Wonder Woman: Warbringer (DC Icons #1)(71)

“I—” Theo hesitated. Even his locs looked like they were thinking. “Well, no. It’s just when—”

“Just when you’re around me. So next time you guys feel like killing each other, maybe take a break and go to your corners. Literally, just get away from me or each other.”

Theo and Nim shared a skeptical glance.

“See?” said Alia. “You both think I’m nuts so you have something to agree on already.”

“What will your people make of the attack on the museum?” Diana asked.

“I’m not sure,” said Jason, his voice weary. “There’s a lot of bad stuff happening around the world right now. They’ll probably chalk it up to terrorism, an attack on the Foundation because of its international policies. We’ve had threats before, problems at some of our facilities abroad.”

“But nothing on this scale,” said Theo.

“No,” said Jason. “Nothing with a body count.”

“And do we have any idea who those particular good guys were?” Nim asked.

“They were speaking German,” said Theo. “Ich bin ein blow the museum up.”

Jason shuffled through a stack of files. “There are a number of international organizations who make it their business to try to track the Warbringer’s bloodline. There used to be more, but either they’ve gone to ground or just died out. There’s the Order of Saint Dumas, and a splinter group called Das Erdbeben that once operated out of Hamburg, but it’s hard to tell which are real and which are fiction.”

“Those bullets seemed awfully real,” said Nim.

“But why now?” asked Alia. “Why wait until so close to the new moon to try to…get rid of me?”

Jason shifted uneasily in his seat and looked down at his hands. “I think that may be my fault.”

“As long as it’s not my fault,” said Theo.

Alia waited, and Jason smoothed his thumb over the knee of his jeans. “Mom and Dad hadn’t transferred a bunch of the old files to digital. I thought I should back everything up, make a record. So I scanned it all in—”

“On a Keralis Labs computer?” Theo said, sounding genuinely horrified for the first time since they’d started talking. “Were you even running encryption?”

“Yes,” said Jason. “And we have all kinds of confidential information on those servers. Research. Proprietary data. It should have been safe.”

“But someone in the company could have recognized something,” said Diana. “All it would take was one word, one mention.”

“I’m sorry, Al,” Jason said. He looked physically ill. “I never really believed in all of it. Not the way they did. I should have been more careful.”

Alia sighed. How could she be angry with him for something he couldn’t possibly have understood? “I don’t know whether to smack you for being so stupid or do a victory dance to celebrate the fact that this time you’re the one who screwed up.”

“You could incorporate a smack into your victory dance,” suggested Nim.

“Efficiency,” said Alia. “I like it.”

“Efficiency,” Diana repeated thoughtfully. “It’s possible these organizations are exchanging information now. It would be the strategic thing to do. As near as I can tell from the scroll, tracking and identifying Warbringers was no easy task. The first recorded assassination of a Warbringer happened in the modern world. That can’t be a coincidence.”

“One more thing to blame on the Internet,” said Theo.

Alia held up one of the folders. “What about all the text that’s been blacked out? Are there complete versions of the files anywhere?”

Jason shook his head. “Not that I’ve found. I think Mom and Dad may have been pursuing separate lines of research at some point. I’m not sure.”

Theo refilled his glass. “Okay, we get to Greece, we find the spring, we’re all good.”

So they weren’t going to run screaming. Alia could have hugged Theo. But that was pretty much always true.

“Theo, this isn’t your fight,” said Jason. “Or yours, Nim. I’m going to have Ben put us down at an abandoned landing strip near the airport in Araxos instead of the airport in Kalamata. From there, I can arrange for a flight back to—”

“Stop,” said Nim, holding her hands up. “If people are willing to blow a hole in the side of the Met to get to you, then they know who we are, and as soon as we pop back up on the grid they’ll be coming after us, trying to find out where you went.”

“She makes a good point,” said Diana. “We can’t afford to underestimate these people again.”

“All right,” Jason said, considering. “We’ll find a safe house. Someplace secure—”

“You’re going to find some olive grove to stash us in?” said Theo indignantly.

“I was thinking a hotel,” said Jason.

“Forget it. If our roles were reversed, would you just sit around sipping ouzo while I was in danger?”

“No,” conceded Jason.

“Then I’m coming with you.”

“Me too,” said Nim.

Alia shook her head. “No way. You saw what we’re up against. You could get hurt. Maybe killed. I couldn’t bear that.”