Burn (Story of CI #3)

by Rachel Moschell

  They were supposed to be keeping an eye on the kids. This was so irresponsible. But when he kissed her, Wara just about saw stars.

  What did a hot guy like him see in her, nerdy missionary girl just arrived from Montana? She sat behind a desk to study linguistics, for goodness sakes.

  This guy knew everything there was to know about sports and the outdoors, plus he was a new Christian, just starting to go to church.

  Oh, everyone in the mission would tell her this was such a bad idea.

  Wara dropped her backpack into the wet grass and let Lázaro pull her behind the biggest boulder and kiss her again.

  And then, dreams being weird like they are, it wasn't Lázaro Wara was kissing but Alejo.

  Alejo and his Prism team had put a bomb on her bus, and the whole thing went over into the ravine, taking Noah Hearst with it. Alejo was holding Wara prisoner in his tent up there on the top of that mountain. Swarms of crickets hissed in the tropical foliage and the air reeked of citrus. People were coming towards the tent, and Alejo swore, then kissed her again, hard. Later she’d figured out he was trying to give the rest of his team an excuse as to why he was keeping Wara in his tent and away from the rest of them, who wanted to kill her. The kiss was supposed to tell everyone else that team leader Alejo got the girl and everyone else better stay away.

  Velcro separated from Velcro as someone ripped the tent flap open, and Wara could only hang there, trapped against Alejo's chest, doing her best to kick him in the knee as he forced her to kiss him. When he finally let go of her cheek, she whirled towards the tropical light and saw...Lázaro. Hiking boots. Tanned, honey-colored skin. That wool cap at an angle over his eyes.

  "Lázaro?" Wara had breathed his name in horror, because she had expected to see her ex-boyfriend here with a bunch of Muslim terrorists as much as she would have guessed the moon really was made of cheese.

  Even though it had been five years since Lázaro and Wara were together, Lázaro had exploded when he saw her in Alejo’s arms. He and Alejo took the fight outside, where Alejo tired Lázaro out within minutes and left him with a bloody third eyebrow.

  Alejo's boss, Ishmael, wanted Wara dead, because she was a witness. She could still remember how Ishmael eyed her with deadly calm, breaking up the fight between Alejo and Wara's ex-boyfriend. Lázaro just stood there, gaping at her, bright crimson bubbling out of the gash over his eye and quivering down his cheek. And then Ishmael Khan unsheathed the hunting knife.

  "My son, this has gone on far too long," he told Lázaro calmly. "She can identify you." He held the blade out to Lázaro and waited.

  Lázaro was supposed to slit her throat.

  Wara watched in horror as he faltered and stepped away.

  Lázaro shook his head and backed away.

  Good Excuses

  WARA SHOT UP IN BED, CLAMMY with sweat. She gasped, saw her legs tangled up in the sheets of the room she always slept in at Rupert's house.

  It was hot, terribly, terribly hot in here. She heard her ragged breath echoing around the narrow room. Wara kicked violently at the sweaty sheets, wadding them up at the foot of the bed, then slumped back into the headboard, still panting and staring at her bare legs sticking out of black knit shorts.

  Oh my gosh. What a horrible dream.

  That scene at camp, where Lázaro kissed her behind the rocks…Wara tried to never think about it. After how things turned out with Lázaro Marquez, it wasn't exactly a treasured memory.

  She had liked him when they worked together at camp, been flattered by all the attention. But even when they dated those three weeks back in Cochabamba, Wara knew it was just a distraction. Lázaro was so not her type, and she was well aware that she was lonely. Having trouble getting used to Bolivia.

  Having Lázaro in her life had shown Wara just how lonely and desperate for a distraction she could be. And for years she had hated herself for it.

  The whole dream just now had made Wara feel very, very sick.

  She swung her legs over the side of the bed and squinted at the light streaming in through the sliding glass porch doors. Pure starlight illuminated the wooly rug next to the single bed. Wara was surrounded by cedar, from floor to ceiling, accented in blues and a low cedar desk in the corner where she kept her laptop and stuff that had permanently found its home here.

  I can't believe I fell asleep.

