A little late for Halloween, but I've had some Internet trouble. Hope you still enjoy it :)

Chloe read through the copies of the police reports one more time looking for anything she might have missed. Two girls dead, two reports of sexual assault, and three girls reporting 'missing time.' In all of the cases, any tests for drugs had come up negative. The cops were treating the cases as being completely separate, but Chloe didn't think she was mistaken for seeing a pattern here.

All of the girls had been with friends or boyfriends on the nights in question. All of the crimes had occurred within a period of just a few days, and all of the girls had apparently been out at various clubs around Metropolis. Friends of the victims reported that they'd been drinking, though not heavily. One minute they were there, and then they disappeared without saying anything to anyone.

Interviewing the girls was difficult since the police had advised them not to talk to anyone pending their investigation. But Chloe had already spoken to one of the girls. Kelly Franklin was a student at Met U and had been in some of the same writing classes with Chloe. After feeling like the police weren't taking her report seriously, and knowing that Chloe interned at The Daily Planet, she'd decided to take her own investigative approach.

According to Kelly, she and her friends had been to a few haunted frat houses on campus that night and later decided to hit the club circuit. For the week leading up to October 31st, many of the bars and clubs in Metropolis' trendy warehouse district had joined together for a Halloween themed week of entertainment. Popular bands rotated between bars, and a special entry fee got you into at least three bars of your choice along with the house drink special at each.

Kelly remembered most of the night clearly, but the third bar was where things had gone hazy for her. Her friends had reported her missing from the Blue Monkey Lounge. They'd had a few drinks by then and were listening to the live band, and then Kelly was gone. Video surveillance showed her walking out with a guy she claimed she didn't know – the same guy she woke up with the next morning.

It was a classic case of he said she said. Kelly went to the police and filed an assault report, assuming based on her blackout that she'd been drugged. But the tox report had come back clean, and her accused attacker swore she was the one who wanted to go home with him. Since the video didn't show Kelly being mistreated and she appeared to be walking out of the club of her own free will, the police seemed to have decided it was a case of one night stand remorse.

But that didn't explain the other girl whose story matched up eerily with Kelly's, nor did it explain the two dead girls reported missing in a similar manner by their friends. Then there were the girls who had gotten separated from friends for a brief time but hadn't actually been missing. According to those reports, the girls' boyfriends said they were acting strangely, and they had woken up the next morning experiencing a period of missing time.

The problem for Chloe was that they hadn't all disappeared from the same club. They had, however, all gone missing from the clubs hosting the Halloween events in the warehouse district. And as much as dressing up for Halloween wasn't really her thing anymore, she knew where she was headed that night.

And who's going to be your backup? Her inner voice of reason was back to reminding her that with Lois and Clark out of town on an assignment, her choices for backup were limited. She was pretty sure Bart was still in town, but putting up with his blatant attempts to romance her would be distracting. According to Clark, AC was back in Florida for a rally that he'd probably end up being arrested at. While his eagerness to save his ocean friends was endearing, Chloe wished he'd show a little more discretion in the process.

There was Victor, of course, but if Victor went with her then he wouldn't be available to patrol or run backup for Oliver. And the last thing she wanted was to see Oliver right now, or any time before she was at least old enough to claim senility as a reason for forgetting their last encounter.

Five months ago, Chloe had asked Oliver to help her get into a charity fundraiser hosted by the wife of one of Metropolis' premiere attorneys to the corporate world, Bill Leiman. She'd been looking for evidence that he had helped Holomon International cover up safety violations which had led to the deaths of almost fifty night shift workers in one of their labs.

They'd gotten into his home office with little trouble. It was what happened next that made Chloe want to hop a time machine back to the moment when she involved Oliver in the first place.

"I hope you're getting close because those guards are going to be making the rounds in another five minutes, tops," Oliver advised as he stood near the door.

"I'm through the firewall and I'm copying the files now, but I'll need a couple of minutes to cover my tracks." Chloe's fingers flew across the keyboard, and less than two minutes later she sat back. "Done. Let's get out of here."

