Burn (Story of CI #3) (21 page)

NEARLY TWO DAYS AFTER WARA BROKE Alejo’s heart, Amadou still had both of his hands.

Alejo was sitting in Amadou’s house right now, hunched over on the couch, elbows digging into his knees. Cail and Caspian were at the hospital. Lalo was leaning back into the couch next to Alejo.

The evening news chattered from the TV in the corner and Maria was in the kitchen boiling up some tea. Alejo and Lalo were checking up on Amadou on their way back to the mission compound where they were supposed to eat and catch some sleep.

Alejo wanted to sleep forever.

She broke his heart.

Amadou was sitting across from Alejo on the other couch, hands folded neatly on his lap, staring at an 8 by 10 photo of Amy on the ancient plaster wall.

Amadou’s heart was broken because Alejo couldn’t save his wife. No one had been able to save his wife.

Alejo’s heart broke because the woman he loved
wanted
to leave.

She told him she loved him, seemed so hungry for him that night she kissed him and said she didn’t want anything. Anything but him.

Slumping there on Amadou’s couch, Alejo felt his cheeks pale again at how he had believed it.

Then she rode off with the bad guy into the sunset.

And probably never looked back.

They had searched Timbuktu, anywhere two foreigners could be hiding out.

Nothing.

Lázaro and Wara were gone.

Rupert kept calling but Alejo didn’t take his calls.

Let Rupert figure out what to tell Wara’s parents about their daughter’s location. Alejo just could not think about it.

That night, Alejo was sure he had gotten there in time to save her. Amy died, but he was going to save Wara. They’d gotten the crowd to disperse, were about to escort Amadou back to his house. Lalo had run onto the scene, panting and shouting something about the tracking device, but by then, Alejo had shut him up because everyone was heading home.

It was odd how quickly the rioters had given up the idea of Amadou being the thief.

It took Alejo too long to realize this smelled like a distraction.

It all came together in about two awful seconds.

No one had seen any new foreigners around Timbuktu, because Lázaro was already here.

Twenty-four hours after Lázaro tried to roast Alejo and Wara at the Western Union, Hannibal had walked into Timbuktu out of the desert.

They’d never suspected anything, because the AT security guys went through extensive background checks. But yesterday Alejo learned that Hannibal had joined the team in Timbuktu six weeks ago, just in time to join Jonah’s team of manuscript guys. It was the perfect cover to do assignments for whatever terrorists in the region must pay Lázaro these days.

Lázaro had been here, in Timbuktu, right under Alejo’s nose the past six weeks. And Alejo had brought Wara right to him.

Alejo’s lungs were on fire that night by the time he raced back to the mission compound to find Johnny out cold on the porch.

Everything went downhill from there.

He’d been in time to save Wara.

But she didn’t want to be saved.

She wanted to go with
him.

Alejo squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed hard, shutting out the chatter from the TV and the scent of honeyed green tea starting to swirl around the living room.

When Marquez is done with her, will he kill her?

Is she sleeping with him?

Alejo’s ribs were so tight it was hard to breathe.

Lalo clapped a hand onto Alejo’s shoulder. “If you want me to, I’ll help you find her,” Lalo said.

Alejo had a hard time getting his eyes to focus on the guy right next to him on the couch. “What?”

“Are you just going to let her go?”

As if that was optional.

Alejo scowled darkly.

Wara was already gone. This wasn’t a rescue mission.

Wara knocked Alejo out and left him for dead so she could go with the man she apparently really wanted.

And it appeared he had just said that out loud. Alejo hated talking about his stuff, but somehow Lalo was getting it out of him.

“She burned all the bridges,” Alejo told Lalo, hot and angry. “There’s no coming back from this.” Alejo wished he’d brought one of the dorodango balls here, because his hands desperately wanted to do something, anything. Even if it was crushing one of the mud balls into dust.

“Look,” Lalo said, “sometimes people get all kinds of emotional scars. Because of that, they do bad things. It’s not always because the person is evil.” He sighed. “If she did something that hurt you, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you. She can still love you, and do something that hurts you. For many reasons.”

Yeah, like to save a killer’s life.