  The clock on the bedside table said it was 8:46 pm. That had been a super unpleasant nap.

  She wondered if Alejo would still be downstairs waiting for her. Something sad painted itself across her heart when she remembered his eyes when he asked her to take a walk with him.

  And she’d said he’d have to wait. Wara had just been too broken and confused to know what to do.

  Suddenly she was desperate to find him.

  Wara zipped the hoodie up to her neck and threw on a soft sage-colored scarf Cail had knit for her. Cail always looked embarrassed when Wara put the thing on, like she was horrified at herself for actually doing something girly. Thanks to growing up in a conservative family that was totally into anything Little House on the Prairie, Cail also knew how to bake bread and pies like a fiend.

  Wara's knees still shook as she padded down the carpeted stairs that hugged one side of the high-ceilinged living room.

  Alejo was waiting on the couch, slumped over into the beige fabric, eyes closed in the semi-darkness. No one else was around.

  In the kitchen, the old fridge was rattling against the tiles like a caged beast. Alejo didn’t hear a thing as Wara stepped across the floor in her woolly UGG slippers and sank down onto the couch. His cheek slipped down onto her shoulder and then he jerked, sitting up and looking at her with wide eyes.

  She couldn’t help but smile at him, the way his lashes were all matted together and the couch had left cute little red trails all across one side of his head. She felt horrible that he was sitting here waiting for her instead of going to bed. But she was also really, really happy.

  “Still up for a walk?” she asked him with a grimace.

  Alejo scrubbed at his eyes and smiled a sleepy grin.

  “Let me get you a coat,” she told him. “You’re not used to this weather.” She touched his shoulder and tiptoed through the noisy kitchen, into the laundry room on the right where there was a whole walk-in closet of clothes up for grabs for whoever needed to use them. She knew there was a brown corduroy coat in there that actually was Alejo’s. He’d been wearing it last November when he came to Montana to see her after his surgery, after he’d nearly died coming to prison in Iran to save her. Wara lowered the warm coat from its hook and brought it back to Alejo, who was now sitting with his arms crossed in front of him, staring at the flickering orange in the fireplace.

  Outside, the beauty of the night almost hurt. A pulse of neon yellow was all that remained of the sun, straining to burst from behind the jagged black peaks. Up here on the second story porch, Wara could see the mountains, towering over the pine-carpeted yard that sloped down into the darkness. The stars that studded the jet black sky twinkled like Christmas lights out here in the mountains, pale green, yellow, and pastel pink.

  Alejo’s shoulders were hunched against the cold and he was taking in the stars. He’d stuffed his hands in the pockets of the corduroy coat. Wara hid her hands in her pockets, too.

  She had been so excited to see him, dreaming about picking up where they left off when she was in training here at headquarters. Despite their rocky past, Wara had grown to totally trust Alejo Martir. More than that, she liked him. A lot. She had missed him a ton the past four months, and was really hoping that the next place they worked with CI they could work together.

  But how many times did she think about what it was like for him there in Timbuktu? Had she really expected him to come away from that all happy and ready to flirt with her?

  Wara always assumed Alejo was used to this stuff.

  But his life hadn’t been easy the past months.

  "So where are we going?”
she asked him as they clumped down the porch stairs. The property was big, with a shadowy pine and cedar canopy for a backyard, sloping down to a little creek. But there was a high cement brick wall around all of CI’s land. You couldn’t just walk forever without doing a loop around the property.

  “How about the tree house?” Alejo said. They were strolling along a little faster now, weaving around branches. The ground shimmered with patches of silver and salmon starlight. Alejo pulled up to a stop right next to the famous tree house, where Rupert used to play when he was little and this property belonged to his grandpa’s shipping company. The thing had two stories and hovered about three feet off the ground, wrapped around the trunk of a huge oak tree. Of course the house was made of cedar, with a sloping little roof of blond wooden shingles. At the top of the treehouse, domed windows sat in a pair like dark little eyes.

  "Now this place brings back some memories.” Alejo actually flashed a smile. He stopped with one hand on the wooden ladder that led up into the treehouse’s floor. "You kicked the crap out of me that day. My jaw hurt for days."