She joined Oliver as he cracked open the door only to close it again. "Dammit. They're in the hallway." He grabbed her arm and pulled her against the wall with him.

Chloe's mind raced. If they got caught in here and Leiman suspected what they'd been after, it would be bad - bad for her but even worse for Oliver. He had the most to lose if people started to look beneath the careless playboy façade he used to mask his vigilante activities. And why would a playboy be in the office?

She grabbed one of the champagne glasses they'd brought in with them and splashed it all over the front of Oliver's shirt.

Oliver stepped away from her, confused. "What the hell are you doing?"

Chloe grabbed the other glass and downed it before gripping the lapels of Oliver's jacket. "Kiss me."

"Whoa, Chloe…"

She didn't give him a chance to argue, leaning up and capturing his lips in a kiss that immediately sent a shock wave down her spine. Holy hell, she thought dizzily, wondering if it was the champagne or Oliver that suddenly made her world tilt. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him back with her until her hips hit the desk behind her.

It didn't take Oliver long to get into the role. He lifted her onto the desk and jerked her hips against his. Chloe felt the soft material of his dress pants against her inner thighs and moaned, pulling him closer. His lips were softer than she'd expected, but they were also demanding as they slanted across hers again and again.

A throat clearing near the doorway startled them both. "Excuse me, Mr. Queen?"

Oliver jerked back, and Chloe put her hand up to her lips as she dragged in a ragged breath. Every one of her nerve endings was still tingling, and her hands were trembling. Get it together, Sullivan, she ordered herself.

Chloe stood on shaky legs and refused to meet Oliver's gaze.

He put a steadying arm around her before turning to the men in the doorway. "Sorry, my uh… date and I got a little carried away. I spilled some bubbly on my shirt and we were looking for a bathroom." He stumbled a bit as he approached the men, causing Chloe to sway on her heels and grasp his arm tighter.

Regaining her balance, Chloe chanced a peek at the men and saw one of them rolling his eyes as he spoke into a radio. "No problem here – just a couple of inebriated guests."

"Mr. Queen, the bathroom is on the opposite end of this hall. If you'll follow me?" The taller of the two men kept his face expressionless as Oliver played the harmless drunk card all the way to the bathroom. When Oliver tried to follow Chloe in, the man grabbed his arm and eased him back. "Uh, that's ladies only."

Chloe's face was burning as she disappeared into the bathroom. She walked over to the mirror and began repairing the damage to her makeup and hair that their little romp in the office had caused. She'd idly imagined what kissing Oliver might be like once or twice. She'd just never imagined it would be that disorienting, that… passionate. No wonder women lined up all over the city for a night out with him.

Chloe put a halt to her memories of that night because no good was going to come of her thinking too much about that kiss. She'd managed to get her act together in the bathroom and had emerged playing her tipsy part. She'd giggled appropriately as Oliver continued his harmless playboy act in front of Mr. Leiman while handing over his generous donation check.

Chloe had gotten what she'd needed to nail the CEO of Holoman International, but she'd asked her editor, Perry White, to let Lois write the story since she didn't want Leiman to be suspicious. In the end, no one was the wiser about their real activities in Leiman's office, and neither Oliver nor Chloe said anything about what happened that night.

Chloe had even managed to mostly avoid Oliver since then. While he'd been in and out of the city on both QI and League related business, she had graduated from Metropolis University, and she and Jimmy had rather impulsively decided to move in together. News of that decision had apparently reached Oliver and the others via Clark. She'd endured one very uncomfortable League meeting with Oliver looking at her speculatively and Bart cracking bad jokes about his 'Chloelicious' being off the market.

Domestic bliss lasted exactly two months before Jimmy told Chloe that he was moving out. He said she was distant and he never knew where she was or what she was doing. And when what she was doing so often involved helping Clark and the others, she didn't have much of a defense. Even when they were together, they somehow managed to feel like they were apart. And it didn't help that when Jimmy kissed her, she thought about someone else.

Chloe sighed and pushed her chair back. It felt strange to be leaving the office so early, but she had a costume to pick up. She decided to hold off on backup – she had the team on speed dial if she needed them.