The pipes creaked as she turned on the shower, but the water pressure wasn’t terrible. Miserably hot and sweaty as she was, Alia set the water to scalding and tried to scrub all the grime and salt from her body. She had bumps and bruises everywhere. One thigh was almost all scratches and abrasions, and one of her toenails was cracked and nearly black with blood beneath the nail. But she was alive. After all of it, she was alive.
Panic and grief came roaring toward her again, and this time she didn’t fight it. She braced her back against the plastic shower door and let the tremors shake her in heavy, tearless sobs. It wasn’t the cry she wanted. It wasn’t the comfort of being in her own bed, Nim telling some stupid joke beside her, a pint of ice cream close at hand, but it would have to do. She turned the water to cold to cool down her body, and when she emerged a few minutes later, dried off with one of the scratchy white towels, and pulled on her cheap drugstore sweats, she felt almost human again.
“You’re up,” she said to Diana.
As soon as Diana disappeared into the bathroom, Alia hooked the red backpack over her arm and headed for the door. She knew Diana didn’t think it was safe to get in touch with Jason, but she needed to reach her brother. If she had been targeted, Jason could be targeted, too—and if someone on his team had tipped off the Foundation’s enemies to Alia’s whereabouts, then maybe Jason was putting his trust in the wrong people. She had spotted the burner phone in Jason’s duffel at the parking garage and managed to slip it into the backpack while Diana was turned away. Now she’d just step outside, call Nim, and figure out how Nim could set up a meeting with Jason without revealing that Alia was back in town.
But when Alia reached for the doorknob, she stopped short. It was gone. The lock was still intact, but the doorknob above it had been snapped clean off its base. Diana. She must have done it while Alia was in the shower. So much for trust. Then again, Alia had been planning on leaving.
“That’s beside the point,” she mumbled, tearing open a bag of sour gummy worms with her teeth. “When that girl gets out of the shower, we’re going to have words.”
“What would you like to discuss?” Diana called over the sound of running water.
“You can hear me?” Alia asked incredulously. Then she flopped back on the bed in defeat. “Never mind. Of course you can.”
Alia had every intention of staying awake to tell Diana exactly how she felt about doorknobs going missing, but she must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew, Diana was shaking her awake. Her hair was damp, and she’d changed into the “I NY” T-shirt and gray sweatpants.
“Wha—” Alia began, but Diana clapped a hand over her mouth and placed a finger to her own lips.
“Someone’s trying to get into our room,” she whispered.
Alia felt her heart start to pound. “The maid?”
“The maid would have a key. And the tread is too heavy. Alia,” Diana said, “they’ve found us.”
“Stay here,” said Diana, wishing that she hadn’t taken quite as hard a stance on weaponry back on Themyscira.
“But how could they have found me?” Alia protested in hushed tones.
“We don’t know what forces are working against you. Be silent and be still. And if anything happens to me…” Diana trailed off. She didn’t know how to finish that sentence. She supposed she should try to extract a promise from Alia that she would attempt to reach the spring on her own. But there was no time for oaths. “Run.” Alia nodded, her eyes wide.
Diana’s feet were bare from the shower. She padded silently down the narrow passage that led past the bathroom, the feel of the carpet’s rough fibers strange against her skin. She crept the last few feet, her heart thudding hard in her chest. This would be a fight—a real fight, not a sparring match in the Armory.
She paused, waiting. Silence. Had she imagined the whole thing? Had her overstimulated mind fabricated an intruder? Another guest might have simply mistaken their room for his, tried his key, and, realizing his mistake, moved along.
The door rattled slightly again. Someone was trying to tamper with the lock. She heard a click as the tumblers gave way. There was no time to think.
Diana bent her knees and kicked, her foot connecting hard at the very center of the door. It flew off its hinges, and she heard a surprised cry as the door crashed into the intruder, driving him back against the wall.