  Wara surprised herself by smiling, too. Back in the days when she was just getting to know Alejo, they came out here once together. She barely trusted him then, and Alejo was acting weird. Almost flirty.

  "I don't know what possessed me," Wara rolled her eyes in an arch. "You were teasing me. I was just learning karate and you were always telling me to practice."

  "Yeah, well." Alejo raised a hand and ran it down her cheek, eyes memorizing her face. Wara froze. He blinked and quickly turned his back towards her and scrambled up the ladder. "I deserved it," she heard his voice echo. Alejo’s head and shoulders were already inside the tree house. Wara climbed up after him and they whacked at the canvas-covered pillows lumped around the floor, checking for spiders. Alejo sank down onto one pillow and Wara sat cross-legged next to him. The rough fabric had chilled in the night air and was raising goose-bumps on Wara's bare legs. She rubbed her knees with both hands, trying to warm up.

  Should have changed out of the shorts.

  But when she woke up from that nasty dream, she’d been dripping in sweat.

  "What are we doing out here?" Wara had to ask. "This isn't exactly your favorite place. After the infamous kick-to-the-teeth."

  Alejo leaned back into the wooden wall, knees bent up towards the ceiling. “They’re all good memories,” he said. “Being here with you.” Wara felt her jaw hanging open, more than a little off-guard. “I really don’t want to talk about Timbuktu,” he said. Like he was warning her to not ask. “We can talk about Timbuktu when we get there. Tell me about you the past few months.”

  Well, at least he wanted to hear about her. That was better than barely speaking at the airport. Wara felt the words leak out of her as she told him all about the jail in Rabat, those deep blue bruises on the activists' ankles, the way her heart would barely stay in her chest during the English classes. "We heard all but one of them have been released," she announced, a little proudly. "They got to go back home. Tabor and Rachel have taken over the English teaching now, and it seems like no one at the jail suspects who is leaking the information out."

  Alejo listened, lashes lowered and throwing feathery shadows across his coffee-colored cheeks. After Wara finished the tale of her adventures, silence fell around the treehouse for just a moment. "God protected you," he finally said. Wara felt herself wince.

  "Or we just escaped anything bad happening. This time," she shrugged. And it was annoying, but that shrug reminded her of the pain in her shoulders. Thanks to last time, when she did not escape anything bad happening. People died. Right in front of her. She got tortured, and the muscles were never going to heal.

  "How have your shoulders been?" Alejo asked.

  "Not that great," Wara muttered. "My shoulders still hurt, but I'm starting to get used to it. But everything still, just…bothers me."

  On the phone from Mali, Alejo had seemed disturbed by Wara's skeptical comments about faith and her glaring bad attitude about church after the trip to Iran. After all, Alejo had only converted to Christianity a year or so ago. New stuff was always exciting, right?

  Alejo didn’t seem to understand her problems with church. Or maybe he just didn’t want to think about it.

  Wara tensed for a motivational sermon, caught her breath as an iron ball began to hollow out the space next to her shoulder blade. Alejo just closed his eyes, then moved his pillow right next to hers, sat so his shoulder warmed Wara's arm. "I saw this graffiti in Timbuktu," he said tightly. "On the wall of the compound where the Baptist missionaries live. 'If God exists,' it said, 'he'd better have a good excuse.'"

  She waited for the sermon but it never came. They just sat there together, skin chilling in the mountain night, watching the shadows flit across the floor as branches shivered in the wind. A mosquito hovered next to Wara's bare right knee, somehow staying afloat despite the cold.

  Wara finally just had to say it. "Yeah, I feel like that," she whispered. "I get that. Everything is so messed up. I wanted to make the world better, but we're living in the middle of these situations that are so messed up. And now, there's Lázaro." She hated the way his name sounded here in Rupert's backyard.

  A long time ago, she had felt Lázaro Marquez's shoulder against hers. Now Alejo was sitting here, and she wanted to be with him more than she'd wanted to be with anyone in her life. She respected him, liked him. A lot.

  And here they were, alone together under the stars, and Wara was thinking about Lázaro, making his name echo in a whisper around Rupert's tree house. Because Lázaro was a problem that wasn't gonna go away.

