Will was working backward.
Batman built conclusions from evidence. Will had the conclusions already — he knew the killer, knew the motive, knew roughly what had been taken. The problem was finding where Strange had gone, and Strange was not going to sit in his old laboratory waiting for Maroni's people to show up.
He'd have moved everything the moment the casino job was done.
Will lay on his bunk in the Senate, staring at the water stains on the ceiling. The mold up there had spread into shapes. He'd spent enough sleepless nights in this room that he'd started recognizing them.
The building was empty now. Every other Roman who'd lived here was dead. The hallway outside was silent except for the tap at the far end dripping in the dark, one drop at a time, steady as a clock.
It was worse than the noise had been.
Think. What would Batman do.
But that was the problem, wasn't it. Batman had the skills, the equipment, the money, the network of informants scattered through every district — the beggars and orphans who fed him information about the city's movements. Will had none of it. He was an ordinary person who'd made a reckless promise to a dangerous man and now had roughly seventy-two hours to make good on it.
He pulled the pillow over his face.
Three knocks on the window glass.
He ignored it. He was on the fifth floor.
Then the pillow came off his face by itself.
"Hey. Miss me?"
Selina crouched at the foot of the bed, one eyebrow up, eyes catching the lamplight.
"How did you—"
"You still owe me an answer." She settled herself more comfortably and pushed the hair off her forehead. No mask this time. The leather made your skin breathe poorly and wrecked your hair if you wore it too long. Since he already knew who she was, there wasn't much point.
Under normal circumstances Will would have found a way to get rid of her. But the situation had changed, and he needed someone with a specific skill set. A professional thief who could navigate the city's dark spaces was about as useful as anyone could be right now.
He pressed a hand to his temple and thought about what he actually remembered about Catwoman.
One version had her as Falcone's illegitimate daughter. Maria, the mother, abandoned while pregnant — Falcone washing his hands of both of them. Selina growing up with that knowledge, carrying it like a wound that had never properly healed. It explained the casino job. It explained a lot of things about how she moved through Gotham.
He tested it carefully.
"You're doing this to hit back at your father. You want to tear down Falcone's empire. For your mother."
Selina went still.
"...How do you know that." Her voice came out flat. "I've never told anyone that. Not even Holly."
She pressed both hands to the sides of her head and breathed through it. She'd come here to get answers from him. Somehow she was the one being taken apart.
"Fine," she said, when she'd steadied herself. "Forget how you know. What do you want?"
She was done asking why. She just needed to know what he was after.
"We want the same thing," Will said. "Falcone goes down. That's the goal."
A lie. Delivered without a change in breathing, with steady eye contact, at a measured pace. Will had never thought of himself as someone who lied easily. Apparently Gotham had been good for something.
Selina didn't catch it.
"You want to work together." She said it slowly, reassessing him. The man who'd predicted the casino massacre. Who knew her face, her name, her mother's story. Who, as far as she could tell, had no obvious reason to know any of it.
Whatever his actual capabilities were, someone with intelligence like that was worth something as a partner.
But she had a rule. She didn't work with people whose background she couldn't verify. Didn't matter what their reasons were.
She rolled forward off the bed's end and came toward him on all fours, smooth and unhurried.
"What are you—"
She pushed him flat.
Her face was close enough that he could see the faint scatter of freckles across her cheekbones. His hands found the bed frame and held it.
One finger extended, the claw of her glove tracing from his forehead to his throat.
"I'm looking forward to working together," she said. "But first — who are you, really? Honest answer or I open your throat. Your choice."
Will had been ready for this.
He'd started building the cover story the moment he saw her expression shift in his favor, working backward from what she'd need to hear. By the time she'd looked at him with that guarded, recalculating stare, the story was already assembled.
He was the son of a merchant family. Falcone's people had destroyed them — taken everything, left nothing. He'd come into the Romans to hide and learn, playing the long game, maintaining quiet contacts with other small crews and certain people in the department. He'd spent time pulling threads on Falcone's inner circle, which was how he knew about Selina.
"That's why you recognized me," she said.
Her expression eased.
She believed it. Or believed it enough.
"So," Will said. "What do you think about the partnership?"
Her answer was a brief press of her lips to his forehead — there and gone before he'd registered it — and then she was up and moving toward the window in one fluid motion.
She pushed the sash up. The night air came in. Her silver hair lifted in it, and above the Gotham roofline a half-moon sat cold and sharp as a blade.
"Goodbye, mysterious man. Find me when you need me."
"I need you right now."
Selina's foot caught the sill wrong. She grabbed the frame with both hands, five floors of open air below her.
"That is ATTEMPTED MURDER," she said through her teeth.
Will came back with two beers from Oswald's small refrigerator and climbed the fire escape to the roof.
Selina was already there, waiting.
"You have a bottle opener?"
"Don't need one."
He bit the cap off, leveraged it with his teeth the way he'd learned at a dozen late-night barbecues in another life entirely. The cap pinged off into the dark below.
He handed her the bottle. Foam rose through the glass, wheat and yeast and something almost clean about it, cutting through the warm Gotham night.
Selina took it and watched him sideways, measuring without being obvious about it.
Good bone structure. Deep-set eyes. The kind of face she'd normally give a second look, and she had strict standards. He'd also shown up with beer, which suggested some residual awareness of how human beings interacted.
She took a sip and waited.
"Maroni gave me three days to recover the stolen money. I need your help."
That's it? She felt a flicker of disappointment — and then he mentioned the figure, and the disappointment went somewhere else.
Five million.
"Any idea where to start?"
"The sewers." Will had worked it through by now. Strange's augmented men had come up from below — they didn't travel on the surface, they were too conspicuous for that. Which meant their base was underground, or close to it. And Strange wouldn't relocate far from them. His safety depended on having them nearby.
He told her what they might find down there. What the augmented men could do. He kept it straightforward, no softening.
Selina tilted her head back and finished the entire bottle.
"Let's not waste time then."