Burn (Story of CI #3)

by Rachel Moschell

  But she knew that this wasn’t what she wanted. She’d made a bad choice, but because she didn’t want to watch someone die. This was not who she wanted to be.

  Wara felt a little better.

  Until the double doors creaked open.

  And Lázaro and three AQIM goons dragged Jonah Jones into the room.

  The Amazing Jonah Jones

  JONAH JONES. WAS HERE. WARA was pretty much too shocked to even speak.

  They hauled Jonah into the room on a dirty tarp and left him over by the boxes. Jonah was wearing sweats and an untucked baby blue dress shirt. His long limbs were sprawled at all kinds of unnatural angles and he was missing the black nerd glasses. The AQIM guys marched out and Lázaro stood there rather proudly.

  “He’ll be fine,” Lázaro waved a hand absently. He was smirking at no one in particular. “Don’t you worry about him. Remember, I told you we can’t damage him. He’s worth millions.”

  Wara felt herself mentally tripping all over her own tongue. She was too confused to know where to start.

  Lázaro wanted Daniel/Lalo Navarro, the psychic kid who had escaped from Russia. What the heck was Jonah doing here?

  “It was easy, really,” Lázaro was explaining. He strolled over to Wara and grinned. “I pretended to be your friend Cail on the phone and got this guy to meet me out back behind the compound. I drugged him and got him out pretty quickly. After all, I know the place very well. The Ancient Text guards didn’t even know I was there. I think they think Jonah’s napping.”

  “And Cail?” Wara rasped. She was still trying to figure this out.

  “I assume she’s at the hospital,” Lázaro said, stroking his chin. “There wasn’t a good way to get the psychic and the insurance at the same time, without one alerting the other. But now that I’ve got him,” Lázaro shot a disgusted look in the direction of Jonah passed out in the corner, “I’ve got leverage to get the girl.”

  Lázaro thought Jonah was the psychic, the one who could do remote viewing.

  Either Lázaro hadn’t taken a look under Jonah’s shirt yet, or he didn’t know anything about the scars. Lázaro wouldn’t be so stupid, would he?

  Tsarnev’s uncle must not have mentioned the scars in his file.

  Lázaro was dialing someone on his cell phone. Wara’s heart sank when she heard him snicker, “Cail Lamontagne?” Lázaro winked at Wara and put the call on speakerphone.

  “Who is this?” Cail’s voice was all business.

  “Your friend Wara’s ex,” Lázaro said snottily. “Don’t hang up. I have your psychic boyfriend, Jonah. But you, my dear Cail, will not alert anyone that Mr. Remote Viewing is missing. I need him alive, but he doesn’t need all his fingers. I’m sure I could think of other things that would be fun to amputate. Plus I can kill your friend Wara. No one will pay me anything for her.”

  Wara heard Cail make a strangled noise. It was barely audible, but Wara could imagine Cail standing there clutching the cell phone, leaning against the wall, all the blood from her face draining into her toes.

  “Jonah?” Cail croaked. “You’d better not hurt him. Or Wara. Where are you? We’re coming out there.”

  “You are coming out here,” Lázaro said. “If you let anyone know Boyfriend is missing, he will suffer and Wara dies.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” Cail said lowly. She sounded furious.

  “Tsk tsk.” Lázaro rolled his eyes. “I know it was unprofessional, but everyone sneaks a passionate kiss in the laundry room behind the compound every now and then. I saw everything. I only had time to review the last couple hours of my surveillance cameras when I arrived in Timbuktu, but thankfully the two of you gave me some interesting material this morning. You confirmed exactly what I needed to know.” Lázaro was still smirking. “You have fifteen minutes to get here, alone,” he ordered Cail. “We’re in Qaddafi’s palace. I have twenty men outside and they’ll be expecting you, no one else.”

  Lázaro ended the call and settled onto one of the filthy boxes to wait. Jonah snored softly on the tarp, making little moaning noises as his eyes fluttered and he did his best to wake up.

  What were they going to do to him?

  What were they going to do to Cail?

  And on a weirder note, why was Cail kissing Jonah in the laundry room?

