"Don't," Maria said with a rare grin. "Save owing me a favor for something that's bigger." If she was holding a card she could call in, she at least wanted it to be for something weightier than just keeping something from Bruce - even if that could be difficult at times.
Maria was fairly sure that sitting on the countertop was in no way hygienic, but she was far too interested in the light in Dick's eyes to bring it up. He wasn't a spy, didn't deal in the ins and outs of covert organizations, but he'd dealt in shadowy information just the same, putting together a puzzle when half the pieces were flipped upside down and there was no box cover to help, much less edge pieces.
"Stay on the move anyways, even without being discovered," she agreed. "Being discovered is a pisser, and that means that you can't stay too long in any one place anyways, just in case someone notices that there's a lack of rats and indigent people around anymore. Or a drain on the grid on the particular block where you're running your big power-sucking machines for experiments, whatever. Change it up, keep a low profile. Even if people catch the scent, they can't track every jump, if you plan carefully enough."
August was where it got tricky, and she had a few more of the pieces, and some that she could even lay out for him. And some that his musings clicked together for her. "Nygma touches SHIELD's database," she said. "Now, maybe they're not concerned what's found out by someone like Nygma, who's still on the shaky side of the law, but he can see patterns and might babble conclusions to anyone, like the Director of SHIELD. They grab him to find out what he knows, and, while they've got him, to have him hack back in, so that they can cover their tracks a little bit better. Or maybe get at some secret intel they couldn't before, because, hey, free hacker in their clutches.
"But Nygma's not on the streets, he stays in a SHIELD cell for a month," she said, jumping to the next topic. "They have to be getting a little edgy. Maybe they need to move an asset into place to find out just where he is, if he's in a cushy cell spilling his guts or if he's gagged. They need Cap out of the way, because Cap knows who belongs in a cell block and who doesn't. So they do the one thing that's guarenteed to get Cap focused on one direction: they needle the Winter Soldier. Cap goes off chasing the Winter Soldier on his own, hunting Hydra in Gotham and the Winter Soldier around the world, and they..."
She sat back, staring into her cup of coffee, and then poured herself another. "And they have free rein to get what they need in SHIELD," she said flatly. "Hell if I'm going to let them," she added, voice fierce and eyes hot now. "So, we know where they've got tentacles. How do we cut them off?" She studied Dick, considering. "What's your play in all this?"