Burn (Story of CI #3) (17 page)

HANGING ON TO ALEJO’S ARM IN the dark, Wara tiptoed after him around a narrow corner, further into the silent mosque. Alejo was totally right. If the guy that worked here found two foreigners making out in a Muslim prayer place, they could totally get stoned. Or burned at the stake. Something.

Right now it didn’t really seem to matter.

Alejo had kissed her. She had seen his eyes come alive when he looked at her.

The skin of his arm was hot under Wara’s fingers.

He was finally acting like he really cared about her.

Alejo stopped next to the wall and creaked open a tiny door, rounded and painted a cheery mint green. “After you,” he grinned dangerously at her and flipped a switch that illuminated a very weak little light bulb. Wara darted inside. Alejo slid in next to her and closed the door, leaving them in a tiny closet, wreathed in shelves of cleaning stuff and brooms made of silky straw.

Everything smelled like lavender and mint. The bulb in the corner was about seven and a half watts and the light it cast over their faces was a bare champagne-toned glow.

“What are we doing?” she whispered.

“Making out. I guess,” Alejo laughed. And then he kissed her.

Wara thought it would be really cool to stay here forever. She was really happy they didn’t start wearing that hideous body armor stuff until tomorrow. She wanted to be as close to Alejo as she could get.

Something rattled by outside the broom closet door and Wara froze, cheek pressed against Alejo’s chest. He wrapped one warm hand against her temple, holding her against him. “Sshh!” she whispered at him. Alejo slid his hand down to cover her mouth.

Thank God, whoever was shuffling by didn’t need any brooms.

“This is kind of like high school,” Wara said when everything was silent again and Alejo’s hand moved around to her waist. “You know, kissing a boy under the bleachers? Or wherever you did that in high school in Bolivia. I don’t know if you guys had bleachers. Except this is way cooler, because we’re in Timbuktu. In a mosque. Hiding in a closet!” She felt her eyes burning, a half-inch from Alejo’s hazel eyes. “Oh, and you are the hottest boy I’ve ever kissed. That guy from under the bleachers in Bozeman turned out to be kind of a nerd.”

“Shut up,” Alejo rumbled into her ear. White teeth flashed at her in the darkness. “I think you should just stop talking now.”

More kissing went on. Wara figured if the rest of the team was worried about them, someone would call.

“When we’re done here,” Alejo said into her ear after a while, “in Timbuktu, how do you feel about finding something else to do. With me. We could start a business together, live wherever we want to.”

“Like, run away together?” She was saying stupid stuff. Because was Alejo really trying to say what she thought?

“No, I mean I want to marry you.” It came out so fast Wara was blown away. For a second, even Alejo stopped breathing. Maybe he hadn’t even meant to say that. “I want to be with you forever,” he added quietly. “I know in the States I’m supposed to have a ring and ask you nicely.” He tilted her chin up to look into his eyes and Alejo was smiling. Really nervous. A pearl of sweat dripped past one eye and down his temple. “I never was good with women. I have no ring and I’m asking you to marry me in a closet in Africa.”

“Yeah.” Wara was too stunned to think of anything epic to say either. She didn’t want a stupid ring. She wanted Alejo. “Yes. Totally yes. I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to be away from you. Ever again.” She pressed her forehead against his and cupped her fingers around Alejo’s neck. “Let’s tell Rupert. We’ll leave CI. We can do something else.”

“Get away from the violence,” Alejo said so soft Wara could barely hear. “Oh my God.” He suddenly grabbed her, wrapped her so tightly against his chest she could barely breathe. She was plastered against Alejo’s t-shirt and she could hear his heart tattooing a wild dance against her cheek.

Then he let her go and slipped past her to the shelves in the back. “Just a second,” he said lowly. Alejo lifted cardboard boxes and scooted over paint cans. Wara wrapped her arms around herself and leaned back into the wall. She couldn’t take her eyes off him.

“Yes!” Alejo finally pumped a fist in the air.

“What the heck are you doing?”

“Malians always have henna,” Alejo answered. “Everywhere.” And he grinned and held up something like a fat silver pencil. The tip shone a deep earthy red in the dim light. “You never know when you might want to paint yourself with henna while cleaning out the bathrooms.”

“Alejo, what are you doing?” Wara grinned back at him. She felt so happy it was all she could do not to laugh so loudly the mosque caretaker would come stomping in here to toss them into the street on their butts.

