Catwoman: Soulstealer (DC Icons #3)(41)

A slight tremor shook Ivy’s hands as she brushed her red hair back.

She’d stood there beside Harley just now. Watched Harley hurl that ax with deadly accuracy.

Ivy asked, her voice thick, “Who was she?”

Selina glanced over a shoulder at Shrike and cringed at the pool of blood that was slowly spreading. “I don’t know,” she half lied. She knew who Shrike was, but the things that mattered, the vital things…Selina didn’t know them. Only Talia and Nyssa did.

They locked up the secrets and truths about their cabal of assassins as if they were jewels. More valuable than jewels.

Selina faced them once more, bracing her hands on her hips, and asked Harley with as much cool bravado as she could muster, “Don’t you want your own mountain of cash to sit on when your sweet ex-boyfriend gets out? To know you don’t have to answer to him—to anyone?”

Harley’s eyes flashed. “You got something to say about my ex?”

Selina rolled her eyes beneath her helmet. “It never hurts to have financial independence. Surely you got into this lifestyle because you wanted something similar.”

“I got into this lifestyle, kitty, because it was freedom from everything.”

“Is that what they’re calling anarchy these days?”

Ivy casually stepped between them. “It’ll be fun, Harley,” she said with a charming grin. “I need the cash, even if you don’t. Think of all the rain forests I could save.”

Some edge in Harley’s eyes soothed at Ivy’s teasing words. An answering smile tugged on Harley’s mouth, but she turned to Selina. “You drag me along, you back out of your promises, and I’ll make what I did to her”—a nod toward Shrike’s body—“seem like heaven compared to the hell I unleash on you.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Selina snorted. “Fine.” She turned, walking toward the alley exit.

“That’s it?” Harley demanded. “You haul us here for that?”

“Yes,” Selina said without looking back. “I’ll provide our targets and meeting spots the morning of.” She waved a hand over her shoulder. “Come dressed to impress.”

Harley let out a low growl. “Who does she think she is, coming to my town—”

“You are exactly where I was a few nights ago,” Ivy said with a low laugh as Selina continued out of the alley. “Trust me: the feeling passes.”

“You said that the last time we got dollar tacos.”

Selina bit down on her laugh as she kept walking away, though Ivy didn’t. “I’ll never live that down, will I?”

“Never. Not even when we’re little old ladies knitting on a porch.”

By the time Selina reached the alley exit, their voices had dropped to murmuring. Gentle, sweet words passing between them.

Loving words.

Tiny, pale flowers bloomed in Ivy’s hair like fallen stars.

Tucking that tidbit aside, Selina vanished into the shadows.



* * *



—

There was no sign of her. Two hours out here, and there was no sign of her.

Luke couldn’t tell if that was a good or bad thing. He racked his brain for any sort of alternative for where she might be, but with a city this big…she could be anywhere.

His night had been nice enough before now. He’d gone to dinner with Elise and Mark, who bickered with each other the entire time, when they weren’t asking him about his work at Wayne Industries. He’d even managed to get to his boxing gym for a few hours before that, to spar with an up-and-coming middleweight who needed some seasoning.

He loved the gym, especially its outreach to at-risk teens in this city. His mom oversaw the charity that funded it, and she sometimes even jumped into the ring herself for a few practice sessions.

He often wondered if the joy in her eyes when she did it was the same in his own. Whether she might have held her own in the ring if she’d been given the right training when she was young. His temper, his focus, that driving thrum in his blood that pushed and pushed him…all of that came from her.

There were other vets at the training hall. One was an Army captain who attended his group therapy session. Luke never mentioned therapy at training, and she never really talked to him beyond a quick hello and a nod, but it was nice to see familiar faces from the other parts of his life. Beyond the prep schools and galas. The military had been full of people from all backgrounds and walks of life. He was still getting reacclimated to how little variety existed in the upper echelons of Gotham City.

Overseas, they’d been too busy fulfilling commands and working their asses off to protect this country to bother with caring about where someone came from. What had mattered was whether the person next to you had your back when it counted. He’d only met a few people in this city of whom he could say the same.

He and his mom had been talking for months now about doing an outreach program for vets at the gym. She was already taking meetings with therapists, vets, and boxing pros about how to make it work. And taking meetings with investors and government officials for how to get funding. Of course, his family could fund it indefinitely, but his mom savored this: wrangling companies that made ungodly profits to do something in turn for the community. Getting people involved and caring.

Standing atop a three-story building at the edge of the dark, glittering band of the Gotham River, dawn still hours away, Luke rotated his shoulders, keeping loose, limber. He was about to turn away from the water, the glowing city around him, when motion caught his eye.