Hang on to your butts, folks. Clark's getting ready to suit up for the first time. This chapter and the next are pretty much all Lois and company.
In other news, Story 3 is coming along at lot faster than I expected (i'm writing chapter 21), so I just might be able to make that weekly update switch in September. And that works out nicely, because the last August update will be chapter 23 which is the halfway point for this story.
Side-note: I know a lot of people usually don't check author profiles, so probably very few of you saw the sizeable info-dump I put in my profile. If you're curious about the planned direction of this budding fanfic universe, go take a gander.
Chapter Twenty:
Detective Gordon turned on the lights in the empty conference room and directed Lois inside. She walked in with a faint shiver of fear, because she was actually going through with this. She was about to tell someone stuff she hadn't talked about for five or so years.
"I've got to warn you." she started, as she lowered herself into a chair. "A lot of the stuff I'm going to tell you isn't pleasant. Kind of the opposite, really."
"I'm a detective, Miss Lane. I've seen things that I don't doubt are as bad as what you've experienced." Gordon assured her, while he set down the stack of file folders and then slid towards her the paperwork necessary to make this interview formal and official.
For a second, Lois felt like patronizing him; felt like saying things that would feed his ego, but being incredibly sarcastic about it and treating him like a child, because a part of her was going: How dare he assume to know what I've been through. Like he was turning it all around and making it about himself.
Another part of her acknowledged that he probably did have a very good idea. The detective wasn't young. He had five or six years on her and he had been on the police payroll for as long. He wasn't turning it around to make it about himself. He was just trying to assure her that he had been around the block a few times already.
That didn't mean they had been around the same blocks, however.
"Still, if you want to take a break here and there, I won't hold it against you." Lois shrugged, jotting her name down on the dotted lines where applicable. Yes, she was on board with this. Yes, this amounted to a signed confession. Yes, she was willing to trade full cooperation for a distinct absence of jail-time.
Detective Gordon frowned thoughtfully. "Isn't that what I should be saying to you?" he wondered, setting out a notepad and the recorder for the interview.
"I've kept my mouth shut on these things for six years, or something like that. Not even my diary knows." Lois told him, sliding the paperwork back towards him. "If being the stoolie canary means bringing down Sofia even just for a couple of years -- because let's be honest, Papa Falcone's going to find some way to get her out of jail eventually -- but if we can swing even five years in a super-max, I'll call it a job well done."
Detective Gordon nodded solemnly. "Glad to see your conviction, Miss Lane."
"And another thing." Lois put in. "If I'm going to spend the next hour or whatever spilling all of my deepest darkest secrets to you, I'm going to insist that you to call me 'Lois'."
"Then I guess I'm going to have to reciprocate and ask that you call me 'Jim'." the detective said, smiling. He slid a few of the file folders across the table and clicked on the recorder. "I've got some names I'd like to run by you to start. These are the files on four people who went missing, last seen in the company of known or suspected associates of Mrs. Gigante. I'm hoping now you'll recognize at least one of them."
Lois flipped open each folder and gave a quick look over each of the missing people. It didn't surprise her to find that she recognized all four of them; two of them only by name, but they were distinctive names that you didn't really hear in this part of America.
"Shawndra Barrera, civil rights activist and once-prominent member of the NAACP. I remember the media circus when she went missing." Lois said quietly. It hadn't been the first incident of NAACP members going missing, but due to the nature of Ms. Barrera's disappearance, it had certainly been the most sensational. "She's dead. Her body was dumped in the Carter River upstream."
"Do you have a more exact location?" Gordon asked, scribbling the information down.
"No, but the dumpers didn't go more than ten minutes out." Lois answered. Admittedly, that was long enough to get to the west side of the peninsula, but Sofia had had a thing back then about not dumping bodies directly into the lake.
Gordon sighed. "I still hoping we could find her alive, but I don't think her family will argue with a proper funeral." he commented. "The next one?"
"Vladimir Loginov, Ol' Vladdie. He might be dead." Lois tried to remember. "He was one of the bankers getting money laundered through the system. Not a confident sort of guy. He ended in the Slam a few times until he remembered which way the wind was blowing."
"The Slam?"
"Sofia's personal prison."
"She has a prison?" Gordon asked incredulously, his eyebrows shooting up to his hairline.