Alejo’s eyes were like molten coals. “Sit down,” he told her. “Right there.” Wara slid right down to the floor, back against the wall. Alejo slid down along the other wall, sitting with his legs on either side of her hips. They were both still barefoot. He set one of her bare feet on his thigh and started drawing on her foot with the henna pencil he’d found on the shelf. The henna paste tingled against the delicate skin of her foot.

Alejo was writing in Arabic, curving letters with tiny dots like stars, from her toes all the way up to Wara’s ankle. Arabic was, of course, one of the languages Alejo knew really well.

“What does it say?” she whispered. She knew some Arabic, too, and could have read it even though it was pretty dark in here. But she wanted to hear him say it.

“It’s a passage from Song of Songs,” Alejo said. “Set me as a seal upon your heart. For love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave.”

Love is strong as death.

Jealousy as fierce as the grave.

After growing up in church, Wara remembered what came next.

Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord.

Many waters cannot quench love, nor can floods drown it.

“Nothing can make love stop burning,” she said out loud.

Alejo was writing his love on her skin.

IT WAS MORNING IN TIMBUKTU. The dew had barely even scorched off the rocks yet, and the manuscript guys were already at work, sequestered over at the Horizons Institute, doing their magic on the manuscripts.

Cail stepped out of her room into the silent hallway of the mission compound, yawned and stretched inside the stiff body armor. The plan was to stop by the Institute and make herself talk a bit with Jonah, before joining everyone over at the hospital. Her first shift would be tonight, but she wanted to go over now and check out the set-up.

Maybe she could get Lalo to smile a bit today. Even just once.

Last night and this morning, he’d pretty much avoided her like the plague. His eyes roamed everywhere but hers when she tried to talk to him.

Lalo was afraid.

It was making him act loopy.

Cail saluted Moussa the doorman on the way out and headed towards the Institute, feeling stuffy and snug inside the hard vest. She’d tied a white bandana over her hair to help reflect the sun and was wearing the cool shades she was probably going to live in until they left this place.

It felt good to have the Glock on her, especially in a place like this.

She had pretty much buried the memory of Jonah’s horror at seeing her holding the weapons yesterday. That was just too painful to deal with.

But they were gonna have to deal with this. Somehow.

That was one of the reasons Cail was now walking towards the Horizons Institute with a peace offering of lemonade. Lalo said Anne the missionary lady had left a bunch of pitchers of the stuff in the fridge when she headed out of Timbuktu.

Cail found everything quiet and scholarly inside the Institute, like a sad little library full of yellowed books and Apple computers. Lucky for Cail, Jonah was in one room, the other three manuscript guys off somewhere else. Jonah looked up when he saw her enter the office, grinned at her over the top of the black glasses. Malian pop music pinged in the background and pillars of fire kept time to the music on the desktop computer screen. Jonah was hunched over his laptop, sweaty and nerdy with a swatch of dark hair rising like a horn over one ear.

Jonah straightened on the rickety stool and pushed aside a mess of white ceramic plates speckled in crumbs and stains of green sauce. "Cail! Come in. Oh please come in. Whatever you have in those bottles looks very, very cold." Jonah peered at the lemonade bottles over his glasses.

Cail plunked two frosty bottles onto the desk, one of them Caspian’s pink water bottle with Japanese cherry blossoms. Weirdo.

The Horizons Institute was a sauna. A World War II-era fan gyrated unevenly around the ceiling like a drunk hula-hooper, but it was a losing effort. It was hot in here. Dewdrops of condensation oozed out the sides of the cold bottles, pooling on the Formica desks.

"I brought lemonade." Cail bared her teeth in a smile at Jonah. "You working alone?"

"Yeah. For a bit. The other guys are picking up some boxes of manuscripts from Amadou’s neighbor. You wouldn’t believe how families have boxes of manuscripts stored away, in old wells or under the bed. Hundreds of years old. Just waiting for the right moment to get them out."

Cail leaned a hip against the Formica and as she shifted, Jonah's eyes slammed into the Glock strapped to her waist. The peppy blue around his irises darkened. His eyes rose to her chest and the thick body armor seemed to suddenly register. "There's, uh, not any trouble. Is there?" Jonah’s voice practically squeaked.

He was looking at Cail. Armed.

They were in here alone.

