Wonder Woman: Warbringer (DC Icons #1)(33)
“You intend to steal a car?” Diana sputtered.
“Why would I steal a car I can’t drive?” Alia said, hoping she sounded calmer than she felt. At this point she was getting by on bravado alone. It had been nerve-racking enough to hop the turnstiles on the subway—something she’d never done without Nim to egg her on—and now she was basically about to commit a crime. It wasn’t as if Jason would press charges, but she wasn’t big on the idea of getting caught. Everything in her was screaming, Go home. Hit reset.
She was on her own turf now. She should feel calmer, more confident than she had on the island, but she never did well in crowds, and Manhattan was basically one big crowd.
She watched one of the attendants vanish into the recesses of the garage. The other was on the phone in the office, just visible through the glass. This might be their only opportunity to get inside. “Look, you asked me to trust you; now I’m asking you to trust me.”
Diana’s dark brows lowered, and she huffed out a breath. “Very well.”
A huge vote of confidence from the Cult Island delegation. “Good,” said Alia, hoping she sounded sure of herself. “First task is to get past those attendants without them noticing us.” She loped quickly across the street and then dropped into her best crouch as she slunk along the wall, relieved that Diana followed.
“This feels like law breaking,” Diana whispered as they crept up the ramp.
“I mean, we’re not really breaking any laws. We’re just circumventing some bureaucratic challenges.”
Alia led them past the booth and to the stairwell, hoping they wouldn’t run into the other attendant as they climbed.
When they reached the third floor, she pushed the door open. It was quiet up here, the air cool in the dark. The only sounds were the occasional squeal of tires or the rumble of an engine echoing from somewhere in the cavernous building. She counted the spaces. She’d never actually been to this garage, but she knew the number she was looking for—321. March twenty-first, her mother’s birthday.
318, 319, 320…Could this possibly be it? Alia felt a little deflated. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but the car was a disappointingly dull Toyota Camry. Of course, it was possible she’d gotten this all wrong. What if the space number was her parents’ anniversary and not her mother’s birthday? What if Jason wasn’t using this garage anymore?
She peered through the driver’s-side window. The interior of the car was spotless: empty drink holders, a receipt folded on the dashboard, and there, hanging from the rearview mirror, a pendant emblazoned with a fleur-de-lis—the symbol of New Orleans, Lina Mayeux’s hometown. Alia’s mother had once confided she’d contemplated getting a tattoo of the fleur-de-lis to remind her of home. What changed your mind? Alia had asked her. Her mother had just winked. Who says I have?
Alia blinked back an embarrassing prickle of tears.
“Okay,” she said. “Don’t freak out, but we’re going to have to break the window.”
“Why?”
“We don’t have a key, and I need to get into the trunk.”
“But it’s your car?”
“My brother’s.”
“Perhaps I can get the trunk open without the key.”
Diana gripped the lip of the trunk just above the license plate and yanked upward. Instead of the latch giving, the metal of the trunk peeled upward with a shriek. Diana bit her lip and stepped back. The rear of the car looked like an open coin purse. “Sorry about that.”
Alia listened for the patter of running footsteps, but apparently the attendants either hadn’t heard one of their cars being torn apart or hadn’t cared. She looked at the gaping trunk, then back at Diana. “So you’re the weak one in your family, huh?”
Alia and Diana peered into the trunk. There was an industrial-size flashlight, jumper cables, and a gigantic canvas duffel.
“Bless you, Jason, you paranoid loon.”
“What is it?”
“A bug-out bag.” Alia hefted the duffel from the trunk, laid it on the ground, and unzipped it. “Jason has them stashed all around the city in case of emergency. In Brooklyn, too.” Alia ignored most of the gear—a tarp and tent, a water-purification system, rain ponchos, matches, freeze-dried meals. She set aside the first-aid kit. Her feet would be grateful for that later. “It’s basically everything you’d need to survive an apocalypse.”
“Is he so sure one will come?” Diana asked.
“No, he’s just a control freak. Jason is basically the biggest Boy Scout ever. He likes to be prepared for every possibility.”
“But that’s impossible.”
“Try telling him that. Aha!” Triumphantly, Alia held up a huge wad of cash. “We’re rich!”
“Is it enough for an airplane?”
At least Diana was consistent. “Maybe a model airplane. It’s only a thousand dollars, but it’s enough to get us a room and something to eat while we figure out what to do next.”
Alia didn’t miss the troubled expression that crossed Diana’s face. She knew Diana truly believed in all of this Warbringer stuff, an age of bloodshed, the magical spring. Alia wasn’t sure what she thought. She couldn’t deny the bizarre things she’d seen over the last twenty-four hours, or the fact that they had somehow traveled all the way from the Aegean to the Hudson River in what had felt like the blink of an eye.