  Lázaro had seen them on his cameras, and now he assumed Jonah was the one in love with Cail, the psychic everyone would pay millions for.

  Snowy white scorpions slithered out of the box where Lázaro sat and scuttled over his thigh. He didn’t even notice.

  Wara jerked so hard the chair legs rattled on the concrete when Lázaro finally said her name.

  She’d never heard him call her Wara. He always said something stupid like “dear” or “Ms. Cadogan.” It made her feel like an experiment in his lab, the way he tossed out those terms at her, mocking and haughty.

  But now he said her name.

  “I remembered you,” Lázaro said slowly, crossing arms in front of his chest. “When I interrogated you after dinner. That’s when it started. The whole drive after that, I kept remembering. I remember being with you, at your apartment. In Bolivia.”

  The burn flashed across the bridge of Wara’s nose and she felt her lungs get all tight.

  Lázaro kept talking, but he was missing the cocky tone he usually took with her. He seemed…amazed. That he had memories.

  “I actually remembered my family,” Lázaro said. “My mom. Brothers. And that you and I were going to visit them. I was really happy about that because the girls my brothers met in our neighborhood were always kind of rough. But I was proud, because I wasn’t gonna live that way anymore, and I walked down the aisle at that church and gave my heart to Jesus. And now I had a nice girlfriend, a missionary, one my mama was going to be so proud of.”

  This was freaky. He did remember.

  Wara knew he’d been quiet all night. She figured it was because he was so mad she tried to shoot him out in the wilderness with no decent hospital nearby.

  But he was remembering. Wara and Bolivia and his family.

  She couldn’t reconcile the person Lázaro was talking about, the guy she flirted with at church camp and dated and bought beer with from that coffee shop, with the man all armed and sitting there with scorpions crawling all over him, not even flinching.

  “I thought that we really had something.” Lázaro raised an eyebrow at the dirty floor. “After that night and the beer. I knew what happened wasn’t what was supposed to happen, but I really cared about you.” Bitterness twisted Lázaro’s tone. “When you didn’t come to the airport, I thought something terrible happened. An accident. Thieves got into your house. A heart attack. I missed my brother’s wedding because I was going all over Cochabamba trying to find out what happened to you. It took me a while to get it, even after all your friends told me you had a ‘family emergency’ and had to go back to the States for a while. My brother was pissed about all his money and the ring. But I finally figured out you just wanted to be left alone.”

  Lázaro snorted and rolled his eyes. All Wara’s muscles felt like melted butter.

  Lázaro never went to his brother’s wedding? Because he was worried something had happened to her?

  “And that’s all I remembered,” Lázaro said a little louder, scowling and whacking a scorpion off his knee and clear across the floor. It clacked and bounced across the uneven concrete like a poison skipping stone. “I don’t remember seeing you after that, til I found you in Montana. But memories are coming back. All the time. I even remember things from when I was a kid. I guess they are all real memories. I don’t think Tsarnev cared enough to plant a bunch of fake memories about me playing basketball in the street with my bros back in Puerto Rico.”

  Wara sat there blinking. Lázaro was not angry.

  She thought he’d be furious, but instead, he just seemed…confused.

  “If you wanted to end it with me,” he frowned at her, shifting positions on the box, “you should
have just told me.”

  Wara felt something razor-sharp pulse in her heart and spiral down to her toes, making cuts all the way down. “I’m sorry…” she started to say, voice broken and jagged.

  A commotion echoed off the ceiling and three loud booms rattled the wooden doors, which Lázaro had closed but not locked. A cluster of men pushed the doors open, and there was Cail, towering over all of them by several inches. All the AQIM fighters had their AK-47s pointed at her. Cail was wearing black clothes with a white jeweled bandana over her hair. Her wrists were zip tied in front of her. Obviously, they’d taken all her weapons away and stripped off her body armor.

  Her face was pale as a ghost when they pushed her into the room. She glared at Lázaro, eyes blazing, then saw Wara sitting there tied up and her jaw dropped a little. Cail paled even more when she saw Jonah sprawled on the tarp.

  “He’s fine,” Lázaro sniffed. “Glad you could make it.”

