When I posted this story years ago, I intended it to be a one-shot. I did have an idea of how I could continue it for a few more chapters, but I was already in the middle of writing a multi-chapter story and didn't have time to focus on extending this story at that time. The idea for the rest of this story has been in the back of my mind for years and I finally got around to writing this chapter. I don't know when I will post again in this story, but I hope you enjoy this next part.
A couple of weeks following the Livewire attack, Cat sat in her office staring at her wall of monitors with a look of outrage on her face.
"Kiera!" She bellowed out for probably the tenth time in two minutes. She waited a few seconds for a young blonde to come running through her door.
When no one came she finally tore her gaze away from the screen and looked through her office window at her assistant's desk. The young woman's chair sat abandoned a few feet from her desk.
Cat got up from her chair in a huff and walked out of her office.
"Kiera!" She yelled out again while scanning the bullpen. Her assistant was nowhere to be seen.
"Where's Kiera?!" She demanded.
The rest of the office staff pretended to be too engrossed in their task to look Cat in the eye. No one wanted to speak up and risk becoming the focus of their boss' fury.
"There is a fire raging downtown right now!" She pointed to one of the TV screens. "Millions of people are watching live coverage of Supergirl extinguishing a burning building! And is Catco first on the scene? No! GBS is! Now I repeat, where is Kiera?!"
"I think Kara said something about going to the supply room to get more toner for the copier." A young man in a sweater vest stammered. Cat vaguely recognized him from seeing him always hanging around Kara's desk. She did not need to be an excellent judge of character to see he was lying to cover for his friend.
Cat glared at him. "Kiera just changed the toner in the copier this morning." Cat had no idea when the copier toner was last changed, but unlike this kid, she was good at lying.
"I... I might have misheard her, she might have gone to get paper, or she might have said something else, I …"
He was saved by the arrival of his friend, trotting through the door.
"Ms. Grant, I have Terry on the phone for you. He was on his lunch break a couple of blocks away from the burning building. He is on his way now to interview witnesses." Kara handed her boss her cell phone.
Cat snatched the phone and shouted orders to the reporter on the other end as she walked back into her office.
About ten minutes later, once she was off the phone with Terry, she called Kara into her office to retrieve her phone.
"Where were you when that fire was raging?!"
A look of panic crossed over the blonde. "What do you mean?"
"I shouted your name at least a dozen times with no response. If you are going to keep this job, I expect you to come when I call you the first time."
"Oh." The tension Cat saw in her assistant's body eased slightly. "I'm so sorry I had run to the restroom for a few minutes, but as soon as I heard about the fire downtown, I remembered Terry said he was going to lunch at the Big Belly Burger nearby and I called him.
"The bathroom is within shouting distance, why didn't you come back sooner."
"I…um… didn't use the women's room on this floor…it…it smelt like it could stand to be cleaned so I went to the one by legal. I'm so sorry if I had known about the fire, I never would have left my desk."
Cat stared at Kara for a few seconds before saying. "See that it does not happen again."
"It won't," Kara assured her before walking out.
Cat continued to stare at her assistant through the office window as she sat back down at her desk. Kara's story about being in the bathroom while Cat was shouting for her was plausible, but she still suspected the young woman was lying. She remembered the smell of smoke she noticed when her assistant first handed her the cell phone. She was certain that Kara was not hiding a nicotine habit and while it was possible the scent could have clung to Kara's clothing and hair by someone else disregarding the building's smoking ban, Cat suspected this was not the case.
Kara had disappeared right as Supergirl was dealing with a blazing inferno and had returned right after the hero put out the fire. It could just be a coincidence, but Cat found herself frequently noticing these coincidences in the last couple of weeks. They were why she had been unable to shake her absurd theory that her assistant was somehow living a double life as the Girl of Steel.
Sure, when she first had the idea, she immediately laughed it off and chalked it up to stress and exhaustion after nearly being murdered over Thanksgiving. But the idea had taken root in the back of her mind and caused her to reevaluate the last two years with her assistant. Why did Kara always seem offended whenever anyone criticized Supergirl? How could Kara be at her desk one second and then she'd be gone in the few seconds when Cat looked away? And what was she always whispering about with Olson and her friend in sweater vest?
So many memories had come back to her framed in a new light, like the time a tablet Kara was holding nearly snapped in two. It happened during Kara's first month as her assistant. She had made a mistake and screwed up Cat's schedule for the day. Cat started yelling at her and asked the girl why she should keep paying her salary if she could not handle a simple task when they both heard a crack and saw the tablet was bent and the screen was shattered. Kara had been very apologetic about the mishap, but Cat had blamed the incident on the tablet being poorly made. She thought it was impossible for her assistant to easily break a tablet with her bare hands unless it had been defective, to begin with. Now she wondered if it had been a clue that Kara was not who she appeared to be.
Cat also remembered a few weeks earlier when she was on the phone with an old friend, who was visiting National City and Cat insisted they should get together for lunch the next day at Petrillo's. When she got off the phone, she called for Kara to come into her office, but before she could instruct the young woman to make the reservation, Cat received a phone call about a problem with advertising which she spent the next several hours dealing with. She completely forgot about her lunch plans until the next morning when Kara was going over her schedule for the day and told Cat she had a one o'clock reservation.
"Wait, how did you know I wanted you to make a reservation?"
"What do you mean Ms. Grant, you told me yesterday to make a reservation for you and Ms. Cain at Petrillo's.
"No, I didn't. I was going to tell you to make a reservation, but thanks to my former head of advertising's incompetence, I never got the chance."
"You said something about it yesterday afternoon. I can't remember your exact words, but with everything going on, maybe you forgot about telling me to make it. I made the reservation while you were on the phone with advertising, and I confirmed the time with Ms. Cain."
Cat was sure she never told Kara to make the reservation, but she could not come up with a logical explanation for how Kara knew to make one. Kara was sitting at her desk when Cat was on the phone with her friend and her office door was closed. There was no way she could have heard her boss talking—unless she had super-hearing.
No, I'm being crazy. Cat thought. If her assistant were an alien, she would have realized it long ago. But what did she know about Kara's personal life or her history? In the last two years, she had never known, until recently, that the young woman was an orphan with an adoptive family. Cat realized if she were going to let this theory go, she needed to find proof that Kara could not be Supergirl.
She waited until Kara was out on a coffee run before she dialed an old associate of hers. Maybe she was being paranoid, but if there was any chance her assistant did have super-hearing, she didn't want her overhearing anything in this phone call.
"Hello," A male voice answered. It belonged to a Private Investigator Cat used a few times over the years when she wanted something investigated off the Catco books.
"Hey, I need you to look into one of my employees."
"You think someone may be leaking stories to the competition again." The PI guessed.
"No, nothing like that. But I do want you to do a full background check, see if she has anything to hide."
"And which employee do you want me to investigate?"
"My assistant, Kara Danvers."