“You have to decide,” Lalo was going on, “if you’re just going to let her go. Or if she’s worth going after. People hurt people,” he repeated, “but that doesn’t mean she’s not worth saving. Or that she doesn’t want you.”

Lalo eyed Alejo and rubbed a hand across his eyes. Lalo looked exhausted. Alejo could safely say the last few days hadn’t been fun for any of them.

If anybody knew something about people hurting other people, it would be Lalo. His dad apparently beat the crap out of him when he was just a kid. Alejo had seen some of the scars. Daddy was also a Satanist. That’s about all Alejo knew, but the calm hollowness in Lalo’s eyes when he talked about hurt and love made Alejo want to listen to him.

“Bad situations sometimes make people do bad things.” Lalo looked at the floor. “Don’t let her go just because of what she did. Let her go if you don’t love her anymore. Or if you aren’t gonna be able to forgive her.”

It sounded beautiful, the idea of never letting the person you loved go, of forgiveness conquering everything.

But what were you supposed to do when hanging on hurt so bad you could hardly breathe?

MUCH, MUCH TOO SOON THE OFFICE door whirred and softly clicked open. Lázaro flipped the overhead light on to find Wara under the huge desk, arms wrapped around her knees, face buried in her black sweat pants. She really did not want to see Lázaro, and it could have something to do with the fact that he just got paid in drugs to finish her.

There was a very long pause.

"He
is
kind of an asshole," Lázaro finally said. In Spanish. He was already remembering. Crap. "Makes me feel sick too. Come out here a second. Yes, you. Come out here. I have to show you something."

What was she gonna do, hide under here like a six-year-old? Wara climbed in slow motion out from under the desk and stood there behind the heavy piece of furniture, happy for the barrier between herself and Lázaro.

It was weird to hear him speaking Spanish again, after all the proper English. Lázaro was holding that silver case. The scars on his neck stood out even more and he was not looking very good.

"I'm not sure if you understand what kind of pain nerve damage from burns causes, but it is actually quite substantial." He clicked open the case and pulled out a syringe. Wara startled and felt her breathing quicken. Lázaro didn't even look at her.

"Not for you, dear. This is mine." He plunked the case onto the tiles at the border of the thick rug and started to uncap the glass syringe. "I don't know where Tsarnev gets this stuff, but it's experimental. He took care of me after whatever the hell gave me these burns. But burns are not the easiest thing to heal from. There's still a lot of pain." Lázaro crisply rolled up one black sleeve to above the elbow, the arm without the scarring. "If I don't work for them, I don't get this,” he said. “I've tried a lot of other things, and this is the only stuff that makes the pain manageable. End of story."

It was a horrible situation to be in. Really it was.

Lázaro said the people he worked for wouldn’t tell him anything about his life before the memory loss. “Aslanbek,” Tsarnev had called him. Until the night Lázaro tried to kill her in Montana, he didn’t even know his own name.

But Wara wasn't focused in the least on Lázaro's burned skin or the drugs. Her thoughts skittered right over that and slammed frantically into images of her and Lázaro in that café, buying beer from Marc. She could smell the dark roast espresso, taste the sweet cream on her tongue, feel Lázaro's white napkin flower crinkling inside her purse between her thigh and the glossy black counter. She saw the two of them laughing in the shadows of those fuchsia bougainvillea, walking through Cochabamba towards Wara's apartment with a backpack that clinked with cold beers.

Later: she was in his arms on the velvet couch while a sugar cookie candle burned on the coffee table.

“I can’t believe this!" Wara felt herself heave and she planted both palms on the mottled wood of the desk. She watched dazed as Lázaro flicked the syringe cap onto the floor and wiggled the needle into a vein on his forearm. Glassy blood beaded where the needle pierced his skin. "What happened to you?" she rasped. "How could this happen?"

This was the worst day of her life.

And Lázaro was just standing there in front of her, shooting up God knows what.

He pushed the stuff into his arm, eyes practically rolling back in his head as it hit his bloodstream. After twenty very long seconds, Lázaro yanked the needle out of his vein and tossed the entire syringe into a metal trashcan next to the door. Glass pinged against metal and Lázaro ran his tongue along his lower lip.

"God. Well, my day just got a little better."

Wara blinked back tears, still finding it way too hard to reconcile the guy in front of her with someone who had been her friend for a month, who had spent the night on her couch.