  “You bastard,” Cail said coldly. The AQIM guys shuffled out of the room and closed the doors, leaving the four of them alone.

  Wara felt like sinking down into the floor and disappearing. Cail walked over to her, black boots thumping across the concrete. She turned her back to Lázaro.

  “That was horrible,” she hissed at Wara. “What you did to Alejo.” She pressed her lips together, pain stamped all over her face. “But I know why you did it.”

  “Please shut up,” Lázaro said from across the room. “This isn’t a ladies’ tea party.”

  Wara’s shoulder slumped towards the floor and she felt her face crumple.

  I know why you did it.

  It didn’t matter anymore why she did it. There was no way to take it back.

  Something awful was about to happen. “He wants to sell you and Lalo to the terrorists,” Wara whispered. “I tried to warn you when I called.”

  “I know,” Cail sighed. She lowered herself onto the chair next to Wara and threw a glare Lázaro’s way. He was making a call over in the corner. It sounded like he was scheduling pickup for Jonah. Wara and Cail just sat there, shoulders pressed together, staring at the floor. “By the time we figured out what was going on,” Cail said lowly, “we couldn’t move out. Tsarnev must have told everyone they were about to capture the psychic they want. The troops moved in.”

  “Why did you come here?” Cail had to know this was gonna end badly.

  “To save Jonah?” Cail shot Wara a wry smile. “I used to be in love with him, remember? I couldn’t live with myself if Lázaro makes him a eunuch. Or messes up his pretty face. And then there’s you.”

  Wara felt her eyes slide shut. “When they realize Jonah isn’t Lalo…” She heard Cail inhale sharply next to her.

  “They won’t be happy,” Cail said. “We have to find a way to get out of here before then. The three of us. Good thing Jonah’s skinny cause he’s looking pretty doped. We might need to carry him.”

  For the first time in days, Wara felt her heart warm up a bit with hope.

  All three of them. Escape together.

  She was here with Cail, and they were going to work to get out of this together.

  Even though the chance of this ending well was basically impossible.

  Wara and Cail started at the same time as they realized that Jonah was trying to sit up on the tarp. Then they jumped as the wooden doors banged open.

  “Ah. Good. He’s waking up,” Lázaro grinned. “This will make everything a tad bit easier.”

  Six guys in baggy shirts with AK-47s strode into the room and hauled Jonah up off the floor. The terror in his blue eyes was visceral. He hadn’t noticed Cail and Wara yet, sitting there watching him from the chair.

  “Take him to Tsarnev,” Lázaro ordered. “Tell him to call me in a few days, and if I’ve received the money he promised I’ll be happy to turn over the insurance policy that goes with the psychic he ordered. Until then, tell Tsarnev I’ll probably be on the beach. Surrounded by lovely ladies. As usual.”

  They were already taking Jonah! It was all happening too fast.

  Wara and Cail hadn’t even had a minute to work on their escape plan.

  The guards threw the girls in zip ties toothy grins and saluted, completely ignoring Jonah’s confused shrieks. Cail was quivering on the chair next to Wara. She knew Cail wanted to rush them, to get Jonah back, to keep them from taking him away like this.

  But there were six of them, and they had AK-47s. There were many more outside. Lázaro probably still had the Skorpion under his shirt, and Wara would bet anything it was now loaded.

  “Take me!” Cail yelled at Lázaro. Jonah was already out of the room. “It’s foolish to give him to Tsarnev when you haven’t gotten any money. Give me to him first, and when you get your money you can give them Jonah.”

  “This is wrong,” Wara fumed Lázaro’s way. “Don’t do this!”

  Lázaro ignored both of them. He rolled up his shirt and yanked the weapon out of its holster, sliding the steel over all his scars. A scorpion ran down the leg of Lázaro’s pants and when it fell to the dirt he smashed it with his heavy boot.

  “I’m taking you with me.” His eyes fell on Cail. “In a few days’ time, I’ll hand you over to Tsarnev. If he gets me my money.” There were still three guards left in the doorway. The rest appeared to have driven off with Jonah in a caravan of pickups that Wara heard roar by the windows. “Take her out to the vehicle for me and watch her,” Lázaro ordered his guards. He stuffed the Skorpion into the waistband of his pants. “In a second I’ll meet you at the vehicle and you can hand her over to me. The three of you will join Tsarnev.”

