Wonder Woman: Warbringer (DC Icons #1)(77)

Alia limped over to him, tears in her eyes, and said, “Yes, I’ll help, you big grump.”

He dragged her down and hugged her tight. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“Same here.”

“Are you getting snot all over my shirt?”

“Probably,” she said, but she didn’t let go. “How the hell did you get down here?”

Jason sighed. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you all of it, but we need to go. Whoever shot us down will have people on the ground, searching.”

“Did Ben get out before the plane went down?” Nim asked.

Jason shook his head. “No.”

“He died bravely,” said Diana.

“But he died just the same,” Alia replied. Another death on her conscience, and all the more reason to make it to the spring.

After a few minutes of fiddling, they managed to get Jason free, though Diana kept her distance, arms crossed, jaw set. He pulled a Velcro patch free from one of the straps of the parachute pack, revealing some kind of screen. His fingers moved over it, entering a code, and a cluster of green dots appeared beside an electronic compass rose.

“That’s us,” said Jason, using his fingertips to zoom out. Another green dot appeared to the southeast.

“And that’s Theo,” said Alia.

“Or his parachute at least.”

She punched Jason hard in the arm. “Don’t say that.”

They followed the signal through the poppy field into an olive grove, through row after row of gnarled trees. In the late-afternoon light, their gray-green leaves took on a silvery cast, like boughs clustered with clouds of sea foam.

Nim stopped short. “Oh God,” she said, and when Alia followed her horrified gaze, she saw Theo’s limp body hanging from the twisted branches of an olive tree, like a puppet gone slack on its strings.

“No,” said Alia. “No.” She had done this. She might as well have snapped his neck herself.

Then one of Theo’s pointy shoes wiggled, his knee, his thigh, up to his wrist. Alia grabbed Nim’s arm, relief gusting through her. “He’s alive!” she said on a happy gasp.

“I should have known I couldn’t get rid of him that easily,” said Nim, but she was smiling.

Diana peered at Theo’s wiggling form. “What exactly is he doing?”

Jason sighed. “I’m pretty sure he’s doing the wave.”

Alia cocked her head to one side. “Maybe the robot?”

Diana frowned. “Is this the way your people celebrate cheating death?”

“What exactly are you doing, Theo?” Alia called.

He tried to twist against the strings, to no avail. “Alia?” he shouted. “Guys?” His feet bicycled futilely through the air. He was only a few feet off the ground, but it was a crucial few feet.

“He looks like a manic Christmas ornament,” said Nim. “And God, who told him those pants were a good idea?”

Personally, Alia thought the pants were great. Was it wrong to notice how good someone’s butt looked when a second earlier you’d thought he was dead?

It only took a few moments for Diana to scale the tree and cut Theo loose. He fell to the ground in a heap and gazed up at them from the dirt. “Can we never, ever do that again?”

“Sold,” Jason said, offering him a hand. He pulled Theo up and drew him into a quick hug, clapping him on the back. Alia wanted to plant kisses all over Theo’s ridiculous face, but she was going to have to fall out of a few more planes before she had the guts to do it.

“How did they find us?” said Nim. “How did they know we were headed to Greece?”

“I don’t know,” said Jason. “It’s possible they found the jet via satellite. Maybe they were just waiting to see where we intended to land, and once we were in range—”

“They took a shot,” said Theo.

“They’ll have seen where the jet went down,” said Diana. “We need to move. If they don’t already know we escaped the crash, they will soon.”

“But where are we?” said Nim. “And where do we go?”

Theo pulled out his phone.

“Don’t!” said Alia, swatting it out of his hands onto the ground.

“Hey!”

“Maybe that’s the answer to how they found us,” said Nim.

Theo looked almost insulted. “You seriously think I let anyone track me through this thing? If anybody goes looking for Theo Santos, they’re going to think I’m sunning myself on Praia do Toque. Which, honestly, I wish I was.”

“I wish you were, too,” said Nim.

“Does anyone else have a phone?” said Jason.

Nim shook her head. “It was in my clutch at the party.”

“I never got a new one,” said Alia. “And Diana doesn’t have a phone.”

Theo clutched his chest. “No—no phone? How do you function?”

Diana cast Theo a haughty glance that looked like it had been pulled straight from Nim’s playbook. “I wear practical shoes and avoid the branches of olive trees.”

“So cold,” said Nim with a grin. “So accurate.”

“Shhhh,” Theo said to his pointy-toed shoes. “She didn’t mean it.”