The Catwoman Fan Club ~ Julian ~ Zane put the tablet on my desk at nine thirty on a Wednesday morning with the expression he wore when something had happened that he found entertaining and he suspected I would not . " You need to see this , " he said . I looked at the screen . A woman . Early thirties , dark hair , wearing a carbon fibre suit that had been purchased somewhere that sold carbon fibre suits to people who wanted to look like they wore carbon fibre suits . She was standing beside a car , a decent car , not the right car , holding a helmet with a blacked - out visor .

She was looking at the camera with the expression of someone who had decided they were being mysterious . The caption beneath the video read : I am Catwoman . Always was . #Catwoman #UnmaskedMyself " There's more , " Zane said . He took the tablet back and scrolled . There were more . Considerably more .

Fourteen more , as it turned out , spread across four platforms , ranging from the vaguely plausible , a woman who actually appeared to have some racing background , based on the way she held the wheel in the edited footage she had posted , to the entirely unconvincing , including one who had filmed herself in what appeared to be a supermarket car park at night and another who had posted a single photograph of herself in sunglasses and called it done . Fifteen women . Fifteen women had publicly claimed , across the past three weeks , to be Catwoman . " It's a trend , " Zane said .

He sat down and crossed his ankles on the edge of my desk , which I had told him not to do and which he continued to do . " Someone started it , someone else copied , and now it's a thing . The racing forums are losing their minds . " " How many of them can actually drive ? " " Two , maybe three . The rest are- " He gestured vaguely at the tablet , " aspirational . " I watched the footage . All fifteen of them , which took me forty - three minutes ; I was thorough even when thoroughness was not strictly necessary .

I watched every clip they had posted , every edited race video , every carefully positioned photograph . I watched the way they held their steering wheels and took their corners and managed their braking points . None of them were Catwoman . It wasn't a close call . It wasn't a question of degree or margin ; the distance between what these women were doing and what Catwoman did on a circuit was the distance between someone who had read about racing and someone who had been breathing it since they were a teenager . Catwoman's line was not a learned thing .

It was not something you could study and replicate . It was the product of years of instinct built into muscle memory , of thousands of laps taken at speed until the geometry of a corner became something you felt rather than calculated . The woman in the supermarket car park did not have Catwoman's line . None of them did . I closed the tablet and handed it back to Zane . " Well ? " he said . " No. " " That's it ? Just no ? " " They're not her . " I picked up my phone . " None of them are anywhere near her . " The Cotesman Fan Club +25 Bonus Zane uncrossed his ankles and leaned forward .

" Julian . Fifteen women have publicly claimed to be the person you've been trying to find for four years . Does that not- " " It tells me she's significant enough that people want to be her , " I said " Which I already knew . " I pulled up the Dubai security contact's number . " It also tells me that whoever she actually is , she's watching this happen and finding it either amusing or alarming . Probably both . " " You think she knows about the trend ? " " She follows everything that happens in the racing world . Of course she knows . " I pressed call and held the phone to my ear .

" And she knows that every woman who falsely claims to be Catwoman draws attention away from whoever Catwoman actually is . Whether she planned it or not , this benefits her . " Zane looked at me for a moment . " You think she started it . " " I think it doesn't matter if she did . " The call connected . I switched to the logistics of what I needed , the camera package , the drone coverage , and the facial recognition deployment across the event perimeter . My Dubai contact listened and confirmed , and I ended the call and made two notes on the pad on my desk . Zane was still watching me .

" You increased the Dubai package , " he said . " Significantly . " " Julian . Dubai is six weeks away , and you have fifteen fake Catwomans generating noise , and you're increasing security deployment . Some people might say that's- " " Efficient . " " I was going to say obsessive . " " Same thing . " I set the pad down . " She'll be in Dubai . I've been certain of it for months , and I'm more certain now . The Dubai 24 -Hour Race is the biggest underground event on the calendar . She has never missed it in four years . " I looked at Zane .

" And this year I will have every entry point covered , every face documented , every vehicle tracked from the moment it enters the perimeter . " Zane was quiet for a moment . " And if she doesn't come ? If the fake Catwoman noise makes her go to ground ? " " She won't go to ground . " I said it with the certainty of someone who had spent four years studying the pattern of how someone moved through the world . " Catwoman doesn't go to ground . She adapts . She finds the angle . She wins . " I picked up the phone again . " Going to ground is not in her nature .

" ୮ Zane looked at me with the expression he produced when he had decided to say something and was choosing the right moment . " How are you this certain about someone you've never seen ? " I thought about the Bronx . The tyre mark is still warm on the bridge road . The timing of thirty - one races across four years that never once conflicted with an I * Technologies board meeting . The sentence about warm air . The way she had taken the inside line in Vegas twelve years ago at a speed that had made me question everything I knew about what was possible .

" Because I've been in the same space as her more times than either of us knew , " I said . " And every time , she leaves something behind . " I set the phone down . " A pattern . A decision . A line through a corner that nobody else would have taken . " I looked at the window . " She thinks she's invisible . She's not . She's just moving faster than everyone who's looking . " Zane was quiet for a long moment . " Until Dubai . " " Until Dubai , " I said . He picked up the tablet . Scrolled through the fifteen fake Catwomans one more time with a slight shake of his head .

" This is genuinely funny , by the way . As a side note . Completely separate from everything else . " 2/3 The Cateem Fan Club +25 Bonus " I know it's funny , " " The supermarket car park one , especially . " " Zane . " " Right . " He stood . " Dubai . Six weeks . I'll coordinate with the security team . " At the door he paused . " Julian . When you find her - and I'm saying when because apparently I've accepted that this is happening - what exactly is the plan ? " I looked at the window . At the city outside , moving and indifferent . " I haven't decided yet , " I said .

Which was not entirely true . But it was true enough for today . Comments Support Share Sara Lili Sara Lili is a daring romance writer who turns icy landscapes into scenes of fiery passion. She loves crafting hot love stories while embracing the chill of Iceland's breathtaking cold.