She registered a large form—a young male, about her height, broad in the shoulders. Good reflexes. He recovered quickly, shifting into fighting stance, and they faced each other in the dim light of the hallway, circling.
He lunged toward her. She seized his shoulders, twisting to the side to bring him down, using his momentum, but he adjusted his stance—very good reflexes—and regained his balance. He was strong, too, surprisingly so. Diana found it was a bit like reaching for a pitcher and discovering it full instead of empty—unexpected, but no great challenge.
She shifted her grip. The fabric of her attacker’s shirt bunched in her hands as she slammed him against the wall. The plaster splintered. He groaned, and she shoved him to the floor, pinning him facedown, one arm extended, the tendons bending as she applied pressure.
“I’ll break it,” she said as he struggled against her. “Be still.”
“Diana!” Alia was standing beside the destroyed door, staring down at them in shock.
“I told you to remain in the room.”
“Diana—”
“The situation is under control. Whoever dispatched this assassin sent a weakling.”
The young man beneath her grunted, trying to wriggle free.
She gave a tug on his arm, and he froze. “Who sent you?” she growled.
Alia clapped her hands over her mouth. She bent double, shoulders shaking, and for a moment, Diana thought she was weeping—but she was laughing. Was she having some kind of hysterical fit?
“Diana,” she gasped, “that weakling is my brother.”
Diana looked down at the male in her grip, his face planted in the hallway’s dirty green carpet. “Are…are you sure?”
Alia barked a laugh. “Pretty sure, yeah.”
Diana changed her hold, flipping the intruder so that he was pinned by her knees, and peered into his furious face. His gaze blazed with anger, a muscle twitching in his jaw. Now that she looked, she supposed he wasn’t dressed like an assassin. He wore a clean white shirt of fine cotton unbuttoned at the throat, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His head was shaved, though not quite smooth, and he had the same dark liquid eyes and brown skin as Alia. In fact, now that she was looking at him properly, the resemblance was striking.
“Why did you attack me?” she said.
“You attacked me.”
Diana winced. So she had. “Well, why were you trying to break into our room?”
He bucked once beneath her, and she used her body weight to shove him back to the floor. Brother or not, she didn’t know his intentions. “I was looking for my sister,” he snarled. “Who the hell are you?”
Alia cleared her throat. “Maybe you should let him up.”
“He’s in no danger. I’m not hurting him.”
“I’m pretty sure his ego is permanently bruised, and I don’t know what might be hiding in that carpet.”
“We should search him for weapons.”
“Diana, he’s my brother. Let him up.”
Reluctantly, Diana rocked back on her heels and stood, releasing him. She offered him a hand, but he ignored it, making what she thought was an unnecessarily dramatic show of shaking out his arm.
He came up to his knees and, in a single swift movement, yanked a gun from a holster near his ankle as he leapt to his feet. “You should have searched me for weapons.”
“Jason!” Alia yelped.
“I’m just making a point. If—”
Diana had never seen a gun outside of the pages of a book, but she’d been trained to disarm an assailant. Her hand snapped forward, striking the pressure points of his wr
ist. The gun dropped from his grip, and in the next breath she had him up against the wall, cheek pressed to the plaster.
“I was just making a point!” Jason said. “I was agreeing with you…whoever you are. Alia, will you call her off?”
“I’m not sure I should. What are you doing with a gun, Jason?”
“I have it for protection!”
“How’s that working out for you?”
Diana gave him a little shove. “Alia hasn’t been out of my sight once. How did you find us?”
“The trunk with the go-bag is equipped with an alarm in case of theft,” he said. “You triggered it when you broke in, although I have no idea what you did to that poor car. I asked the attendants if they’d seen anyone coming or going with a red backpack, and they remembered you two.”
“But how did you find the hotel?”
“The cell phone in the backpack.”
“A phone?”
“Yes,” he grunted. “There’s a burner phone in every go-bag. I followed the signal here.”
