Disclaimer

DC Comics and Warner Bros. own the characters used in this story. But the story is entirely a product of my imagination

Chap 35

Bruce turned in the direction of the voice.

Within a second, Wonder Woman stood before him.

"She did not kill Mark! She did not kill anyone for that matter! Leave her alone," Diana's ordered.

"Then who killed Mark?" Bruce demanded.

"I did! I told you, I told every one of you, I killed Mark!" Diana cried.

"There is no point lying now, Diana. Tell me the truth." Bruce spoke resolutely.

"What else do you want to hear from me, Bruce?" Diana cried in desperation, "It's all over, and she is innocent."

"Absconding is not innocence, Diana!" he said solemnly.

Diana stared at him in shock.
"What…are you…"

"You did receive my note, didn't you?" Bruce reminded.

"Yes, I did! And you were wrong. She was never going to kill you. She was never going to kill anyone." she repeated.

"Then why was she running away?" he asked.

Diana kept quiet, as her eyes met her sister's.

"All right, now, nobody moves!" came a voice from behind the bushes.

"Superman!" Bruce sighed, "What are you doing here? I think I asked you…"

"I need to know what's going on here. I have alerted the others and they will be here any minute now." He turned to Diana's sister, "Lady! You'd better confess your crimes and surrender yourself. I know that Diana took the rap for you, and you were the actual killer of Mark and Touser. You will be prosecuted for two murders and one attempted murder on Bruce Wayne. If you try to resist, I tell you, you will be heavily outnumbered."

Diana tried to say something but her sister took over. "Diana, there is no point arguing with them." She then turned to Bruce, "You sure are the world's greatest detective, Batman!"

Bruce flinched a bit. She knew his secret identity

But she continued without paying much attention to Bruce's expression. "I'm sure you know everything, except the fact that I did not kill Mark."

"We're not buying that," Superman said, before Bruce could say something. Bruce sighed.

"I cannot help it, but this is the truth! I did not kill Mark, neither did she. I don't know who did!" she said.

"And you did not mind to leave Diana to take the blame." Bruce said.

"I did not want her to take the blame. It was Diana's idea. I'm telling you the truth, I'd never have let her come to harm." She said.

"Well you already did let her come to harm!" Superman said, "Thanks to you she lost her stature as a super hero and is now charged for murder."

"That's not the point now, Superman!" Bruce interjected, "Listen, Lisa…yes, let me call you Lisa for the time being…it was not right on your part to run away while Diana took the blame upon her."

"I wasn't going to run away." she said, "Yes, Diana did ask me to go back home, but I wasn't going to. I wasn't going to let her come to harm!"

"And why did you send me that stupid note if she wasn't going to harm you?" Diana shouted at Bruce.

"Well, I had to get her out!" Bruce cried, "And you were covering her tracks so well that I was blown completely off track. I thought Berta was your sister, and I made a fool out of myself before hawk Girl."

Diana couldn't help a small smile, though she knew it was inappropriate.

"This was the one last chance I had to get her out. I knew that you were in contact with her, and so, I sent you the note. As I expected, you contacted her about this, and she came right to me to explain that she didn't want to." Bruce narrated his plan.

"You took advantage of me!" Diana frowned.

"I didn't know that I had the advantage." Bruce said, with the surreptitious message. He then turned to Lisa.

"If you have done nothing wrong and you don't want to run away, you'd better tell us what exactly happened, right from the start."

"You know most of it!" she said.

"Humor me!" Bruce said in exasperation.

"Very well," she sighed, "It was Mark's mother who had the evidence against the Smiths. The night she met with an accident, I happened to be there, in the surroundings. I found the crashed car and ran to her aid. She was losing almost unconscious, but I could understand from her that she trying to run away with the evidence she had when she met with the accident. She gave the tape to me and asked me to submit it to the authorities. So, it's not like Diana said, the tape was prerecorded and not recorded by me."

Bruce simply nodded. She continued.

"And then, I made the mistake of my life. I went home, instead of going to the authorities. I knew that Mark would be there, he was supposed to be there. I…" she paused and looked at Diana. She tried to say something, but Bruce cut her out.

"This is for your own good, Lisa! Please continue," he said solemnly.

"I couldn't believe that Mark could do something like that! I wanted to confirm, and I knew that he wouldn't lie to me." she said.