Lois shrugged. "She's got to put them somewhere." She pushed two of the folders back to him. "Souza and Einstein-- Bjorgulfer Eysteinsson, I mean. My ear's not as close to the ground as it used to be, but there's a fifty-fifty chance they're still alive. If they're anywhere, she's keeping them in the Slam. You probably know Souza."
"Lucas Souza. He's a sergeant with Narcotics. Went missing last summer." Gordon nodded. He didn't cross paths with Narcotics very much, but when he did, it seemed like he always ran into Souza. A decent fellow, all things considered.
"Chances are real good Souza helped Sofia in setting up the meth operation so it went completely below police radar. But you only end up in the Slam if Sofia has any reason to doubt your loyalty, so he must have had second thoughts." Lois explained. "Get him out and he'll probably sing like a morning lark."
"Where is the Slam?"
"It's in the West River. I don't know the address, but I can recognize the building when I see it."
"Miss Lane-- Lois. Why didn't you come forward with this information years ago?" Gordon wondered. He couldn't help but think how useful some of this would have been to know ages earlier.
Lois cocked her head and raised an eyebrow. "Really? You're wondering like you don't know the answer? Nobody thinks about snitching on Sofia and lives to follow through. I'm still alive because I didn't, so you had better catch her this time." she said emphatically.
"I understand." Gordon nodded. Snitching was dangerous business; they would definitely have to assign a protection detail to Miss Lane. "Tell me about the gang you were a part of."
"We were all young, dumb punks." Lois said dryly.
"I figured that much. How did you get in?" Gordon asked.
"I beat up one of their members." the reporter admitted, grinning at the memory. "I'd run away from home a few days earlier; my dad was being impossible. You know how it is. Anyways, I was bunked up at a homeless shelter for the night when this asshole tried to drag me out of bed, so I kicked his butt. He was part of the gang. That impressed his buddy enough that he wanted me to join the initiates."
"You had to do an initiation?"
"Yeah, I had to steal a car. Like a luxury car. All the initiates had to do it without getting caught by the owners or the police."
"What do they do with the cars?"
"Some are gifted away, some go into a chop shop, and the rest get sold on the black market." Lois answered.
"Hmm, that sounds like the Suicide Kings." Gordon realized. One of the gangs operating out of the Slums and still fairly large and they dealt largely in cars and car parts. "They're a rough bunch, from what I've seen."
Lois snorted. "Of course they are. It was all about currying favor with Sofia and her lieutenants. The more brutal you acted, the better the chance that you caught her eye. You catch her eye, you move up in the world." she said. "I was in there for two years. I spent most of that time working the drug circuit. I was half-dealer, half-pusher."
"Who were your customers?"
"High schoolers. I was a teenager, so they sent me to a Midtown high school. I had to be the good student with the bitchin' grades so the administration wouldn't suspect me of being the drug-dealing low-life, in case you were wondering how I got into college." Lois said. She had been an A-B honor roll student even before running away, so there hadn't been any need to pretend. The honor roll students were rarely suspected of wrong-doing. "I had about fifty regular customers and a few of them were teachers. I also had to-- I dunno, seduce people into buying, if they wanted to, but weren't sure."
"Hah, and people ask me how drug-dealers are getting into the schools." Gordon scoffed, gleefully making a note of teenage plants. "So you did this for two years. How did you get out and more importantly, why?"
Lois found herself hesitating and her previous urge to tell all suddenly dried up. Because what came next... Well, that was where things got properly gritty. This was the thing that would have given her nightmares and regretted for the rest of her life if she had followed through. This was the thing she had refused to even hint at for fear of how people would regard her after. They already called her insane, but she could deal with that. But she couldn't deal with people calling her an almost-murderer on top of it.
Her gaze slid to the right, where she normally found Clark most days and for a vague second, she wondered why he wasn't there. He was usually so close at hand he was literally just in arm's reach and maybe she had gotten used to him being there.
If he was here, he'd probably do some physical contact and urge her to continue, polite little farm boy that he was. He would tell her that it was okay; this was for a good reason. He would assure her that she could say it out loud, even if he didn't know what it was.
Clark wouldn't judge her on something she hadn't even done.
