Catwoman: Soulstealer (DC Icons #3)(28)

But first: the security system.

She’d hacked into the museum’s network to draw up the blueprints for the building—had memorized them meticulously. Knew that there was a centralized room, in sublevel one, that controlled every switch. Knew it was staffed by two guards at night, thanks to a memo she’d found in the email servers, each with panic buttons on hand.

Too risky. And shutting down the entire security system increased the risk of a guard in another part of the museum noticing the lack of little red lights.

So she’d picked her grid. Combed through the blueprints to find where the alarm wires ran through the building and the carefully hidden hubs where one might access them.

Another clever puzzle to solve. One that set her blood thrumming.

Selina silently eased through the hallways of the museum, counting her steps to the nearest locked wall panel. She’d easily cleared half a million in valuables tonight. But that ten million from the painting…one hell of a payday.

Scanning the halls around her, Selina stopped before an almost invisible panel built into the wall. She’d eyed it twice now while walking through here at the gala, using each step and glance to figure out its lock.

Selina pressed on a section of the utility belt slung across her hips, a little compartment opening up to reveal an assortment of lockpicks and clever, useful things. Selecting one, keeping an eye on the hall around her, she slid the pick into the lock.

Idiots—for leaving this panel here. Though it made her life easier.

With a click, the panel swung open, revealing a network of switches and wires. Her helmet scanned them, providing her with the feedback she needed to narrow in on the wire to disable.

No cutting. That’d trigger the entire system.

But rerouting the alarms…Selina pulled another device from her belt—a cord with a USB on one end and a smaller port on the other. She fitted the latter end into the small slot at the base of her helmet, then slid the USB end into the security panel itself.

Instantly, data whirred by. Security feeds, routes…Her Death Mask sorted through it all. And began creating a false loop of data for the several halls ahead. So that even when she entered it, crossing over trigger beams, the loop of old data would keep playing for the main computer. Along with the video footage from the mounted cameras.

When it was done, she unhooked the cord and closed the panel.

One guard lay ahead. Stationed just to the left of the open doorway down the hall. She’d seen him these past two nights. Half asleep, nodding off at least twice an hour.

A crack of her bullwhip would wake him up. She smirked at the thought.

On silent feet, Selina approached the hall, flexing her clawed fingers.

She would disable him—not kill him. The man wasn’t involved in this. Didn’t deserve anything worse than a headache.

Taking a small, bracing breath, she neared the corner. The inhale before the storm.

Quiet as death, Selina swept around the corner, angling for the guard who she knew would be standing just two feet to her left.

But her fingers closed on open air.

The man was already down. Unconscious. No sign of injury except for some sort of shimmering green powder on the lapels of his uniform.

Selina whirled, knees bending, a hand going for the bullwhip at her left hip while her goggles scanned the room—

A soft female laugh flitted from a darkened corner. The corner where the Fox painting would be.

“You know,” the stranger said, stepping into a shaft of moonlight leaking in through the glass roof above, “I was hoping you’d be a woman.”

Selina rose to her full height and kept her claws unsheathed as she stalked toward the young woman standing on the other side of the gallery.

In the dim light, the woman’s red hair was blood-dark, her skin moon-pale. A pretty face smiled above a green bodysuit with countless pockets. Young, around Selina’s own age—nineteen or twenty.

“Happy to please,” Selina said, her voice raspy and warped thanks to the League’s standard voice-modifier. She jerked her head to the small painting the stranger was standing in front of. “But I think that belongs to me.”

“Technically,” the stranger said, vibrant emerald eyes flickering with amusement as she gestured to the painting a few feet behind her, “it belongs to Luke Fox.” Her hands were covered with dark green gloves. No—vines. Those were closely wrapped, thin vines all along her fingers. Organic, living organism, Selina’s helmet supplied.

Impressive.

The woman angled her head, her heavy curtain of red hair slipping over a slim shoulder. Small white flowers seemed to be woven throughout. “And technically, I was here first.”

“You only got here first,” Selina said, sliding the bullwhip free and letting it unspool to the marble floor, “because I was disabling the alarm. It’s mine.” She hadn’t used that tone since those days in the East End. Enforcing Mika’s rule.

The stranger snorted; some of the flowers in her hair closed. As if they were alive, too. “Do you know that there’s a species of dung beetle that just waits for other beetles to create their reserves and then takes them? It happens all the time in the animal kingdom, actually. It’s called kleptoparasitism.”

Selina smiled, even though the stranger couldn’t see. “You’re Poison Ivy.”

With the living plants on her, there was no one else the stranger could be.