This felt horrible. All kinds of panicky thoughts began to play on the radio station of her brain. It was all she could do to focus on the lemonade, Jonah Jones, the rows of dusty books and computers lining mosquito-splattered plaster walls.

"No. No trouble," she clipped. "I just carry this around. In case. Part of my job, Jonah. Just like Lalo and Caspian."

"Yeah. Of course," Jonah said. He shook his head to clear it and batted at the black horn sticking out from his hair. The thing plastered itself to his ear with sweat. "You staying a while?"

Cail kept her face neutral. "Sure."

"Oh cool.” They both stood there kind of gawking.

Something rustled in the entryway and Cail tensed. Hannibal appeared around the corner, black bandana pulled up over half his face to keep out the stupid sand. He nodded at Jonah and Cail. It must be his turn to keep an eye on Jonah today.

Cail and Jonah just sat there until the Hungarian guy disappeared back outside.

"You guys still have a lot of manuscripts to get into the computer?" she asked Jonah.

"A ton!" Jonah made a raspberry noise with his lips. "Of course we'll never get them all, but hopefully it'll be the best part of them. Thousands of the most important manuscripts are already out of Timbuktu, thanks to Amadou."

"Yeah, I heard about that. What a story."

"We're just trying to not let the rest go up in smoke." Jonah offered a tired smile.

Cail plopped onto a stool a few feet from Jonah's workstation, glad for her long legs. If she and Jonah weren't both about six feet, their feet would be dangling above the tiles. She passed one of the dripping bottles to Jonah, who snatched it out of her hand.

"Listen, I usually do jobs at some university in Europe,” Jonah started explaining. “The most rustic I've ever done is a couple weeks in Syria. In a city. When the job came up in Timbuktu, I thought it was a joke. But a foundation from South Africa is paying good money for this, and I really need the cash. There's the wedding four months from now, and Jess has a ton of school loans."

Jonah unscrewed the lemonade and took his time. He tipped his head back to gulp from the bottle, and the skin on his neck shone splotchy and red. Jonah was wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt, blue and navy plaid with trendy little pockets. Tailored khaki pants. "To be honest with you, though,” he said when he finally broke away from the lemonade, “I wouldn't even consider doing this without the security. I know they say AQIM has pulled back, but obviously the bad elements are still around. Look at the school. Being here makes me really, really nervous."

Jonah looked nervous. The hair rising out of his head, along with the clammy skin and piles of papers and dirty dishes gave the whole scene a mad scientist air. "We all know what AQIM are capable of doing to foreigners," Jonah said. "As soon as things are too unstable to work, Ancient Texts is gonna send a plane from Bamako. The pilot, Ashton, is based there so he can get here pretty quick. All the foreigners will have to go. That includes you, too, of course, your whole group. And you know what sucks? We’re leaving all the local people here.”

Cail exhaled loudly. If things got bad here, Lalo's team would probably not be going. That included her, but there was no need to discuss this with Jonah. It looked like AQIM was retreating to other parts of Mali, however, so that was good news.

Jonah wrinkled his nose, probably thinking about radicals out in the desert and really big machetes. Above their heads, the demented ceiling fan whacked away at the humidity.

"On a lighter note," Jonah continued, "I've been meaning to tell you. At Christmas, when Jess and I went back to Nebraska so she could meet my family, we ran into a mutual acquaintance of you and I. Jon Fetid." Jonah curled a lip at the name, swiped a forearm across his forehead to mop up the sweat.

"Eeww." Cail cringed. Now that was a name she hadn't heard in an age and a day. "Jon Fetid. You are kidding me."

"I kid you not," Jonah shook his head. He was grinning. Cail felt her eyes spark a little. Her past with Jonah and Nebraska was a scary place, but she couldn't deny that there was something homey about talking with someone you had known in grade school, pimples and all. "Ran into him at Target. Right by the frozen pizzas." Jonah made a face.

"You are kidding me." Cail drew the words out, felt herself begin to smile. "I'm glad it wasn't me. What that guy did was despicable."

"Oh, I know," Jonah raised an eyebrow. "I remember." They sat there a second, examining the tiles.

Jon. The guy had been betrothed to marry Cail's older sister, when Shalom and Jon were nineteen. Her family didn’t believe in dating, so the couple just got betrothed right off the bat, with the permission of Pastor Lamontagne of course.