  “No!” Wara wailed, panicked as the three henchmen saluted and moved from the door towards her chair. They ripped Cail to her feet so fast Wara heard her gasp and manhandled towards the door. Wara leapt up and tried to follow Cail, but Lázaro caught her by the shoulders and pushed her hard back into the chair, held her down while she kicked at him.

  Cail disappeared out the door in a crowd of terrorists and AK47s.

  “Stay there!” Lázaro ordered Wara, a little breathless from avoiding her wild kicks. “Don’t make me knock you out!”

  He’d already knocked her out so many times. Wara had no doubt Lázaro was serious. She stopped kicking at him and fell back into the chair, desolate.

  A coil of dirty nylon rope sat on the floor, and Lázaro scooped it up, walked towards Wara. “This isn’t high tech,” he said, “but it should hold you for a while. I don’t need much time.” He cinched the rope around Wara’s shoulders, her chest, tying her tight against the chair back. Then he hauled the chair against a pillar and secured the chair against the pillar.

  Wara sat there tied to a chair in the center of the room, unmovable against the thick pillar. Lázaro said he didn’t need much time. For what? To shoot her?

  He had the Skorpion right there in the waistband of his pants.

  Lázaro had what he wanted: the psychic and Cail.

  Or at least he thought he had what he wanted.

  Wara had given him back a lot of his memories.

  Others he took by force.

  He didn’t need her anymore.

  “I know you and I would never work,” Lázaro said matter-of-factly. He leaned over her, tightening all of the knots in the rope, so close she could smell sweat. “It was just a nice dream,” he said. “The two of us. Instead of just me. I’m leaving you here. Eventually someone will find you. But I’ll be long gone.”

  Lázaro leaned into Wara and kissed her on the mouth before she even realized it was happening. “Goodbye,” he said.

  Then all she saw was his back as he limped towards the double doors, the Skorpion in one scarred hand.

  Gone

  THANK GOD, THEY DECIDED TO LET LALO out of house arrest. It had been getting really boring in the mission compound, especially after Cail took his weapons away.

  Lalo didn’t really blame her. He felt bad for what he’d made her see last night.

  He was carrying again now,
though, because there was no way he was going to walk around Timbuktu helping the kids get loaded up, unarmed. They needed to move seventeen injured children to the hanger and get them situated in the plane. One nurse got to go, a tiny little thing who didn’t seem to weigh an ounce over a hundred pounds.

  The bad guys hadn’t shown up yet to make a play for Lalo, so he was still good to go. He spent the morning carting IV poles and bedding through Timbuktu to the plane. The ambulance was gonna ferry the kids over and the hospital staff would get everyone nice and cozy inside.

  Lalo was at the hangar, kneeling inside the plane and checking on a cute little girl with a million beaded braids when Alejo burst into the plane. He banged his elbow pretty hard on the metal doorframe on the way in and swallowed a curse.

  “The AT guards can’t find Jonah,” Alejo said. “He’s missing.”

  That was weird. Jonah Jones was not the guy who was gonna sneak off the premises and into a city surrounded by terrorists just to get some fresh air and say that he could. “Not answering his cell,” Alejo said.

  Sharp, cold fingernails immediately started to prick Lalo’s insides. “Who has a twenty on Cail?”

  Alejo’s face darkened. “Who has a twenty on Cail?” he said into the radio. Lalo was already pushing past Alejo out of the plane. He and Alejo jogged through the mass of hospital people and kids on stretchers. “The last place I saw her was at the hospital with you,” Alejo said. “About twenty minutes ago. You were talking with her.”

  He and Cail had a little chat under the shade of the hospital gate, just taking some time to drink a little water and cool off. Cail wanted to ask him if he was ok, and it was obvious she was worried about Lalo having his pistol back.

  He’d told her that their chat the other day in the laundry room had made all the difference in the world to him. He was not planning on doing anything violent to himself in the near future.

  And it was true.

  Sitting there last night with Cail in his arms, Lalo realized he did not want to live without her, either.