16

Kerry didn't know anyone named Fox Mulder. She wasn't even sure it was a real name, but she was intrigued by his message. During her lunch break, she broke from routine and took her lunch from the bistro on the first floor to go. Instead of sitting and eating on the outside patio, she walked across the street and entered Highland Park through its northeast entrance. Sitting and eating her sandwich with her newest Temperance Brennan crime novel, she watched the kids on the playground and periodically looked searching for her contact. She wasn't sure what he looked like. He could have been the bald guy with the paunch belly that jogged through and nearly crashed into the baby stroller while ogling the busty blonde, or he could have been the guy in the suit dating the girl seven years his junior. Getting through her sandwich, Kerry checked her watch and looked around again.

"Miss Hennessey?"

Kerry spun around to the figure that had come up behind her. Dressed in blue jeans with an unbuttoned white dress shirt and light jacket, he looked to be in his forties with piercing blue eyes and an unruly shock of uncombed brown hair tinged with gray hairs. She placed him somewhere in his early forties. Mulder reached to shake her hand.

"Sorry to come a bit late, but I wanted to let you finish your lunch first." He sat down by her on the same bench that Kerry had risen from. "I'm Fox Mulder…"

"I don't understand why you wanted to talk to me." Kerry placed her book in her purse and crumpled up her trash to toss in the receptacle by her. "Do I know you? Do you know Bridget?"

"No, I never had the honor to meet her." Mulder looked around a bit and sat with his fingers interlinked and hanging down off his knees. "But we do know someone in common. William Collins?"

"Oh, yeah…" Kerry knew the novelist. "His mother was a nanny or something for my mom when she was young." She tried to recall the family link with the Collins family of Maine.

"William's an old friend, we attended camp together as kids…" Mulder added. "Anyway, I understand you've been trying to track down Bridget."

"Yeah…"

"Kerry," Mulder started with a deep breath. "I'm ex-FBI." He noticed her reaction. "I retired a few years ago, but my wife is still an agent. While I was part of the organization, I was part of the X-Files division. It was my job to investigation public occurrences that fell outside the perimeters of regular law agencies, like UFO sightings and suspected occult murders."

"Okay…" Kerry reacted hesitantly.

"Today, I've stayed in the subject as a writer. I've published a few books about the government's covert knowledge of alien contact, and that's where I became fascinated by your sister." He continued. "Your sister, Bridget, by all accounts was a very normal high school girl, but I believe she became involved with a supernatural event sometime in November 2005 that gave her abilities that she felt driven or compelled her to…" He paused trying to select the right words. "…Save the world from itself."

"Why do you think this girl is my sister?" Kerry pulled her hair blown into her face by a breeze.

"Because it would be impossible for a girl to be gone for days and even weeks without her family and friends getting suspicious." Mulder used simple deductive reasoning. "Your sister vanished March 18, 2006, and was never seen or heard of again. The body the police identified as her has since been identified as remains from a flooded cemetery the year before. Meanwhile, a girl resembling Bridget has been seen living in New York City, Chicago, Boston, London, Toronto and San Francisco where her trail ends. However, if you believe our friend, Howard Wolowitz, she lives somewhere around Los Angeles."

"You think I should look in Los Angeles for her, don't you?" Kerry asked him.

"Your mentor, Miss Flockhart, is heading to Santa Monica next month to sign off on an inheritance claim." Mulder looked to Kerry as if he was her big brother. "I think you should go along on that trip."

It was Monday night. Following Sheldon begrudgingly in his egocentric schedule, the guys hesitantly indulged him and prepared for a night of Thai Food followed by a night of the movies, but the evening did not go off with a good start. The Thai Palace they regularly frequented was booked for a private party and they were forced to drag Sheldon griping, harping and complaining over the alteration to his schedule to another location. After some cajoling, they finally forced him to flip Thai Food Monday and Hamburger Tuesday for that week which meant heading to the Cheesecake Factory for his bacon cheeseburger. On their arrival, the found the place sparsely busy and their regular table open.

