He wasn't sure when he fell asleep, but he woke to find Lois snuggled up against him, one arm thrown around his chest, the sheets pulled up over both of them. The candles had burned down into sandalwood and patchouli scented puddles in the glass saucers that protected the furniture. She was warm and she smelled of orchids and vanilla and sandalwood.
He didn't know exactly what woke him. He listened to the noises outside. There was a cat somewhere under the trees hunting. He heard other animals outside, squirrels and mice, the nearly silent whirr of an owl in flight. He heard the rustle of people downstairs and in the adjoining rooms. Nearly everyone was asleep. He checked the clock on the bed stand. A little past midnight, local time.
He disentangled himself from Lois's embrace and sped into his Suit, giving Lois one more look. As much as he wanted to stay in her arms, he had other obligations too. He launched himself out the window, stopping to hover above the trees. He was still puzzled at what might have awoken him. If it had been a call for Superman, it hadn't been repeated.
He went higher, listening and looking for anything out of place. Nothing. Then he spotted it. A van heading down the street at high speed. He took a mental note of the license plate before looking back at the building one more time – there was a white unmarked tub sitting outside the kitchen door. It hadn't been there when he and Lois had come back to the B&B. That he was sure of.
The tabs on the lid had been cut, indicating the tub had been opened – at least someone had intended to open it. A quick scan with x-ray vision showed it was filled with some unidentifiable granular substance laced with viscous liquid. He opened the tub and his nose was assailed by the smell of diesel and other chemicals – something similar to fertilizer or rocket fuel. HTA? Maybe.
The trigger he hadn't caught before was more obvious now. The metal handle had been replaced with hollow metal tubing with electronics inside. A short section of copper came out of the handle, passed through the lid and was bent down to contact the chemicals in the tub. He scanned the area again and found a second tub hidden in the landscape on the opposite side of the building. He pulled the top off of that one as well, separating the chemicals from the trigger.
Then he reached to the small of his back under his cape, pulled out his cell phone and keyed in 9-1-1.
"This is Clark Kent, I'm at the B and B on Easum. Superman just found two tubs of what might be HTA near the building…" he paused as the lid on the ground by his boot sent off a spark. "And somebody just tried to detonate them."
Lois awoke to the flashing red and blue of police lights on the ceiling above the bed. Clark wasn't beside her and his side of the bed was cold. Well, Mom always wanted me to marry a doctor. I've married the next best thing – a superhero. She grabbed her satin robe off the chair and slipped it on before going to the nook window to see what was going on.
Clark was standing with several police officers. He was wearing his jeans, a t-shirt and his sneakers. He looked like he'd gotten dressed in a hurry. His hair was mussed, giving the impression he'd just been rousted out of bed.
Lois slipped on her own jeans and t-shirt, grabbed her purse and cell phone then ran out of the room and down the stairs.
"What's going on?" she demanded, running up to Clark. She recognized the two plainclothes men standing near him. "Agent Brown, what's going on?"
"Superman found two tubs of HTA, one by the kitchen door, one near the front," Clark explained simply. "He had to be someplace else, so he had me call it in. The officers are canvassing the area in case there are any more tubs around."
"Did he happen to see who left them here?" she asked.
Clark shook his head. "But he did see a van leaving the area. The police are looking for it now."
"Miss Lane, I seriously suggest you and Mister Kent here take the first flight out of here and head back to Metropolis," Brown told her.
"But we're reporters and this is a major story," Lois explained. "You can't make us drop this."
"No, Miss Lane," Brown stated firmly. "You're a witness. And even though normally the local cops would want you to stick around, I'm asking you to go home. They can take your statements at the bureau office in Metropolis. In fact Agent Quinn is looking forward to talking to the two of you about all this."
"Clark?" she asked.
He sighed heavily before looking at her. "I think we should do as Agent Brown asks. I doubt there's anything more we can find out here." He looked at her as if willing her to understand the subtext. There was something else going on that he didn't want to discuss with the police around.
"Let's get packed then," Lois agreed slowly. "We should be able to make Metropolis by lunch time."
"My thoughts exactly," Clark agreed. He nodded to the officers and the two FBI agents then took Lois's arm as they went back inside the building.