"Oh my gosh!" Cail laughed. She was sitting here with Jonah, laughing. "What an idiot! Jon’s betrothed to my sister, Shalom is head-over-heels in love with him. She sees him on a Tuesday, they talk about how many kids they're gonna have, that the wedding might be in May, what kind of house in the country they’re gonna have together. Two days later, Shalom sees on Facebook that Jon is engaged to another girl." Jonah's big sister. Who Jon barely knew. "Apparently God gave him a revelation on that Wednesday that your sister was supposed to be his chosen helpmeet. He just kinda forgot to tell
my
sister before proposing. And announcing it."

"What an asshole." Jonah narrowed his eyes. But time had taken away the horribleness of the moment, and his eyes sparkled a bit behind the glasses. "Can you believe it? And no one even cared!"

That had been the worst part. Instead of thinking good old Jon Fetid was nuts for proposing to a near-stranger while being engaged to Shalom, everyone from Cail and Jonah's church had been ecstatic at the news.

God had spoken. He had revealed his plan.

And Jon Fetid truly loved Jesus because Jon, right away, obeyed.

"You beat the crap out of him," Cail remembered.

"Hell, yeah." Jonah pressed his lips together.

Jonah had been seventeen. Jon Fetid just curled up in a blubbering ball and let Jonah lay into him on the church lawn, right there by the big glowing cross that said One Way to Heaven and Pastor Lamontagne’s pink petunias.

Jonah had been the only one who said something, that there was no way Jon's actions were from God. But everyone knew Jonah Jones was already rebellious anyway. The whole church knew that the Jones' son hated going to church, listened to such evil music as Coldplay. All the youth group had gone to Mexico over Christmas to pass out tracts and King James Bibles, but Jonah refused to go along. Everyone was already murmuring and praying for him, for how he'd fallen away from Jesus.

They put Jonah in church discipline, for beating the crap out of Jon Fetid out there by the neon cross.

One of the many aches Cail had carried in her heart all these years stabbed her again, just now, talking about it and staring into Jonah's face.

She had thought he deserved it.

Everyone knew Jonah was worldly, she more than most because she was his friend. She'd seen the non-Christian music on his laptop, knew he watched American Idol and didn't even care about reaching the lost for Jesus. While Cail radiated the love of Jesus and passed out tracts to dirt-encrusted little Mexican kids, Jonah had gone skiing in Colorado.

Cail had just shaken her head every time Jonah walked by, fixed her puppy dog eyes on him and hoped he could see that she was praying he would give Jesus all his life.

"Damn it." Cail winced and bit her lip, digging her nails into the leg of her jeans. She squeezed her eyes shut. Her eyeballs felt grainy and bone-dry, filled with the sand of the Sahara.

"What was that?" Jonah slurped more lemonade, eyeing her sideways.

"Nothing." Cail sighed, long and slow. "Jon Fetid acted like an idiot," she finally growled. "And I couldn't see it. I thought he really heard from God. I used to think like that. I was…brainwashed. What Jon did, anyone could see that he acted like a jerk. You can't just get engaged to two girls at the same time. But everyone in our church was thrilled. They acted like this was totally from God. Except you."

Cail never thought she'd have the chance to talk with Jonah about this. Something caught in the back of her throat. She nearly ripped a hole in her jeans.

She had treated Jonah like he was going to hell.

And from there, things just got worse.

"You were right," Cail told him. She shifted her eyes across the floor, met his. "I was such an idiot back then."

"You just couldn't see it," Jonah said quickly.

"I’m glad you could see it,” Cail whispered.

Jonah grinned. "I was young and angry. What can I say? I've mellowed out since then. I don't know what I was thinking. I can't imagine punching anyone, now." Jonah sobered. "Well, I do have some good news. When I saw Jon in Target, he had more craters on his face than Mars. Pot belly like you wouldn't believe. Bald and oily and just plain sad. He wouldn't talk to me."

Jon and Jonah's sister had divorced years ago, after they both decided church was a load of crap. Cail knew that much from her mother. Jon and his ex were on Mom's prayer list.

The prayers didn’t seem to be working.

"Anyhow, Cail," Jonah frowned, changing the subject. His gaze flickered to the floor. "I’ve been thinking, and I want you to know. I didn't mean to lose touch with you for all these years. I tried to find you on Facebook. After the…time the court set and all. But there was no one with your name."

The sour taste of the past crept across Cail's tongue. "Yeah, I don't use my real name. On Facebook. Most anywhere."