Superman: Dawnbreaker (DC Icons #4)(34)

They hurried to her car. Lana beeped open the doors and they climbed in. She started the engine and peeled out in reverse, and as they sped down the bumpy driveway, she shouted, “Who the hell were they?”

“No clue!” Clark answered. But even though these men looked completely different from the three who’d tried to break into the barn on his farm, he had to believe there was a connection. Both properties had a crater. There was no way the two incidents were completely unrelated.

Lana was gripping the steering wheel tightly with both hands. “Look at me, Clark. I’m, like, shaking. We have to go talk to the cops.”

“I thought you didn’t trust them.”

“That guy just shot at us, Clark! Isn’t that why the police exist? To protect ordinary citizens like us?”

Clark looked back one last time as Lana merged onto the empty road. He reached into the back for his jacket, thinking about how scared he’d been when he heard the shots. When Lana had fallen. He could have sworn she’d been hit. The thought completely wrecked him. He didn’t know what he’d do if he ever saw Lana get hurt.





“What do you mean, there’s nothing else you can do?” Lana demanded.

Deputy Rogers set down his cell phone and leaned back in his worn leather chair. “I listened to your story, Miss Lang. And I sent two men out there to have a look around. But they just called in to say they didn’t find a thing. No bullet casings. No spray-painted grass. No men in fatigues. I’m sorry.”

“How far in did they go? That place is huge.” Clark turned to Lana. “Maybe pull up the property sales records you found online.”

Rogers shook his head. “Won’t be necessary. My men are already on their way somewhere else.”

Lana had warned Clark on the way to the County Sheriff’s Office that the deputy didn’t care much for her. He thought she asked too many questions. He thought she was always sniffing around in places she didn’t belong. But this was different. A man had just shot at them. In Smallville. Clark and Lana had been sitting around the station for two hours now, and they weren’t getting anywhere.

Deputy Rogers placed his hands on top of his desk, which was strewn with stacks of papers and file folders. It looked less like the desk of a high-ranking law enforcement agent and more like a place where important files went to die. “Now, if you two will excuse me…,” he said, pushing back his chair.

Clark wished there were something more he could say or do, but Deputy Rogers had always been a simple man. If there was proof, he’d pursue a lead to the end. If there wasn’t, he’d move on. It was the way he’d always operated in Smallville.

“What about Wesco?” Lana asked. “Are you at least going to talk to Dr. Wesley?”

“I told you, Miss Lang, we’ll look into it.” Rogers wiped a hand down his face, softening a little. “Look, we’re stretched real thin right now. Between these protests downtown and the upcoming Mankins festival, we’ve already had to bring in a few deputies from the next county. Just to keep us above water. And that’s not to mention a slew of other problems the public’s not even aware of yet.” He gestured behind him at a pile of overstuffed folders stacked on top of a filing cabinet.

Clark read the names on the five files. He then thanked the deputy for his time—because he knew Lana wouldn’t—and ushered her out of the man’s office.

“What Mankins festival?” Lana mumbled as they started back toward the front lobby of the county wing of city hall.

“Bryan told me about that,” Clark said. “The company is celebrating the grand opening of its new building. And I think they want to make it a big deal.”

Lana was shaking her head. “What a colossal waste of time this was.”

“I don’t know about that,” Clark said. “Did you read the labels on those files Rogers pointed at when he made that cryptic reference to stuff the public doesn’t know yet?”

“No. What’d they say?”

“There were five Hispanic names. And I recognized one of them from talking to Gloria at the party. Danny Lopez.”

Lana stopped. “The missing workers.”

“Maybe the police are trying to find out where they are, too. Which would mean the police have nothing to do with their disappearances, right?”

Lana stared at the white stucco wall beside them for several seconds. “I guess so,” she finally said, turning to Clark. “Unless it means they do know what happened to them. Like, they’re keeping records of the people who get deported. It’s too soon to rule anything out.”

Clark nodded. “I guess you’re right.”

He noticed a restroom sign and said, “I’ll catch up with you in a minute.”

Lana nodded and sat on a nearby wooden bench and pulled out her phone.

As Clark stood in front of the mirror, he replayed what had happened on the Jones farm, for maybe the twentieth time since they’d arrived at city hall. What was the spray paint all about? he wondered. And what were they digging for inside those craters? He’d thought there could be a perfectly legitimate answer to these questions—until the man in the black hat had shot at him and Lana. The one thing Clark was sure of was that these men weren’t random locals. They were outfitted like some kind of Special Forces team. But why would military men be on the property that Dr. Wesley, a scientist, had just purchased?