“Did you know this?” asked Diana, but the guilt on Alia’s face told her all she needed to know. She remembered how Alia had asked her to put the duffel back in the trunk. Had she done it deliberately so Diana would turn her back? She was surprised at how much the betrayal stung.
“Diana, I need to ask you to unhand my brother. Again.”
Grudgingly, Diana released him, but this time she patted him down. She decided not to think too much about the fact that she was in such close proximity to a male—friend or foe—and ignored his sharp “Hey!” when she ran her hand up his thigh.
“You pulled a gun on us,” she said. “Your discomfort is your own doing.”
“I’m trying to teach Alia to be more cautious,” he complained.
“Lesson learned, big brother. Was it worth it?”
Diana stepped back and Alia’s brother turned, straightening the collar of his shirt.
“Happy?” he asked.
“Reassured.”
She expected another round of recriminations, but instead Jason turned to Alia. He crossed the short distance between them and pulled her into a tight hug. “I thought…We had word the Thetis had lost contact. I didn’t know what to think.”
“I’m okay,” Alia said, but Diana could hear the wobble in her voice.
Diana was embarrassed by the acute pang of envy she felt. She would have liked someone to lean on, to tell her she hadn’t made a terrible mistake, that she wasn’t in this alone.
Then Jason broke the hug and held Alia at arm’s length. “How could you be so stupid?”
“I’m not stupid,” she said, knocking Jason’s hands away and folding her arms.
“Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been? The Thetis lost radio contact almost a week ago.”
“A week?” said Alia.
Diana’s heart lurched. A week gone? They must have lost time when they left the island. Hekatombaion began with the rise of the first visible new moon after the summer solstice—the slender white scythe of the reaping moon. How long did they have?
“When was the last full moon?” said Diana.
Jason stared at her as if she’d gone mad. “What?”
“I need a calendar.”
He scowled and handed over the boxlike device she realized was his phone.
She touched the screen tentatively. “I don’t—”
He snatched it from her and jabbed at it a few times before holding it up. They’d reached the end of June. According to the screen, the last full moon had been on June twentieth, and that meant Hekatombaion would begin on July seventh. They had less than a week to get to the spring.
Jason shoved his phone back in his pocket. “You disappeared,” he said to Alia. “They sent out search parties. I thought…” His voice broke. “For God’s sake, Alia, I thought you were dead.”
“But I’m not, Jason. I’m here.”
“How is that even possible? They said you boarded the boat in Istanbul. Did you change your mind?”
“I—”
“Everything okay up here?” The Bulgarian from the front desk stood panting at the end of the hall. It had taken him long enough to come investigate.
As one, they moved to block his view of the demolished door. “Everything’s great!” said Alia.
“You bet,” said Jason.
“Vsichko e nared. Molya, varnete se kam zanimaniyata si,” said Diana as reassuringly as she could.
The Bulgarian made an unconvinced “huh” sound and started back down the stairs.
“Should I even ask?” said Alia.
“I just told him that all was well and instructed him to return to what he was doing.”
“Not suspicious at all,” said Jason. Diana saw Alia bite back a smile.
She bristled. “It was a perfectly reasonable thing to say.”
“Let’s get inside before he changes his mind and comes back to take a closer look,” said Jason. “Help me with the door.”
“Diana can just—” Alia began, and Diana gave a frantic shake of her head. It was one thing for Alia to know how strong she was, but the less Jason knew about where she was from or what she could do, the better.
“Just what?” said Jason, already hefting one side of the door.
“Just help,” Alia finished weakly.
They shuffled into the passageway and got the door wedged shut behind them. Somehow the room looked smaller and shabbier with Alia’s brother standing inside it. Despite the fact that he’d just been in a fight, he looked unrumpled and immaculate, the white of his shirt unsullied, a heavy watch glinting at his wrist. Could she convince this boy of her cause? Could she convince Alia? She’d thought she would have time to make her case and get them to Greece. Now she had only a few days.