Lázaro was breathing slower, standing much straighter than a few minutes ago. He walked jauntily over to the desk, swung himself onto a wooden chair backwards and propped his hands under his chin, looking up at Wara with eyes bright like copper pennies.

"I don't want to stay here anymore,” Wara told him. She was still breathing raggedly and leaning one hip into the desk to keep her knees from shaking. “Unless you have an army of guard dogs or evil henchmen out in your patio, I'm leaving now. From your video, it looks like about twenty feet across your yard to the gate. I bet I can outrun you. Unless you plan to just shoot me. Call your boss back right now and trade my corpse in for more drugs."

Wara blinked. What was she talking about? The words sounded awful.

Lázaro's gaze had wandered to the antler lamp. His eyes jerked back to her. The half-dreamy glint was gone, replaced with irritation. "Oh no, dear. If I presented the boss with your body now, he'd know I've been lying to him. That wouldn't do. Besides, I don't think you've been listening to a word I've said. I'm desperate."

Wara shuddered at the feral gleam in Lázaro's eye. He was on his feet in an instant and the chair crashed against the desk as Lázaro grabbed both of Wara's forearms, pinning her to the wood. Pain streaked up to her shoulders, radiating from Lázaro’s fingers digging into her flesh. Wara was too stunned to even pull away.

"I am tired," Lázaro said fiercely. "Just plain tired. Do you have any idea what it’s like to live like an animal, doing whatever 'they' tell me to do, without any idea who
I
am or what
I
believe in?"

Hot streaks of pain ran all the way up Wara's arms and into the marrow of her bones. She tried to yank her arms away, but Lázaro was totally unyielding. "Believe me, dear," he said, "you think you know who I am, but you have no idea. I have the power to keep terrible things from happening, to Boyfriend and a lot of people in Timbuktu who just want to help.

Lázaro's face was hard as he released Wara's arms and threw himself back from the desk. "That, my dear, is why you won't try to run away from here, bash my brains in, or any such thing that might occur to your pretty little head. Even though you could, theoretically, outrun me."

Wara rubbed her arms and dropped back into the armchair behind the desk. Her heart was slamming into her chest. Lázaro marched around the desk and Wara tried not to cringe. He stabbed at one of the screens, brought up some security camera footage.

"There we are," he clipped. "Do you know what you're looking at?"

Nothing was looking familiar. It didn’t seem to be the scenes of this house that Wara had seen earlier.

But one of the guys standing in some random hallway looked very familiar. It was Alejo, dressed in khakis and a long-sleeved t-shirt under a body armor vest. Wara gasped, loud and hoarse.

"This is live," Lázaro frowned at her. "Maybe a ten second delay. This is the Baptist Mission House where Boyfriend and his team are staying."

Wara felt the blood drain out of her head. It
was
the mission house. She recognized those Rubbermaid containers in the hallway, the black plastic bags stuffed full of junk.

"This is where I work, too," Lázaro said. "For Tsarnev. In Timbuktu."

It kept getting worse and worse. Lázaro hadn’t just shown up in Mali to bag Wara? Rupert and Alejo thought they were luring Lázaro to Timbuktu to take him out, but Lázaro
knew
the city all along.

Because he worked for Alexei Tsarnev. And of course, Tsarnev worked in the area of Timbuktu.

“How did you…get this?” Wara croaked. How could Lázaro just have video feed inside the mission house and no one even realize it? Lalo’s team and Amadou had been scouring the streets for any sign of Lázaro in Timbuktu.

“You have no idea who I am,” Lázaro clipped at her. “But by now your friends do. The night you were taken, dear, Hannibal Czako permanently disappeared.”

It took Wara much too long to process this. Then she felt her jaw sag in shock.

“Yes, that was me.” Lázaro raised an eyebrow at her. “I have access to everything. Tsarnev, leader of AQIM in the region. Your friends. And them.” Lázaro grunted and stabbed at the screen, changing the video feed. Wara found herself blinking at a room full of school-age Malian children, sprawled two to a bed on metal cots. There were IV bags hanging from hooks on the wall and bedpans on the floor by the beds. A plump lady in a large-print dress bustled around wearing a tri-corned nurse’s hat.

The Timbuktu hospital.

