The basement of Arkham felt narrower and more suffocating each time Bruce visited it.
When he next stood before her window, Madeleine was sitting up, staring off into space with her arms wrapped around her knees. He left his supplies in the corner of the corridor and walked up to her cell’s door, his hands in his pockets. As he reached the glass window, he pulled his hands out and held them both up for her to see.
“I thought maybe they’d stopped sending you,” Madeleine said before he could speak. She turned her head slowly to meet his gaze. There were those deep, dark eyes again—and when he met them, she gave him a searching look, as if she were pickpocketing his thoughts. “No wires on you today,” she said.
“How can you be sure?”
She shrugged. “The detective was angrier than usual with me. She wouldn’t sound so frustrated if she knew she could still get information through you, which means she didn’t try wiring you up again.” Madeleine rested her chin against her knees in a gesture that made her seem eerily innocent. “She wanted to take you off the case, didn’t she?”
Bruce grimaced. It seemed like Madeleine could predict every single thought in his head. “Yes,” he acknowledged.
“Why are you back here?”
Don’t trust a word she says, Draccon had warned him repeatedly. But the final words Madeleine had said to him continued to echo in his mind. “I was thinking about what you said, the last time we talked,” he began. “How you said it.”
Madeleine gave him a mock innocent look. “What do you mean?”
“You told me that I had a heavy heart.” His voice lowered. “I could hear the change in your voice, like there was something…something about me that you related to.”
She leaned her head against one hand. “No,” she said. “I just know what happened to your parents. Everyone knows about that, don’t they? I was giving you my condolences, in my own way. Does that count, from someone like me?”
She was smiling at him again, in a lazy, knowing way, like she’d found something interesting and wanted to play with it—but this time she was talking about his parents. Draccon had warned him not to let her lead the conversation. And just as the detective had predicted, here Madeleine was, toying with the details of his past.
“I don’t need your condolences,” he said. “I’m just trying to understand you.”
“How sweet of you,” she murmured, her dark eyes hooded beneath thick lashes. “Bring flowers next time. Don’t you know anything about seduction?”
“You’re screwing around with me.”
Madeleine flashed a glimpse of white teeth as her smile broadened. “Oh, I wish.”
To his annoyance, Bruce felt his cheeks warm. What was he doing, trying to get more out of her? Madeleine Wallace was an inmate at Arkham Asylum—she was, in every sense, not normal, and now here she was, playing some twisted, flirtatious game with him. She had murdered three people in cold blood, slit their throats with the precision of a psychopathic surgeon. Bruce suddenly felt like a fool for coming down here and expecting a logical answer from her. Nothing she’d said before and nothing she said now would be useful. He needed a new tactic.
Bruce shook his head and turned away. “You know what? Forget it,” he called over his shoulder. “Obviously we’re not getting anywhere.”
“Wait.”
He paused. When he glanced back, he saw Madeleine had turned to face him now, her legs hanging down across the side of the bed, her arms perched against the bed frame. Her long, straight hair framed her face, and she was staring at him with a serious expression.
“I lost my mother, too,” she said.
Bruce found himself turning back toward her. “You’re lying,” he replied, wanting to see her defend herself.
“I lost my mother, too,” she repeated, “and so I know what it feels like, to have your heart weighed down like that. That’s why I said it.”
“What happened?” Bruce asked.
“Well, aren’t you nosy?”
He didn’t flinch. “You already know what happened to my parents.”
“So?”
“So it seems like a fair question. The police said your mother had committed crimes.”
The amusement in her eyes vanished in an instant, replaced by anger. “You don’t know anything about my mother,” she said quietly. “Or me.” Then she sighed and looked away, lost in thought. “My mother was a robotics professor at Gotham City University. She was the best in her department, one of the best in her field. She used to spend long weekends with me, showing me how to take apart clocks and put them back together again. Even during her busiest days, she would sit with me at night and show me how a piece of software worked, how a line of code could make an artificial arm move.” Madeleine gave him a nod. “You should understand that, right, Bruce Wayne? I mean, you’re in charge of WayneTech now, aren’t you?”
Her words sent a shiver down Bruce’s spine, even as Madeleine’s mention of robotics lit up his eyes. Wasn’t he the exact same way?
Madeleine had noticed the shift in his demeanor. “A kindred spirit,” she murmured, scooting to the edge of the bed. “What did you take apart when you were a kid? Clocks? Robots?”
“Phones,” he answered, the memories flashing back to him now, how he’d sit at his desk and stare at the pile of circuit boards and batteries that were once inside whole gadgets. “Laptops.”
“Me too,” said Madeleine. “I used to build my own.”
“You built your own computers, too?”
“Yes. For myself, and for others.”
Bruce nodded at her hands. “Is that how you got the calluses on your fingers?”
“You noticed my calluses.” She pursed her rosy lips. “Ah. Bruce Wayne is not as boring as he seems.”
It was Bruce’s turn to smile now. “You think you’re the only one with a sharp eye?”
Madeleine laughed, a beautiful, bell-like sound. “It is my business to know what other people don’t know,” she answered, giving him a wink.
“Sherlock Holmes,” Bruce replied, pinpointing her quote’s origin and enjoying the impressed look on her face.
“Very good.” She rubbed her fingertips together. “My calluses are from playing the violin, though. I suppose I have more in common with Holmes than I thought.”
Violin. He was starting to wonder if there was anything this girl couldn’t do.
Careful, Bruce. He could feel himself drawn to this girl, could feel himself aching to talk more to her, to find out everything about her.
But he wasn’t talking to just anyone—no, this was Madeleine, a murderer imprisoned at Arkham Asylum, a criminal who was challenging him at some unspoken game. Her past victims had seen their buildings and labs blown up by the criminals she was involved with. She probably wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to him and WayneTech. Bruce repeated this to himself several times until he felt firmly cemented on the ground again. She’s got crime in her family, Detective Draccon had told him.