Jason turned a slow circle, taking in the room’s bleak furnishings, the plastic bags of candy. “I’ve been trying to call in favors with the Turkish government, and you’re having a slumber party.”
“That’s not what this is,” Alia objected.
Jason threw his hands up in exasperation. “Then what is it? What are you doing in a place like this, Alia? And how did you get here?”
Diana sat down on the bed. Alia had lied to her. “You said you wouldn’t call him.”
“I didn’t,” said Alia.
“But you knew he would trace you.”
“I thought he might.”
“What difference does it make?” asked Jason irritably. He turned to Diana, touching his hand to his shoulder as if it still pained him. “Who are you? And what right do you have to keep my sister from contacting me?”
Diana felt her temper rise. “It was for her own protection. Gods,” she said shooting up from the bed as realization struck. “You could have been followed. We should leave this place immediately.”
“Gods?” said Jason. “Plural?”
“No one is looking for me,” insisted Alia. “They think I’m dead.”
Jason released a growl. “Will someone tell me what the hell is going on?”
Alia bounced nervously on her heels. “Can we all just…sit down for a minute?”
Jason glanced at the nearest bed, his lip curling slightly. With a disdainful flick, he shoved a pile of sweets away and sat down at the edge of the bed. He glanced around. “Do you have anything to drink?”
“Warm soda?” Alia said, offering him a bottle of cola.
“I was hoping for something stronger.”
Alia raised a brow. “Seriously?”
“I’m twenty-one—”
“Barely.”
“And I just got pounced by this…person.”
“My name is Diana.”
Jason took the soda bottle from Alia. “Diana what?”
She answered without thinking. “Diana, Princess of—”
“Diana Prince,” Alia said hurriedly. “Her name is Diana Prince.”
“Yes,” said Diana, grateful for the rescue, even if she was still angry at Alia. “Diana
Prince.”
Alia sat down on the other bed and gestured for Diana to join her. Reluctantly, Diana settled on the farthest corner.
Jason took a gulp of soda. “Start talking, Alia.”
“There was an accident.”
Diana held Alia’s gaze. They couldn’t afford this pretense. “It wasn’t an accident.”
Alia took a deep breath. “Okay, there was an explosion aboard the Thetis. Someone…” She hesitated, and Diana realized this was the first time Alia had spoken the words out loud. She’d let Diana make the claim, agreed with her as far as she was able, but she’d never acknowledged the fact of what had happened herself. “I think someone tried to kill me.”
Jason set down the bottle with a loud clunk. “I told you not to go. You know what kind of threats the Foundation gets. I told you how dangerous it was for you to be without security.”
Alia dropped her eyes. “I didn’t think—”
“No, you didn’t. You could have been killed.”
“I would have been. But Diana saved me.”
“How?”
“I saw the explosion from shore.”
“And you brought her all the way back to New York?”
“It seemed the safest thing.”
Jason’s expression was sour. “Well, at least someone was thinking.”
“That isn’t fair,” Alia said quietly.
“Fair?” Jason leaned forward. “You almost died. I almost lost you. After what happened to Mom and Dad—”
“I—”
“If you wanted to go so badly, you should have talked to me. We could have arranged an expedition.”
Alia sprang to her feet. “I didn’t want a Keralis expedition,” she said, pacing back and forth in the tiny room. “I wanted to be a student. Like a normal kid. Like everyone else.”
“We aren’t like everyone else, Alia. Our family doesn’t have that luxury.”
Diana hadn’t meant to speak. This wasn’t her battle. But she still found herself saying, “She was right to try.”
“Excuse me?” said Jason.
“It’s not just to ask someone to live half a life,” Diana said. “You can’t live in fear. You make things happen or they happen to you.”
Jason turned his cold, angry gaze on her. “People died. Alia could have been killed.”
Wonder Woman: Warbringer Page 12