Part 2, One: Fight Fire with Fire

Friday, December 4

I'd always had some difficulty concentrating in school, but now my thoughts surrounded what I should do about, well, tracking down the guy who murdered my family. Yesterday, I'd been angry and ready to do anything to get justice, but now I was having some doubts. The general population of Gotham – including my future family, excluding Jason – believed that Cougar was a killer. A criminal. Not to mention, I was afraid of how willing I was to kill who did it.

Killing's a slippery slope.

But it was only twice so far. And one more time, whenever I get my hands on who killed my family. And then I'd be done with it. No more killing for me.

Before I knew it, I was sitting in the school library with Jasmine for our study hall. Even while she was trying to help me learn chemistry, I couldn't concentrate. I looked up and, upon seeing Tim at the opposite side of the library with his own friends, I decided to ask Jasmine her thoughts.

"If someone killed your family, and you could do something about it, would you?" I cut her off.

Jasmine looked startled at my sudden question. "Um, I don't know. Why?"

"It's a hypothetical question," I persisted. "Like, would you let the person go? Would you go after him?"

Jasmine seemed to be questioning my sanity as she eyed me carefully. She must not have found anything she was looking for since she shrugged and said, "I'm not sure."

"Oh," I said, disappointed.

"But I'd have to say I'd do all that I could to bring the guy to justice."

Justice. Right. Well, killing the killer was justice, right? At least for me. And who knew how many other people's lives I'd save by getting rid of this one guy. So it was okay. Jasmine just basically said the same thing.

I ignored the part of me that said that Jasmine was against killing people, even criminals.

After school, I secretly went to meet up with Jason. We trained outside despite the cold weather. I put more than my all into sparring. I wasn't training to have fun anymore. I was training for a purpose.

Saturday, December 5

I spent half of my day at the public library, collecting all the information I could on my family's death and on Derek Irwin. I put the information on a flash drive I'd purchased recently and then headed back to the Manor. Of course, as soon as I was there, I continued my research on my laptop, but from the safety of my own room. I knew it was risky, but I couldn't stay away.

I had to know.

There still wasn't anything from the articles themselves that I could pick out, so I turned my attention to Derek Irwin. Luckily for me, he had a public facebook account. Divorced twice – seriously, who puts that on the internet? – currently unmarried. No children. Likes the Patriots and the Yankees.

But what I found odd was that he didn't list where he worked. If he put other sensitive information on the internet, then why wouldn't he put where he was employed? I went through his posts, but he never talked about work. He didn't seem to have facebook connected to a mobile phone, either, so I couldn't get even relative areas of where he's gone.

Although he didn't put his place of employment, he did put his hometown. It wasn't too far from Gotham. Jason and I could get there in a couple of hours, get the information we need, and be back in Gotham – and me back in my bed – before it was time to get up.

"What are you so focused on?"

I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard Bruce's voice. I carefully shifted the screen away from his eyes as I sat up to face him.

"My homework load is getting heavier," I replied smoothly. "I have a research project to do. I thought it was due today, but it wasn't. So now I'm trying to do better work this time."

Shut up, shut up, you're rambling! I scolded myself.

Bruce furrowed his brow. Oh no, had he seen through something I'd said?

"You're still getting tutored by that girl, right?"

I nodded. "Yeah. We're actually working together on this assignment. She's working on one part, I'm working on the other."

Bruce nodded. I was pretty sure he decided not to question why I couldn't have just asked Jasmine if the 'project' was due today or not instead of going out to the library a couple days ago.

I breathed a sigh of relief when he left. That had been way too close.

ELLE: I can't find much about Irwin. You?

JASON: You check his facebook page?

ELLE: Yep. No place of employment or home address.

JASON: You know where you dad worked?

I huffed.

ELLE: No idea. I was never told anything.

JASON: Well, I found an article you might wanna look at. You have an e-mail I can send it to?

I gave him my e-mail address. A few minutes later, I received the article. Basically, a couple of people had gone to the police and the press about some sort of illegal activity going on in their company. They refused to say the company name in the article, but I recognized one of the names: Derek Irwin.

ELLE: He knew something.

JASON: Meet up Monday.

I hesitated. I had school, and I really was having difficulty again, but…

ELLE: Where and when?