"You'd think…" Sheldon took his seat. "That after eating there every Monday after several years that they could have called to allow me to approve before allowing a strange party to occupy my regular table."

"Sheldon," Leonard looked exasperatingly toward Howard and Raj then back to Sheldon. "The world does not revolve around your schedule. Every so often you need to learn to adapt."

"Leonard." Sheldon sighed at this change in his routine. "I have had an on-going dietary regime for several years which has continued unabated since I was twelve. Seafood Sundays, Thai Food Mondays, Hamburger Tuesdays…"

"I know! I know!" Leonard interrupted him. "I've got your schedule!" He lifted his menu to decide what he wanted. His aggravation slowly simmering, he wished he had accepted that offer of room and board in Jimmy's house back before he got married. As he debated getting something new, he noticed Bernadette come up alongside the table. She was one of the girls who worked with Penny.

"Hi, guys…" Bernadette spoke in her light kewpie-doll voice. "I didn't know it was Tuesday."

"It's not." Sheldon responded knowing he was getting his bacon cheeseburger. The preceding conversation was just a mandatory social triviality he had to endure with the guys.

"Let's not go there, okay…." Howard spoke up and looked around. "Uh, where's Penny? I thought she was working here tonight."

"I haven't seen her."

"That's weird…" Leonard scowled. "I recall seeing her leave for work at noon in her uniform." He thought back and recalled seeing her with that large purse she always had.

"Well, she doesn't always wait tables with us when she's here." Bernadette knew the guys well enough to talk casually. "She manages the books with the manager, approves the menus, runs receipts to the bank, closes up…"

"That sounds like stuff the owner should be doing." Sheldon commented.

"I've never met the owner…" Bernadette confessed. "But Penny knows her daughter, Billie. I think they're friends or something."

Raj suddenly whispered something in Howard's ear.

"Penny is friends with the daughter of Linda Kent?" Howard scoffed and reacted amazed. "Oh my God… I wonder why she's never mentioned it to us."

"I don't know, but if you want the truth…" Bernadette spoke up. "I think Penny's their spy here. Everyone tries to stay on their toes when she shows up."

"But Penny's works here six days a week right?" Howard asked.

"She's here every Monday to wait tables while you guys are here, and then, she leaves." The cute busty grad student revealed. "Other than that, she periodically shows up to take care of things."

"What's she doing the rest of the time?" Leonard asked intrigued.

"Probably running things for Miss Kent…" Bernadette answered as she lifted her waitress pad. "You guys do know Miss Kent also owns your apartment building."

"She does?" Sheldon reacted. "I wonder if we can get to get the elevator fixed."

"Why is Penny keeping this all a secret?" Howard looked at Raj then Leonard uncontrollably. He was both invigorated by these facts and bursting with compelling anxiety to share them with his mother. "If I was friends with the daughter of a lady millionaire, I'd be screaming it from a microphone at Comic Con."

"Maybe that's why she doesn't talk about it." Leonard spoke up. "Bernadette, could I get the Club Sandwich with side salad? No cheese."

Raj whispered in Howard's ear again.

"Raj would like the Meat Lover's Sandwich with French Fries, and I'd like the Seafood Grande with Onion Rings." Howard announced.

"And Sheldon, you're getting the Double Bacon Cheeseburger with Fries, right?" Bernadette knew his routine as well.

"Of course…" He responded.

"Sodas all around?" All the guys agreed on the choice of drinks, and Bernadette spun round to deliver their orders to the kitchen and take the order to Table Five. When she entered the employee corridor off the dining room, she looked up through her glasses and saw Bridget at the end of the hall outside the manager's office. She looked deep in thought, her arms crossed before her chest, but her eyes were focused on Bernadette. Dressed in blue jeans and a dark long-sleeved sweater, she had just been casually floating over when she overheard Bernadette with her heightened senses. Grabbing the clothes she kept concealed on the roof, she quickly dashed in before continuing her rounds down the coast.