  Unless he was dead.

  "Listen," Alejo said lowly, "Lázaro made his choice. Whatever those choices were, we're not responsible." Alejo looked at her sharply. Wara uncrossed her legs and flopped them straight out in front of her, across the dusty boards. She felt her shoulders slump. The arm that pressed against Alejo's was the only warm part of her body. The rest of her skin felt damp and chilled.

  "I am responsible for you," Alejo told her hotly, "for keeping you safe. That's what I want to do. That's why I'm here."

  He searched every pixel of her eyes and Wara waited, wanting him to say more.

  I am responsible for you.

  I thought you liked me. Do you want to keep me safe because you care about me? Or because it's your job? Is this still just you feeling guilty about the past?

  The words wanted to break past the guard at the gate of her mouth but she reined them in.

  "I'm tired of people dying," she whispered instead.

  Alejo's eyebrow dipped dangerously. Wara had not seen that feral glint in his eye for a long, long time. "You can't ask me to just let Marquez come after you."

  Wara felt her shoulders slant even farther towards the floor. Alejo's bicep against hers was hard, angry. "No…I…"

  "I can't do that, Wara." He tried to make his voice softer, but that fire in his eyes was scaring the crap out of her. "He's made his choice, and it's obvious what that is. I won't just sit and watch while he carries out a hit on you. I'm going to stay with you, til this is over."

  Wara swallowed hard, felt her eyes narrow against tears as she stared at the floor. She grabbed Alejo's hand and knit her fingers between his, hanging on for sanity.

  "I'm going to be with you til it's over," Alejo had promised her.

  It's what she wanted, to be right here, next to Alejo.

  But when she closed her eyes and imagined finally being out of danger, the assassin after her out of the picture, what Wara saw was blood. Alejo and Cail and Lalo making Lázaro kneel and putting a bullet into his skull.

  That was what Alejo was talking about here. That was the only way it was gonna be over.

  "Ok," Wara heard herself say. She squeezed the life out of Alejo's hand and leaned into his shoulder, hard. "Ok."

  Jesus and the Tattoo

  THE CALL WAS SUPPOSED TO COME IN at nine, but it was pretty late and Cail was still sit
ting in front of her tablet on the faded couch with the orange Moroccan pillows, waiting for her sister.

  "I'll be there in a sec," Faith had typed. "Abigail's nursing and the others are in the tub."

  That had been like twenty minutes ago. Wara had finally gone out for a walk with Alejo. When he asked her at dinner, she’d gone all pale as if a werewolf had just asked her to walk out into the wilderness with him under a full moon.

  Boys. In Cail's opinion, Wara liked the Bolivian guy who had just joined CI way too much.

  Cail sighed long and low, kept scrolling through pictures, killing time on Facebook while waiting for her sister to finish the never-ending tasks associated with five kids. And that was just her sister who was twenty-seven.

  The Lamontagne clan had been raised to believe the more children, the more blessing from God. Cail herself had thirteen siblings. Her parents were now the proud owners of sixty-two grandchildren. Besides Cail, only the sixteen and eighteen-year-old sisters were still single. Even one of her baby sisters, just turned nineteen, had a baby boy named Aragorn.

  Aragorn. As in the scruffy guy who becomes king of Gondor in the Lord of the Rings.

  Cail supposed it had to be an unusual name like that, because in the Lamontagne family, Bible names were pretty much all used up.

  Her older sister Victory was supposed to be having twins any day. That was one reason Cail decided to call. She was worried about her sister, because the last set of twins did not make it.

  Cail also thought she should talk with some of her family members before the trip to Timbuktu, just, you know, in case. Security was a little iffy over there in Mali, after all.

  Cail took a long sip from a shiny white clay mug of Chamomile, then slung her socked feet up and kept flipping through pictures. A lot of her brothers and sisters were on Facebook. There were endless pictures of all her nieces and nephews.

  Her sisters all still wore skirts, long, matronly ones that fell to their ankles. Everyone homeschooled. There were tons of posts about gardening. Why babies should be born at home and not in hospitals. The evils of childhood vaccines and public education. Political stuff that Cail scanned through quickly like the plague.