Lois screwed her courage to the sticking point and took a breath. "Turned out the car theft? That was only level one initiation." she said. "Two years in, I had to start proving my proverbial balls were made of steel. I had to show the gang that I was committed to the cause."
"By doing what?" Gordon asked, though he was half-sure what the answer was going to be.
"Two years in, that's when they expect you to start killing people." Lois said coolly, amazed at her own calm. "Sofia treats the first kill as a rite of passage. If you can do it, there would be no casual doubt about your loyalty. You became family. Opportunities opened up, you were given better treatment, higher access. You moved up in the world."
"And if you couldn't?" Gordon prompted.
The reporter spread her hands. "She didn't say."
It was probably death or some manner of disfigurement to ensure that the rejected gang member couldn't or wouldn't talk about life inside the ranks of the Suicide Kings. Sofia employed every possible way of ensuring silence from both her victims and her traitors.
"The thing is, they don't tell you what the next level is until they put the gun in your hands and show you the guy you have to shoot. But I'm me. I spied on the initiation of the guy ahead of me." Lois went on. She hated being uninformed.
It had been terrifying to learn what would have been expected of her. Lois had been out to rebel against her father and his military-strict style of parenting. Joining a gang had seemed like an excellent way of further spitting in his eye; another way of telling him that she wasn't his to control like a wind-up toy soldier.
Ella Lane's asthma had exacerbated a case of bronchitis into double pneumonia and though Lois still didn't know the details, she strongly suspected that her mother had drowned in an excess of mucus. As his wife had wasted away in the hospital, General Lane had burrowed deeper into the uniform. He had been hard to talk with before, but when it had become clear that Ella wouldn't live to the end of the month -- that Thanksgiving would be the last holiday with the entire family -- Lois had discovered that her father wouldn't even acknowledge her presence unless she saluted him first.
Lois had fully fallen out with her dad after the funeral. It was really Ella who had held them together; the only one of them who could talk to Sam Lane and not General Lane. Without her to be his interpreter, it was inevitable that they would fall apart.
General Lane had parented in the only manner he was familiar with; to become an uncompromising disciplinarian who expected his daughters to jump on command. It had been the exact opposite of what he'd used to expound, which was independence and the questioning of authority and never sacrificing one's ideals and morals. Lois had grated under the one-eighty turn-around, her freedom suddenly constricted in ways she had never imagined. Her only recourse had been to reclaim her independence and in her then-fifteen year old mind, that had meant running away.
Joining the gang had sweetened the pot.
Looking back, she should have realized the whole thing was a twisting rabbit warren that could have taken her to depths she only peripherally knew about.
In the end, she hadn't been about to compromise her morals and take a man's life.
"And you couldn't do it." Gordon concluded knowingly, as though he could see the thoughts going through her head.
"Of course not! I'm all for fucking someone over if they deserve it. I'm a muckraker of a reporter. It's what I do. But these people? These were people Sofia considered serious threats to her infrastructure. That didn't mean they were doing anything wrong or deserved to be shot in the head. Some of them were undercover cops or private investigators. Some just wanted to back out and didn't realize that Sofia's firing policy involved a gun." Lois emphasized, thumping her hands on the table-top. "There was no way I was going to be directly responsible for someone's death."
"So how did you get out?" Gordon asked.
"Well, that probably was the easy part. I called the cops on the next gang rally. Made sure I was holding a bag of acid tabs so they'd arrest me on the spot." Lois explained. Drug possession was officially on her record. "From the gang's perspective, I was just too slow to get away. It didn't look like I betrayed them. They had no reason to think I would talk and some of them knew who my dad was."
"For the record?" Gordon prompted.
"General Sam Lane, U.S. Army. He pulled some strings and got me house-arrest until graduation instead of jail-time. I wasn't allowed to get a driver's license until I was twenty and I had to check in with a parole officer once a week until the end of the year." Lois said. She leaned in a little. "And let's be honest. Sofia doesn't really make it a secret of what happens to traitors, whether you're out or not. I think she left me alone because I knew better."
"So I had better catch her this time." Gordon said, smirking a little.
Lois smirked right back. "You'd damn well better."
"Oh, I will." the detective promised. "Can you tell me a little more about the prison?"