“I saw your face when you came back to the mission compound after visiting them the day you arrived,” Lázaro said. Wara still couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that Hannibal the security guard was Lázaro Marquez in disguise. He must have made his skin paler with makeup, worn blue contacts. The security guard had not looked anything like Lázaro.

She remembered Hannibal wearing a scarf and gloves, like a lot of foreigners did in the desert to keep out the sand. The extra clothes would have covered up the scars. Wara hadn’t paid much attention to Hannibal, but now that she thought about it, he had walked a little unsteadily.

None of them had realized it.

Lázaro had been there in Timbuktu, all along.

And he had everything under surveillance, would have heard Lalo’s team talking about Wara arriving. He knew even before Wara bought the plane tickets and applied for the visa.

“I’m sure Boyfriend told you about the day the school went up in flames last week.” Lázaro went on over Wara’s confusion. He paused and narrowed his eyes at the screen. "I planted the bomb."

Wara's mouth drained itself dry as a desert before she could even process the words. She reeled back, thumped her head against the hard stuffing of the chair back.

"Too many of the kids survived," Lázaro went on. "The second screw up Tsarnev orders me to fix. Along with killing you, I’m supposed to get right on that. Back in Timbuktu, on the double."

He must have seen Wara gaping at the screen, mouth opening and closing like a strangling fish.

"Listen," Lázaro was trying to get her attention, still twitching happily from his cocktail of drugs. "I. Don't. Like. Killing kids." He heaved a dramatic sigh and drew back from the desk, frowning. "Why do you think I came after you? Gave you a chance to help me remember instead of buying myself more happy drugs with your life?" He raised an eyebrow at her.

There was nothing to say.

Alejo had been devastated when the kids he was supposed to be protecting had died in the explosion. She knew it had killed Alejo inside to see the survivors in pain in the hospital.

She was staring at the living kids from the Christian school now on Lázaro's screen. And she was here with the murderer of the children who didn't make it. Helping him.

"I have another bomb ready to go at the hospital,” Lázaro said crisply. “Ready to fix another one of my mistakes, so Tsarnev will give me what I need. I don’t even need to go back to activate it. If I don’t enter the security code through my phone every four hours, the thing will blow. Immediately. So don’t even think about trying to take me out like Boyfriend did. You wouldn’t want those cute kids to get barbequed.”

Wara felt herself gag, slapped one palm over her mouth and buckled over, trying not to vomit.

Lázaro looked away. "I'm pretty sure I'm not the kind of person to worry my pretty little head for very long about doing what Tsarnev wants, despite Just As I am and walking down the church aisle to get born again. In the end, who cares about a bunch of skinny kids from Africa? If it's not me putting them out of their misery, it'll be some nasty African parasite or AQIM when they break into the city and I guarantee you, my way will probably be much quicker. But what if I'm the kind of person who would just walk away?"

Lázaro's voice faded to quiet. Wara watched his hollow eyes trace circles around the shadows the lamp light was throwing onto the jade and pink pattern of the rug.

She was not going to feel sorry for him.

The guy. Killed. Kids.

She felt so sick she didn't think she could stand it anymore.

"Please let me go," she whispered. It was all she could do to keep that fig and water down in her gut. "I don't think I can help you remember anymore."

"Oh, no.” Lázaro’s eyes burned at her. “As soon as you’ve told me what I want to know, the two of us are traveling to Timbuktu. Just like I told the boss. I have work to do there, you see. I can see you want to kill me, but remember that I have the power to keep things from happening, to people you care about who are out there in Timbuktu, just trying to help. To those nameless black kids who asked Jesus into their hearts so they could go to heaven. I don't want to be an animal anymore, so help me God. But if you don't cooperate with me, dear, I will make them all suffer."

Lázaro rolled his sleeve down slowly and precisely, concealing the bloody pinprick where he'd shot himself up with experimental drugs. "I'll give you some time to think about it,” he said, walking towards the door. “Dinner's on the roof at eight. I have more questions." He twisted back to face her in the open doorway, arms spread out to each side like a human scale. "Help me, or death. Help me, death for cute little kids. Help me, or Trigger-Happy Boyfriend and I meet again."

Lázaro stalked out the door, slamming it behind him.