"Jenny…" Bridget lightly prodded one of the other girls. "Take Bernadette's order for her a second." She looked over to the short busty grad student. "Bernadette?" She opened the office and gestured her into it. Blinking a moment under her glasses, Bernadette feared the worse and followed behind her. It was so awkward to be treated by her from a managerial position. Closing the door, Bridget turned and leaned back on the edge of the desk. Molly, one of the two brunette waitresses, paused to overhear outside if Bernadette was getting fired.

"Did you hear me talking to the guys about you?" Bernadette's squeaky little voice asked. "I didn't even know you were here. Please don't fire me; I owe a fortune in student loans."

"Sweetie… honey, " Bridget pulled her long blonde tresses back behind her ears. "Don't talk about my life in front of the guys, okay? I mean… there's a reason I don't talk about…" She paused as her mind accelerated through several stories and excuses and took the best one. "My friendship with Billie and her mother…" She was following a cue from the speculation in the restaurant about her. "You see, if I talked about it, I wouldn't know if anyone liked me for me or because I knew someone wealthy."

"Is that why you pretend to be a waitress for the guys?" Bernadette asked in the dimly lit office.

"Pretty much…" Bridget went along with that.

"I'm sorry; I won't do it again."

"If anyone ever asks again…" Bridget looked up to her again. "Just say it's my day off or I left early…. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Great!" Bridget hugged her now that they had an understanding. "And I'm sure if I asked nicely, maybe Billie could ask her mother to help pay off your loans…"

"That would be so sweet!" Bernadette lit up. "And maybe I could get a raise?"

"Don't go shaking the money tree here, sweetie…" Bridget opened the door and Molly, Ted the dishwasher and Barney and Gus the bus boys scattered from eavesdropping at the door. A look around to make sure they returned to work, Bridget watched as Bernadette returned to waiting on tables and then looked out from afar out the employee entrance. Through her senses, she overheard them debating the use of "Star Trek" transporter technology within the "Star Wars" universe. Bernadette brought them their sodas a moment later and then a silent ultra-sonic alarm went off nearby to override their voices in her head. Turning on her heel, Bridget passed through the kitchen and the utility room on her way out the door. Her sweater pulled off over her head and her blue jeans and boots popping off to land on the roof near her bag, she extended her right arm forward and followed the sound of the alarm toward the spire of the local Pasadena Methodist Church where Eric and Steven Prince trashed the pastor's office. They had recently been relocated to town against their will after their mother had died of cancer. Pastor Fredrick Burkhart was their next living relative, and the two bored felons retaliated against his rigid household by breaking into his office, trashing it then pouring gasoline down the hall. They were pouring it down the middle of the church when the red and blue blur crashed through the doors and Bridget suddenly appeared in her Kryptonian costume.

"Holy crap…" Steven looked to his brother in the barely lit church. "She's real!"

"I hope you boys are wearing clean underwear tonight…" Bridget grinned with a slight giggle. Eric was first to try and run, but a dizzying flash of images later, he was hanging by his underwear band forty feet into the air off the steeple and his brother was right next to him. It was all the start of a very regular and atypical week for the mysterious blonde heroine: assorted drivers trying to evade police in eighteen states, two Canadian provinces and the countryside near London, England, twelve more vandals in Tennessee, Arkansas and Colorado, five street gangs in Tokyo, Chicago and Brooklyn, three drug boats off the Florida coast, covert marijuana fields in Kentucky, a car theft ring in Johannesburg, South Africa, a prostitution ring near Tijuana, Mexico and a very inebriated actress on the Los Angeles Freeway. On Friday, she was back home in Detroit when "America's Most Wanted" was on the pursuit for Beatrice Esmerelda Gonzalez, the "Black Widow Killer," for the murders of her seven ex-husbands in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina. Before the show was even over, a phone call over the air announced that Beatrice could be found hanging around the Waffle House Restaurant off Highway 75, and she was… She was found twenty feet over it with a steel rod bent around her body with her brother and accomplice, DeJesus Desiderio Gonzalez, right next to her hanging by his underwear pulled up over his head.

