Catwoman: Soulstealer (DC Icons #3)(54)

To Selina’s shock, the men parted a path for Harley. A curl of her fingers at her back was her only sign. Follow. Hurry.

Shouldering her heavy duffel and snatching up the camera and tripod, Selina trailed her, Ivy at her side.

More guns pointed toward them as they walked up the stairs.

“Do you know what’s the worst part of living a life of crime?” Harley asked as she got to the top of the stairs that would lead into the main hallway, turning to peer down at the men following with guns aimed at their backs.

Selina reached her side, Ivy a moment later. Just in time to see Harley punch the red button next to the stairwell door.

“Not knowing who to trust,” Harley said, and the six-inch-thick metal door slammed shut.

Sealing the men inside.

The gunfire against the door was muffled, the shouts of the men Harley had trapped inside distant.

“And this was better than fighting?” Ivy demanded, backing away from the heavy door and the red panic button that had saved their asses. The flowers in her hands had sealed again, and she swiftly pocketed them.

“It was, if you consider the fact that Ralph had a bomb with him that could have wiped us out.”

“No, he didn’t,” Selina said, turning toward the hallway that would take them to the back exit. “I would have seen it.” She tapped her helmet.

“Trust me, he did. Those clothes? Just to mask the hi-tech cloaking material Falcone stole off the black market. One throw and we would have been toast. He’s probably debating using it on this door. We should hurry.”

Falcone had such things in his arsenal now.

Unacceptable. On so many levels.

But…Harley had saved them. Selina shouldered her way out the back door and into the empty alley. Not even a lookout. Falcone needed to recruit smarter cronies.

“Thanks, Harley,” Ivy said quietly.

Harley waved it off. “Falcone will be furious when he gets word of what we did.”

Selina stalked down the alley, sirens already wailing in the night. Falcone had grown in power. Not anywhere near the global network and bottomless resources of the League, but enough to potentially grow beyond a local menace. “We’ll deal with Falcone,” she said, more to herself than them. But added after a moment, “Thanks, Harley.”

Harley only grinned.





Three weeks later, Selina was just entering her apartment building, trying not to limp at the ache in her leg.

One of Harley’s little devices had been a bit too successful tonight and Selina had taken a chunk of concrete right in the thigh. The suit had kept the shrapnel from breaking the skin, but she’d bruised bone, likely. Ivy had said as much after she’d insisted on checking the injury. Even Harley had apologized for it.

But Holly Vanderhees didn’t limp, and as Selina rode up the elevator from the basement parking garage, she gritted her teeth at the way her heels made every part of her injured leg throb. There was no way she could have entered the building wearing her battle-suit, and even though peeling it off in the alley to change into her current long-sleeved dress had been an effort of will…she’d done it.

The elevator paused at the lobby, and Selina plastered a bland smile on her face, hoping whoever was getting on wouldn’t notice the sweat dampening her hair at one a.m.

She saw the bruises first. The swollen eye and lip. And within the span of a heartbeat, she was reaching for Luke Fox.

She halted before she could touch the sleeve of his gray zip-up athletic jacket. Luke blinked with his good eye, his every movement pained and tired, and stepped inside the elevator.

“What happened?” she demanded. If one of Gotham City’s petty criminals had hurt him—

“I had a fight tonight.”

“Who attacked you?”

Luke leaned against the wall of the elevator, his face utterly mangled—looking worse, no doubt, in the fluorescent lighting. “No. Boxing. Semipro.”

It was her turn to blink. He hadn’t been attacked, then. “Who won?”

A low, rasping laugh. “I did.”

So the muscles truly weren’t all for show. She didn’t want to imagine the bruises beneath his clothes. Selina swallowed. “Why do you fight?” He had more money than God, and if she hadn’t been near starvation all those years ago, she never would have set foot inside a ring.

“It…helps,” he said, and refused to clarify.

Helps. He’d been in the Marines. Maybe the fighting helped him with whatever he still needed to sort through. She half wondered if Batwing himself had been a soldier, too. If he fought crime for a similar reason.

The elevator reached their floor, silence settling between them.

She’d gone overseas as well. And while Luke had been fighting for this country…she’d been learning how to break it.

Was here to do just that, to destabilize and undermine.

A heavy, hollow weight settled in the pit of her stomach, but she kept her steps slow as they walked out of the elevator. “Can I help you get cleaned up?”

He shook his head, but winced at the movement. “I’m fine.”

She scanned his body—the sweatpants, the jacket that hid his battered body. “Let me get you some ice.”

She’d stolen his car, his painting, lied to his face….It was the least she could do. If he hadn’t been a rich boy, she would have said he was a good man. A rare man.