The Major Crimes Unit was full of excellent people, but the freshly brewed coffee tasted like it had been sitting on the bottom of the pot since this morning. Colletta made a face, but sipped it anyways because the SCU was just too far away to make a coffee run.
"Here." She presented a second Styrofoam cup to Steve. "It tastes like the bag it came in, but it's caffeinated."
"Guess that's better than nothing." Steve commented, stretching out of his seat to take the cup from her. They were waiting outside the conference room for the interview to finish.
The former government agent sipped the hot coffee tentatively and his tongue wrinkled when he tasted the almost plastic-like tint lurking underneath the usual flavor of coffee. It almost put him off, but he had no idea how much longer he'd be sitting here and it was probably safer to stay awake.
"You said the SCU had better coffee?" he asked.
Colletta nodded. "Captain Jase has a cousin who works for some local coffee bean company or somewhere in the distribution line. Either way, the guy's high enough in management that he can sell a couple of cans of the good stuff and mark it out of the stock without getting in trouble." she said. She grinned. "Still thinking about that job in the SCU?"
"Do you think Lieutenant Sawyer would take my performance tonight as part of my résumé?" Steve wondered.
"I figure if we get through this alive and conscious, Maggie would have to be insane to shred your application. Hell, I might get up to Officer First Grade." Colletta said optimistically. She had been on the force about two and a half years now, so she was about due for a promotion just from sheer experience, but this might prompt the lieutenant to push the paperwork through early.
"Sofia Gigante is probably the last big threat in the city. We can't officially acknowledge her due to some bullshit going on in city hall, but if we can arrest her on a solid charge, and since Lois is already behind this, they won't have a leg to stand on." she added.
"There's bullshit going on in city hall?" Steve sounded surprised by this. Metropolis had always seemed like such a clean city to him, both in its appearance and in its government.
"There's always bullshit going on in city hall. Not everyone from Mayor Berkowitz's reign of stupidity got outed and I'm not sure people know how to get them out." Colletta said with a half-born groan. She rolled her eyes too. "Berkowitz made a big speech about taking down the last of the organized crime and he did sort of wipe out the Gazzo family, but I think he was in league with Gigante or Falcone because he never actually went against them. Lois would know for sure, I bet."
"Do you really believe her when she says she used to work for one of Gigante's gangs?" Steve asked. Born in Oklahoma but raised in the ass-end of Philidelphia, he knew from experience that practically no gang member turned their lives around the way Lois evidently had. It seemed to stick with them like bad smell.
"Oh, I believe it." Colletta nodded, looking solemn for a moment. She sunk in her seat. "Ugh, Maggie's gonna have my head for this. I'm actually off-shift right now. I oughta be at home sleeping. I just really wanted ice cream."
"I think if we can bag Gigante, you won't get in any trouble." Steve consoled her. "How much longer do you think they'll be in there?"
As he asked this, they both turned their heads to look at the clock perched nearby. It was half-past two in the morning now and they had arrived at the station just a little after midnight.
Colletta shrugged. "Who knows? I've known Lois for years and she doesn't really talk about her teenage years or her time with the gang. So this is sort of unprecedented." she said. "She still refuses to say we're friends."
"Why?"
"I dunno. I'd be offended, but I think she does that with everyone. I've been meaning to talk to that Clark-guy she works with."
Someone cleared their throat and they both looked to find that they had been approached by a detective in a nice suit. He looked like he had just come on shift, his clothes not yet rumpled by ten hours on the job.
"I'm sorry for interrupting, but I need you two to come with me." he said.
"No can do, detective. I'm on protection detail for this gentleman and the woman getting interviewed right now. My lieutenant says so." Colletta said. "I've got my badge with me-- Hold on, it's in my pocket."
"I really need you two to come with me." the detective repeated, a little more firmly.
"Are we doing something wrong?" Steve inquired.
"Just come with me." the detective said, beckoning to them.
Steve's eyes narrowed for a second. Something was up with this cop. It was common courtesy for an officer to tell you what was going on and if he wasn't mistaken, it was part of the legal process. Furthermore, it sounded like he was trying to circumvent the higher authority that had (supposedly) tasked Officer Kanigher with the job.