"What's with the police?" Dr. Elizabeth Masterson was there when the brother was wheeled in to Detroit's St. Thomas Hospital with injuries and pneumonia from the cold. His sister also had symptoms of pneumonia from being held off the cell phone tower for a few hours. There were eleven police officers and three news teams covering the capture of the Black Widow after being on the run over twenty states for seven years. The examination room was packed with activity, cameras going off and questions from every direction.

"She's back!" Marcy cheered the return of the blonde one to Detroit and walked away laughing her head off with a patient file. She had been a big supporter of their mysterious blonde heroine for ten years now and was even on the e-mail list for monthly newsletters from Howard's Incredible Supergirl Sightings Database. Cate was administering penicillin to the Black Widow while looking up with a secret glance to Liz, and Dr. Dorian was wrapping the brother's broken arm in gauze. What had started out with trying to shoot the mystery blonde in the head had ended with his superhuman female attacker flipping him over by his arm and then tossed out a window ten feet to the ground on his back. His sister almost got away, but her Mercedes was now expensive litter and detritus up and down Highway 75. The look between Liz and Cate was their mutual acknowledgment of Bridget's secret life far from home. Cate missed Bridget very much, and Liz was her next possible confidant after Paul. Checking on her tonsillitis patient recovering from surgery, she looked up to Cate doing her duties and turned away in her light blue scrubs down the hall. The majority of the patient rooms had windows while the inner rooms were used for storage and offices. She had Dr. Hackett's old office, but just before she entered to catch up on her paperwork, she noticed a post-it stuck to her door. Someone had left her a message.

"Meet me on the roof - 9:30"

Her watch read 9:34. Looking around and wondering what this was about, the cute petite lady physician took a moment to toss her clipboard on her desk and marched back out to the hall. Maybe her boyfriend, William, was back in town, or maybe her crazy sister was threatening to jump off the roof again, but that sounded ridiculous. Kate's therapist said that she had confessed to be hesitant about suicide, and she was much more happier with Russell in her life. Palming the note in her left hand, Liz entered the stairwell and lightly jogged up to the roof. It was mostly where the hospital's smokers like Marcy and Oliver snuck their disgusting nicotine habits. A blast of cold night air hit Liz in the face as she pulled the top door open and stepped out in her hospital sneakers. It was a cold night, and on the roof, Liz might as well have stood naked on it because her hospital scrubs did not keep her warm.

"Hello?" She scowled and undid her hair in the bun. "I'm only a little late…" All she saw was the dark outlines of structures and trees around the perimeter of the hospital against the dark violet sky with random lights dotting the area. A distant truck went up the highway, and brakes squealed in the distance. Her feet made crunching sounds to the roof as if she was walking on potato chips. AC boxes, vents and assorted images rested in the roof. Liz's childlike face scowled as she turned looking around. She wasn't that late. Her hands under her arms for the cold, she shivered once and heard more crunching from the roof as she spun around to the door.

"Doctor Masterson…." Bridget stood in her costume. "It's me…" Her costume looked like a combination of latex and silk. It was a rich dark blue color with a neon bright red and yellow Kryptonian "S" emblem emblazoned across her chest. Her belt was nothing more for show, a thick yellow band with a fake buckle holding the top of her short red skirt from her waist. Hanging from her shoulders and tucked into a c-pattern from the top of her flat collar, her cape hung down to the backs of her knees like huge red wings from her back. Her skin was flawless; her eyes bluer than she recalled. Her bone structure was perfect. Her round eyes were innocent like a child, and her chin came to a sculpted point much like her own. It was no wonder they were both compared to actress Reese Witherspoon. Bridget's hair was incredible – it was long and extraordinary with an immortal extravagance to it. She looked like a goddess down off Mount Olympus. Liz was awestruck to be reunited with her. She tried to talk, but her voice was struck mute by this girl she once thought she knew. Unlike Liz, she was not shivering in the cold.

"Oh my god… oh my god…"

"Yeah, that's right…." Bridget spoke with a honeyed slow voice. "It's me." She lit up with that plaintiff grin.

"Bridget, oh my god…" Liz tried to catch her breath. "You… you… Bridget…"

"How's my mom?"

