Catwoman: Soulstealer (DC Icons #3)(11)

Talia burst out laughing. There was no joy in the sound.

Selina rolled her shoulders and waited.

Talia chuckled once more before tossing her sheet of hair over a shoulder. “I’ll make it happen.”

Selina didn’t let her shock show.

“There is one more condition,” Talia said, rising from the table.

Of course there was. Selina monitored her every breath.

“We leave tonight,” Talia said. “And you will not get to say goodbye.”

For a moment, Selina didn’t hear the words, or the hum of the lights, or the click of Talia’s beige heels as she strutted for the door. She heard that damned Carousel song.

And Selina was still hearing it as she said, voice thick, “Take off the cuffs.”



* * *



—

The tarmac of the private airport was empty.

Empty save for the sleek white jet idling just off the runway, its steps already lowered to reveal a near-glowing wooden interior.

The perfect match to the Aston Martin that Selina had just vacated. Talia was already striding toward the plane.

Rubbing her wrists, Selina stalked after the woman, glancing toward the glittering city skyline to their left. The eastern horizon was just beginning to lighten. Dawn.

Her body ached. Everything ached. Not just bone and flesh.

Selina shoved down the thought as she took in Gotham City. The light and the shadow.

A cool wind whipped at her face, dragging strands of her hair free as she caught up to Talia’s side just before the woman began to ascend the steps into the private plane. A flight attendant waited at the top of the stairs, a tray with two glasses of champagne fizzing in her hands.

“Is this your plane?” Selina asked as Talia braced a hand on the stair rail and set a well-heeled foot on the first step.

“It is.”

This school, then…Selina again glanced toward the city’s horizon. To where she prayed Maggie was being shuttled through the streets to the trees and open air and quiet of the suburbs.

She swallowed, trailing Talia up the narrow steps of the plane. The private plane.

“Are you a Wayne or something?” The Waynes did plenty of charity work, and a fancy Italian school for wayward young women didn’t seem beyond them.

Talia let out a low laugh and didn’t bother to turn as she reached the top stair, swiped a flute of champagne from the flight attendant, and said, “No. My family name is al Ghūl.”





She was a ghost. A wraith.

Selina reminded herself of that little fact as she stood atop the stairs of the private jet, squinted into the blinding midday sun glinting off the hangars of the exclusive airfield, and got a faceful of late-August Gotham City stink.

That, at least, hadn’t changed in the past two years. But as for Selina herself…

The four-inch beige heels that clipped so nicely against the steps as she descended were just the start of the changes to her. The long golden-blond hair, the manicured nails, and the suntanned skin were the next. And then there was the perfectly tailored cream-colored linen suit, steamed for her by the flight attendant thirty minutes before landing. The portrait of unthreatening, carefree money.

No sign of the girl who’d ascended the stairs of this plane two years ago, bloody and battered. No sign of the girl who’d clawed and fought to keep her sister safe, keep her as healthy as could be expected—especially with Maggie now well cared for, living in a pretty house in the suburbs.

No sign of that girl at all.

Indeed, the resources of the League of Assassins had made these first steps back into Gotham City so much easier, clearing a path for all she’d arrived here to do. The League was bigger, more lethal, than any criminal organization in this city. A near myth. They answered to nobody and nothing, a veritable force of nature. Their goals were so much larger than financial profit. No, the League dealt in power—the sort that could alter countries, alter the world. The smart criminals were the ones who got out of their way. The smartest were those who bowed.

Selina took a slow, bracing breath, flexing her fingers against the slight tremor that rippled down them. No space for fear, for doubt, for hesitation. Not with so many eyes watching.

Photographers sporting long-range cameras snapped photos through the nearby chain-link fence.

Selina shoved away any lingering trace of nerves and offered a sultry, sly look in their direction, her broad-brimmed black hat—the crowning piece of her ensemble—blocking half her face. She did the photographers an even bigger favor and removed her sunglasses as she stepped off the stairs and turned toward the awaiting black sedan.

And just because she was finally back in this shit-hole city, finally back in this place that had been both hell and home, she flashed them a wave and a smile white and bright enough to light up the Gotham City skyline.

Snap, shutter, snap.

Had those photographers even thought to question the anonymous tip about socialite Holly Vanderhees coming to town after a lengthy stay in Europe? Or were they too afraid of looking foolish to ask who this person was who’d just descended upon Gotham City?

The information she’d leaked through their computer systems had been brief but detailed. Her family had investments everywhere. Old money. Parents: deceased. Siblings: none. Net worth: billions.

Selina reached the sedan and the driver holding the door open for her. It took years of training to hold back her nod of thanks, to make herself ignore the urge to meet his eyes in a minimal greeting.