"Nope!" Colletta triumphantly held up the badge she had successfully extracted from her pocket. "Detective- Does that say 'Breene'? Yeah, Detective Breene, if you want me to abandon one of my charges without telling me why, you'll have to go through Lieutenant Sawyer first. Either call her cell phone or get written confirmation from her about the change of orders. But at this moment, my orders are to stay with both my charges."
Detective Breene frowned a little and then pulled his gun.
"You're under arrest." he announced.
Well, there went the shoe. The guy was definitely trying to be up to no good and they both knew it.
"I've done kickboxing since middle school. I'm a third kyu green belt." Colletta told him. The smirk that touched her face was just a little bit evil.
She was on her feet in a flash, her leg striking out in the precision form of a front kick at the drawn gun, knocking it right out of the detective's hand. The swiftness in which she moved and the power behind the strike proved just how adept she was.
The detective froze for just the second it took him to realize where his gun had gone and Colletta capitalized on it fully. She shifted back and then delivered two hook strikes into the man's center mass, one directly to the gut and the second to the liver. Detective Breene doubled over and sank down his knees, wrapping arms around his middle protectively. The younger officer didn't give him a second to catch his breath. She grabbed the lapels of his nice suit and hauled him up into an awkward position where he couldn't really get his feet under him.
I have the weirdest boner right now. Steve realized.
"You know there's an entire task force in Internal Affairs dedicated to rooting out corrupt cops, right? You're so about to be fired." Colletta said. Her smile felt a little too Lois-like. "It's Gigante you work for, isn't it."
"I'm not telling you anything. Unhand me this instant." the detective ordered.
"You're threatening my charges and me. That's probable cause and an excuse for force, as far as I'm concerned." Colletta declared. She looked over her shoulder. "Hey Steve, go get Lois and the other detective."
Steve all but jumped out of his seat and went over to the conference room door while Colletta dragged Detective Breene out of the hallway. He didn't knock, but barged right in. His sudden entrance made Lois jump in a rather guilty manner, her mouth snapping shut.
"Hey, a dirty cop just tried to arrest us. Colletta handled him." the former government agent told them. "Gigante's on her way if she's not here already."
"Time to bail." Lois agreed, hastily getting out of the chair and eager to leave the interview. It wasn't quite done -- there was still more to say -- but she could use a break.
"I should stay here and get started building the case." Gordon said, turning off the recorder.
"Have you been listening to anything I said in the last two hours?" Lois scowled, putting her coat back on. "They're gonna search this room, find you, and someone'll break your spine. Hide that shit and come with us."
The detective hesitated.
"Look, there's no time to hem and haw." Steve snapped impatiently. "Either stay here or come with us, but there's only one safe option and I have a feeling you'll be safer by sticking with us."
"Think eyewitness in your own case." Lois added.
Which actually wasn't much of an incentive as it should have been. In the two years since Gordon had taken up the task of officially bringing in Sofia Gigante, he hadn't actually gotten more than a glimpse of her. Lois was all but saying out loud that by accompanying them, he had a very good chance of coming face-to-face with the mafia queen herself. It was tempting, but at the same time, not.
But fuck it, he wasn't going to make any progress by playing it safe!
He piled everything into a chair and shoved it under the table, then grabbed his coat.
"Let's go."
Colletta joined them again as Gordon was closing up the conference room.
"What did you do with the dirty detective?" Lois asked.
"Stuffed him in the utility closet and gagged him with a rag. Don't worry, it was clean." Colletta said assuredly, but her expression suggested otherwise. "I hope it was clean. I mean, it smelled clean."
"Ladies, we need to go." Steve interjected, not eager to get caught by the mafia queen and any of Trask's men accompanying her.
"C'mon, this way." Gordon instructed, gesturing for them to follow.
They walked at a brisk, purposeful pace back towards the parking garage. Fast enough that people got out of their way, but not so fast that it looked like they were running. Lois was keenly aware of every cop that glanced at them as they passed and her own words came back to her.
"There's a few dirty cops in the ranks. Not very many, but we have no way of knowing who they are."
She hadn't given it a whole lot of thought before, but now she was all too aware that any one of the cops they passed could be on Sofia's payroll. Any one of them could just step right out into their path and raise enough hell to get everyone around to notice them in a bad way.