"Great!" Liz covered her face with her hands briefly trying to contain her glee and surprise. "Great! She misses her so much, but…" Liz chuckled awkwardly surprised again. "But, honey…. Why me? Why are you appearing to me instead of your mother?"

"I kind of figured out after our little tête-à-tête in the hall last time that you figured out my secret identity." Bridget recalled the night her father had his heart surgery and when her fist to the wall nearly cracked the hospital in two. "I mean, I've kept making efforts to meet with you, but I kept backing out it at the last second. Finally, I just decided that this was it. I was going to do it, but as far as my mother…" She paused trying to explain her feelings. "I guess I'm too scared to face her."

"Bridget…."

"You don't know how many scams I pulled to keep my family from discovering my powers." Bridget tugged off her cape to wrap around Liz and warm her. "I'm just afraid that… if I faced her, she wouldn't take me back, and besides…." She looked over secretly.

"What?"

"There's certain rules to being what I am now and sharing them with others." Bridget sighed. "Powerful rules going back centuries…" She looked back to Liz. "That's why you're an exception."

"But, honey…" Liz placed her hand to the young girl's face as if she was her own daughter. "Your mother knows your secret. So do your father, Kerry, Rory and your grandfather…." She looked into her eyes. "Just go home…"

"No…" Bridget answered. "I can't…." She shook her head. "The truth is they're all still struggling with it. Only you've accepted it. I can't read their minds, but… I know they're having a hard time fighting with the idea that… I've changed. I'm not just Bridget anymore."

"Bridget…" Liz pulled the girl's cape around her against the cold. "After you vanished, your mother had a mental breakdown and spent a few months in a mental hospital. She was hallucinating you everywhere. She thought you were home when you weren't. She thought she saw you where you wasn't…"

"I know…" The young girl in the Supergirl costume shed a tear. "And truth is, I do secretly check up on them from time to time…" She paced a bit and turned back. "But I didn't discover it until after she got out. I wish I could have been there for her, but…" She looked to the heavens. "I couldn't."

"Honey, what kind of power won't let you tell the truth?" Liz pleaded to her.

"Time, fate, destiny…." Bridget took her cape back to leave. "The same powers that keep the truth of Atlantis from being revealed, the truth behind life after death to the secrets of the pyramids… There are forces that are just beyond understanding in this world."

"So you've become a philosopher and a fan of existentialism then?"

"You could say that."

"And I suppose you don't want me telling your mother I saw you." Liz breathed into her hands and rubbed them against each other to keep warm.

"I'm trusting you on your own discretion there, doc…" Bridget slowly started rising off her feet. Liz started to turn back inside then turned back around.

"Bridget…" Liz looked up at her. "One last thing… I've got this young girl named Kaley… a cancer patient. She's in here a lot, and she's like one of your biggest fans."

"I can't go down there with my mother here." Bridget levitated a foot over the roof.

"She's in Room 415…" Liz smiled. "I know very well you can slip down there without being seen."

"You know me so well." Bridget lit up with a big grin. It was her favorite trick to just stand there and then vanish. Everyone froze in place to her eyes as Bridget raced through the hospital corridors in the space of a second. She recalled this place; finding one room on the fourth floor was not an impossible task. Files and papers in three nurses' stations blew up into the air, Oliver saw a brief flash of red and saw sudden footsteps in his mopped floor and five patients buzzed about the cold breeze. In Room 415, nine-year-old Kaley Miranda Davidson sat up drawing with crayons in her book. Her Supergirl drawings taped around her fluttered when the door to her room sounded. It sounded as if someone had opened and closed it really fast. She lifted her bandaged head up and looked up to the costumed girl in her room.

"Hi, sweetie…"

"It's you…" Kaley lit up with a grin full of tiny evenly spaced teeth. "I know it's you." She spoke with a tiny voice.

"That's right…." Bridget peeked quickly out the door. "My friend, Dr. Masterson, said you were my biggest fan."

"Do you like my pictures of you?"

"Are these your pictures?" Bridget came up by her bed. "Are you sure you didn't buy these?"

"Yeah…" Kaley shook her head giggling. "How long can you stay?"

"Only up until someone else needs me…."