"And you said that you didn't love him!" Superman interjected. She tried to offer an explanation, but Bruce signaled her to continue and to Superman not to disturb.

"And he did confess. I was shocked. I couldn't believe my senses for a while! And that moment, everything crashed. My love for him, it was gone. I was reminded of my upbringing, and my hatred towards mankind." She breathed heavily as her heart filled with contempt. "I knew what I had to do. It's just that I forgot he was still there. I let out my rage in words and that gave him enough clue that I was going to be a trouble for him. So, he attacked me. I fell unconscious, but he took me for being dead. He was drunk, and hence did not care to check. He destroyed the tape and left."

"And hence you decided to execute him yourself, for there was no way you could prove that it was him." Bruce said.
She did not speak.

"Very well," Superman nodded, "But why the ad in the news paper." He turned to Bruce, "Now I believe it was she who gave that ad and not Diana."

Bruce nodded.

"It was important for me to establish it to him that I was dead, so that I could catch him off guard. I used that particular newspaper because it was less known and most importantly, Mark's house maid read that particular paper. So, I knew he would get the message."

"Any particular reason for having it in the classified section?" Superman asked.

"She always read classifieds. She was in search of a new house." She said calmly.

"That's all right, Lisa! The newspaper clipping did more than just that. But let's not get into that. Then what happened? Why did Diana masquerade as you?" Bruce asked.

"The only reason why Diana came to Gotham was to keep an eye on Mark, who was there for your party. The rest was unplanned for. The blast, it was intended for Mark, but unfortunately, Mark escaped and you were hurt." She said.

"Well that was my car…" Bruce raised his eye brows.

"But I saw mark come in that car. I didn't know it was yours, for I didn't know you at all!" she said.

"And you detonated the bomb all by yourself. You could've avoided doing that once you knew that Mark wasn't there." Bruce said.

"To tell you the truth, I doubted you too, for you were one of the shareholders, and you coincidentally dissolved your shares just before the incident." She said.

Bruce considered that. "A little too farfetched, but go on," he said.

"I must tell you, after that incident, Diana refused to cooperate with me. And then all of a sudden, she informed me that you were in no way responsible for it. I demanded that she told me the basis on which she arrived at that conclusion, and she had to give away your identity."

Diana took over from there. "From then on, I did not see her, till the day Mark was killed. Unfortunately, you and the others that I was not Lisa, and hence I had to come up with a story, something which was true at that point of time."

"Why didn't you just tell us about it? You could've saved yourself and your sister a lot of pain. We could've got him behind the bars in no time," Superman sighed.

"She did insist on doing that," Lisa spoke, "but I was the one who asked her not to."

"So, finally, you did want to kill Mark!" Bruce said.

"I hoped that I don't have to." Lisa said.

"You wanted to bring him to justice. But on that fateful day, you did go to Mark's guest house with an intention to kill!"

"Because I realized that he had killed Touser" she said.

"How did you know that it was he who killed Touser?"

"I told her," Diana said, "And that was the mistake of my life. I started for Mark's place almost immediately after that, but it was too late!"

"So, you admit, she killed Mark!" Superman said.

"No, she didn't," Diana cried, "because there she was, wailing at his body! Mark was dead even before she reached there. She did not do it, Superman! You must believe me."

No one had realized that Lisa had sunk to her feet.

"No!" Diana shrieked all of a sudden.

In the next few seconds, everything went blur. Lisa had taken out a gun and pointed to herself. Diana shriek brought the other two back to senses, and as Superman was closer to Lisa, he was the first to react, trying to pull the gun away from her. But Lisa already had her finger on the on the trigger and Superman's intervention only made her pull the trigger. However, the nozzle was no longer pointing to her as Superman had managed to twist her wrist. The bullet flew off at an angle and hit one of the trees. However Superman did not succeed in taking the gun away from her just in time, and a second bullet was fired by her uncontrolled fingers which made it straight to Diana. Diana was a little late to react and the bullet grazed the side of her bracelet, got deflected and hit Bruce in the chest.

"Bruce!" Diana cried, as she struggled to hold him from falling.

The event disturbed everyone, including Lisa, and Superman finally pulled the gun away from her before he made his way to his fallen friend.