"Okay, Farm boy, what's going on?" Lois asked as soon as Clark had closed and bolted the door behind them.
"I overheard Brown talking to somebody on his phone," Clark said as he booted up his computer. "It sounded like he was being given orders to get us out of town and back to Metropolis ASAP and the locals weren't supposed to know why."
"Any idea why?" Lois asked while shoving her clothes into her suitcase.
"That's what I'm looking to find out," he told her, watching his monitor as his email program came on the screen. She came over to him and stood behind his chair, bending to read over his shoulder. New mail appeared in the list. Two from Perry, one from Bill Henderson, along with the usual junk. The two emails from Perry both had the subject line of 'Come Home.'
Clark opened the first one from Perry and Lois skimmed it. "He's kidding…" she said in disbelief. "Smith or St. John or whatever-his-name-is is giving state's evidence against Mindy Church in trade for lesser charges and Miller has been remanded to federal custody on charges of bioterrorism? What about the damage she caused here?"
Clark shrugged, opening Perry's second email. "If it plays out the way I think it will, the California courts will never have the chance to try Miller or St. John. St. John will turn state's evidence against Mindy, be given a slap on the wrist and put into witness protection. Miller will simply disappear."
The second email was Perry simply ordering them to take the first flight back to Metropolis. He even went so far as to suggest the Superman Express.
Henderson's email gave a few more details on the Miller situation. Miranda Miller had made a statement to MPD officers admitting she'd been paid by Mindy Church to create a weaponized version of her pheromone perfume and had been involved in the development of the HTA used in the arson fires in Metropolis. Federal agents then came and took her away. Henderson didn't know where they'd taken her.
"So what now?" Lois asked. She knew the answer, but she still wanted to hear it from him.
"We go home and write up what we have, considering nearly all the physical evidence linking Miller to the winery and Missus Church was destroyed in the fire."
"But we both saw the glass in the lab and we know there was kryptonite in there," Lois reminded him.
"I know that, honey," Clark told her. "But I doubt just our word will be good enough."
She looked at him. It was the first time he'd called her that and she found that she liked it. He didn't seem to notice her look.
"I doubt they'll be able to tie the tubs found here with the ones at the fire. They're too common a type and I have a hunch the ones here will turn out to be designed to scare us, not kill us," he added. "They weren't the same chemical ingredients I smelled in the winery. Similar, but not the same."
"Clark? Let's just go home," Lois said. The events of past twelve hours were catching up with here and she simply felt exhausted, mentally and physically.
"Your place or mine?"
"Mine. I have a proper-sized bed," she told him. "You have a mattress on the floor in a loft."
"That happens to be a traditional futon," he protested mildly, closing down his computer and putting it into its case.
"It's a mattress."
"You know, I was kind of looking forward to a picnic lunch and horseback riding tomorrow, or is it today?" Lois said as she climbed into her own bed in her own room. As much as she had enjoyed the B and B, being home was so nice. She watched as Clark shed the Suit at normal speed, letting her see how the cape was attached to the back, how the clasp at the back of his shoulder worked.
"We can still do the picnic, just not in Napa," Clark said, sitting on the edge of the bed. "And I'm sure there's someplace in New Troy that offers horseback riding. In the meantime…" he leaned over and kissed her. "I have something else in mind, if you don't mind."
"Come here, lover," she said, pulling him to her.
He kissed her again, deeply, passionately. Lois reciprocated, molding herself to him. She wondered how she ever managed to get so lucky as his kisses moved to her neck and shoulder. Dear God, if this is a dream, I don't want to wake up.
A/N: Because there were naturally loose threads – The dead clerk from the DA's office was the one who called Perry to be at the courthouse and had also been the one to suggest Lois, Clark, and Superman get out of town for a while. She was killed by 'Smith', but it'll never be proven. Mindy really was framing Bill Junior for the arson fires.
HTA does exist – the first documented arson using it was in Seattle, 1984, and it took out a steel and concrete warehouse in 19 minutes. The most recent and well known HTA incidents were the Twin Towers – jet fuel is a High Temperature Accelerant.