Fortunately, that didn't happen. They made it to the third-floor skybridge across to the parking garage on the other side of the street without anyone attempting to stop them. Having led the procession thus far, Gordon stopped at the door just before entering the garage.
"All right, if they're here, this is where they'll try and ambush us." he said, peering through the glass.
"Yeah." Steve agreed, coming up beside him. "It's pretty empty out there, low ceiling, plenty of sight-lines. We'll be sitting ducks if they catch us. It's the perfect spot to try and pull off an ambush." He turned around. "Ladies--"
"Stay low and run like fuck, we know." Lois said dryly. "This isn't our first rodeo. I'm a reporter and she's a cop." she added, gesturing to Colletta. "And before you ask, the way I report has a lot to do with dodging bullets. How do you think I got into this mess in the first place?"
Slowly, both men exchanged a look that said: You're welcome to try and argue with her, but I'm starting to figure out that neither of us would win. For a second, they both looked briefly uncomfortable with discovering that they were thinking the same thing and then sighed in resignation.
"What Miss Lane-- Lois said. Stay low and run like hell." Gordon said. For a safety measure, he loosened the gun in its holster. "Officer Kanigher, if it's all the same to you, I'd like to be the one driving."
"There isn't some over-manly, attempted chivalrous reason for that, is there?" Colletta wondered, frowning.
"How often are you in police chases?" Gordon asked. He knew the SCU wasn't the department that regularly engaged in cross-city chases that required some pretty slick driving skills to avoid becoming a smear on the roads.
"Good point." Colletta conceded, taking out her keys. "Reverse gear sticks a little; be careful with my baby. I'll trade you keys for gun. You'll need your hands free."
"Cover my back."
They made the swap quickly and all four of them stepped up to the glass doors, ready to push them open.
"All right, we've got to hit that pavement running." Steve said, falling easily back into his old Air Force role of team leader. "We're not parked too far away, but there's nothing between us and the car except empty parking spaces. We shouldn't cluster together or we'll just be easier targets. Believe it or not, a zig-zag pattern of running actually works."
"Be a majestic gazelle." Lois commented.
"In spirit." Steve agreed, grinning. "On three, okay?"
"Just go!" Lois shouted, her voice carrying a commanding note that had made more than one photographer and failed partner jump to their feet. The commanding note she had learned from her father.
The four of them burst out of the doors and pelted across the concrete of the garage. In almost the same second, there was the screech of tires and out of the corner of her eye, Lois caught a glimpse of a familiar-looking black SUV barreling up the last few feet of ramp.
"Company!" she shouted.
Colletta skidded to a halt and raised the Beretta 92 to eye-level, aiming for the windshield of the oncoming vehicle. It was probably bullet-proof glass, but if she could just crack it enough...
She squeezed off just two rounds, wincing at the eardrum cracking echo that seemed to split the concrete. She didn't wait to see if the bullets hit -- the SUV was already swerving away -- and sprinted off towards her car. By the time she got there, Gordon had gotten the engine going and Lois and Steve had piled into the backseat, the former sergeant with his upper body halfway out the open window and the Tec-9 in his hands.
"Let's get out of here!" Colletta threw herself into the empty front seat and slammed the door.
Gordon shifted out of park and stomped on the gas. The car jumped forward like a previously restrained dog and the tires squealed as Gordon spun the wheel to angle to the car the opposite direction from the SUV's resumed approach.
"There's a vehicle on our ass!" Steve announced.
"I noticed! Just the one?" Gordon wondered.
"For now!"
But even just the one SUV was coming up fast on their tail as they made for the exit ramp. Gordon was forced to slow down in order not to smash the car off the curving wall. Colletta had a white-knuckled grip on the seat under her, praying that her insurance would cover any damage the car suffered in the next few minutes. Lois and Steve watched anxiously out the back window as the SUV roared up to the back fender.
"They're right on our ass!" the former sergeant announced.
"It's Trask!" Lois realized, biting down on a growl.
She had just made out the regimented cut of his hair, catching the flash of his blue-gray eyes in the lights they passed under. That stern jaw and hard countenance was nearly impossible to mistake. Beside him in the passenger's seat was the same dark-skinned, swole fellow. Back when she had run with the Suicide Kings, he had called himself Kneecaps Lou.
