With a soft thud, Lennon hit the cool dirt floor. She paused a moment, letting what just happened sink in. Looking slowly around at her haven, she sighed to herself, unsettling the dusty atmosphere a bit.

To the left were shelves of equipment, with everything from ropes, hooks, and gas balls to a high tech set up to make any hacker envious. Opposite that was full living quarters, though miniaturized to conserve space in the underground lair. Lennon quietly thanked Harvey for the umpteenth time for making all of it possible.

Lennon fell onto the nearby futon and sorted out her mind. Everything happened so quickly that she hadn’t really realized what kind of situation she was in. One minute she was planning on doing her homework, the next she was being shot at. It was a bit tough to swallow all at once.

She was now glad that Harvey had the foresight to install a phone in her underground lair. She picked up the reciever and called his office in the business district downtown. Harvey’s secretary, Ethel, answered, “District Attorney Dent’s office.”

“Hi, Ethel. It’s Lennon.”

“Oh, hello dear. How are you doing?”

“Good enough. Um, I have sort of an emergency on my hands. Is Harvey busy?”

“It doesn’t matter. You know Mr. Dent will want to take your call.”

“Thanks, Ethel.”

Lennon heard a click as she was put on hold. A few seconds later, Harvey picked up the phone. “Lennon, Ethel said you had an emergency?”

“Yeah, you could put it that way. I’m safe for now, but I had a …deadlier run in with my father than usual.”

“What? He tried to kill you?? Richard never quits…” Harvey sighed deeply, matching Lennon’s earlier sigh. “Where are you hiding?”

“You know where I am. I never know where my father may have ears. But there’s something else that’s nagging at me. While Richard wanting to kill me for the hell of it is conceivable, there has to be something else going on with him. Something big. The only thing that can relate to is the trial. I can take care of myself, that’s no problem. The problem is how this thing is going to end. You, me, or my father, or any combination of the above named, aren’t going to get out of this in one piece.”

“You know, it really unnerves me when you have premonitions like that.”

“Well, it’s not the loveliest prospect, I know.”

“No,” Harvey responded slowly. “It’s cause you’re usually right.”

The conversation paused for a few moments. “I have no place to live now,” Lennon commented.

“What do you propose?”

“I’ll be at the old homestead.” This was their code name for Harvey’s house.

Harvey paused, “You sure?”

“Yeah...I have to stay there.”

“Ok. You stay safe, alright?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Bye, Harv.” She wearily hung up the phone.

Lennon went to the mini-fridge, pulled out a soda, and flopped back onto the futon. She was just going to relax until she went out that night as Pantherette, mainly because of a lack of anything better to do. But also because if she stressed over the situation any more, it would just make things worse.

As she began to take another sip of her soda, the bottle suddenly slipped out of her hand and crashed to her floor. Lennon burst into tears. They were tears of rage, tears of hate, tears of sadness. Her father had finally gone too far, but she didn’t know how far he intended to go. That’s what worried her.

P A N T H E R E T T E