"Just when I thought we'd gotten away from him." Steve muttered, shaking his head.
The SUV surged forward with a roar and crunched into the rear fender.
"Whoa!" Gordon had to resist every instinct to swing the car out of striking range, for an inch too far to the left or right would have rammed them right into the wall.
"Watch the dents, fuckers!" Colletta shouted out the window. "My insurance only covers so much!"
She leveled the Beretta 92 again and fired to get Trask off their ass and this time, she saw the windshield crack under the bullet's impact. The jerk-hole agent hit the brakes rather than swerve.
"Step on it as much as you can!" Lois shouted at Gordon, almost lunging over the driver's seat to take the wheel herself.
"We're almost out!" the detective assured them.
And sure enough, the next curve yielded the open street rather than another expanse of concrete wall. The car shot free of the parking garage's confines and spun out onto the road. Gordon straightened out the nose and stomped the gas. The tires squealed again.
"Where were you going before?" he asked.
"The Slums, if we can still get there!" Lois answered.
"I'll get you as close as possible." Gordon said. "We're going this way!"
He checked the street signs and then depressed the brake to get safely around the next right turn. Lois caught a glimpse of the Daily Planet's globe through the towers and the mental map of the city in her head suddenly oriented itself. Gordon was taking them south towards Hob's Bay and they were closer to the Ordway Memorial Bridge than the Queensland Bridge.
Another black SUV suddenly appeared on the right side and slammed into the smaller car with a nasty crunching noise. Lois threw herself away from the window instinctively and Gordon yanked on the wheel to send Colletta's car away from the aggressive SUV.
"That's not Trask! That's one of his buddies!" Steve realized, pushing Lois back up.
"They're trying to run us off the road!" the reporter added.
"I think we could tell!" Colletta shouted.
"Hang on!" Gordon pressed the gas pedal all the way to the floor. The buildings seemed to rear back slightly and the lit-up form of the Ordway Memorial seemed to come up all too quickly. At this time of night, the suspension bridge was abandoned.
*BANG!*
"Was that a bullet?!" Colletta yelped, twisting in her seat, trying to find where the damage was. "Who's that fucker shooting at my car?! My insurance doesn't cover bullet holes!"
There was another *crack-bang!* of gunfire and the distinct *thunk* of a bullet slamming harmlessly into the trunk.
"Trask is that fucker." Lois told the young police officer. A second SUV had joined the first, this one with a cracked windshield and Trask's face just barely visible in the dimness.
"He's a dead fucker." Colletta vowed.
"We're almost at the bridge!" Gordon said.
"Faster! Drive faster!" Steve ordered.
"I can't! Pedal's down!"
The SUVs advanced on up on either side of the smaller car even as the road narrowed slightly where the cables of the bridge rose up, and dare Lois say there was something quite predatory about the way they moved. Trask hung back just off the fender while the other crept up on the left and sideswiped the car again. Gordon swerved away, but that was exactly what the other SUV wanted. It swooped in so Gordon couldn't maneuver out of the far right lane, all but pinning them against the wall.
"Oh this is bad." Lois commented, a sinking feeling coming over her. She settled into the other seat and grabbed the seatbelt.
"Is that necessary?" Steve wondered, eyeing her like she was a very particular sort of insane for wanting to mind vehicular safety when they were already in a car chase.
Lois raised an eyebrow and half a second later, cursed her foresight.
Trask rear-ended them hard, hitting the car at just the right angle to send the smaller car spin out of control. The other SUV braked suddenly, allowing the wild car to spin out past it.
He rammed the car again, crunching in the front right side, and that was the last nail in the proverbial coffin. Colletta's car wasn't big, but it still weighed in the neighborhood of three thousand pounds and not an ounce of that was under Gordon's control. Not at one hundred and twenty miles an hour. The back end crashed through the metal railing separating the roadway from the pedestrian path and then through the railing that separated the pedestrians from a long fall to the water. There was just too much momentum working on the car for both railings to stop it.
A terrifying jolt yanked on Lois's stomach when the car suddenly tilted backwards too far to be saved and too suddenly to be stopped. For a moment, they seemed to hang, tilted on the edge of the bridge, and then they plummeted.
-0-
oh my goodness we have new kittens