Burn (Story of CI #3) (27 page)

Lázaro slammed the keys into the ignition. The two of them pealed out of the mud and on towards Timbuktu.

NIGHT HAD FALLEN. CAIL STOOD NEXT to the hospital wall, fingering her Glock, taking comfort in the desert heat that still radiated from the walls.

Thanks to Alejo, they’d been able to keep the kids at the hospital safe after Wara’s warning. They’d found the bomb, and Alejo seemed to know what he was doing with it. He said the thing could be moved, and he and Lalo drove it outside of town. Alejo disarmed it, said that Lázaro had made it easy, almost like he wasn’t all that enthused about the idea of blowing up a building with the kids inside. Again.

But it was good Wara had warned them about the explosives, because that bomb was big enough to take out the whole corner of the hospital where the kids were sleeping.

Cail leaned against the side of the hospital and sighed, long and painful.

Yep, she knew she shouldn’t be, but she was worried. About Wara.

When she told Alejo about Wara’s call, all the color had seeped right out of his face and into the dirt.

They didn’t know what happened. Wara had Lázaro’s weapon and cell, and then he obviously made a move on her. And the line went dead.

But she’d warned them, saved the kids, confirmed Lázaro and Tsarnev were after Lalo. And she’d put herself on Lázaro’s bad side to do it.

Cail had been worrying about Wara all afternoon, wondering what Lázaro Marquez liked to do to people when he was really, really pissed off.

She was sure Alejo had been thinking about it even more.

This had been a very long day.

Just that morning, they had discovered the danger that Lalo was in, that they all were in.

They’d made it through the day, disarming the bomb, guarding the hospital and calling Rupert for updates every hour on the status of transportation out of here for the kids. The kids’ pain level was pretty high, and they needed a plane with room for IVs and blankets so the kids could lie down.

Rupert was trying, but there weren’t exactly a lot of private planes lining up to do a flight into AQIM-surrounded Timbuktu.

Ashton was here, though. To pick up the Ancient Text guys. His plane had roared in about an hour ago, just before dusk, ready to fly the scientists and their security team out in the morning. It seemed the chubby hippy pilot was made of stronger stuff than it appeared at first glance. The guy had been in Iraq and Afghanistan, after all, ten years back. It seemed like Ashton was the only pilot around who was willing to fly into Timbuktu.

Well, at least Jonah and the rest were going off to safety. For that, Cail was grateful. At any moment, all the AQIM fighters could move into the city, looking for Lalo, bringing violence to the people of Timbuktu.

She needed to think about Lalo, now. And the kids.

And she couldn’t bear the idea of Jonah being around if things got violent. All she wanted was for him to be safe.

The radio on her belt squawked and Cail nearly jumped. It was Alejo. “Head back over to the compound for some rest. Now would be a good time.” Alejo and Caspian were stationed at other points around the hospital. They had made Lalo stay in the mission compound when darkness fell, for his safety.

“Ok,” Cail told Alejo. “I’ll be back in thirty.” She wanted to check on Lalo, bring back water and something to eat for the three of them who would be staying up all night out here under the stars.

Hopefully, this would be the last night out here. Rupert should be able to get a plane sometime tomorrow, either convince Ancient Texts to rent out their plane along with Ashton or else hire some other private plane. The plane would take the kids to Italy for medical care and asylum. Then Lalo and his team would get the hell out of here, either in another plane ride Rupert would set up or sneak out in a truck overland.

The mission would be over. Finally.

If the kids were safe, at least that part would have turned out well. Because getting rid of Lázaro and securing Wara’s safety…that part had turned out totally crappy.

“Do you want any snacks in particular?” Cail asked Alejo over the radio. “Because I think we have bananas. Or more bananas.”

There was a pause. “Not hungry,” Alejo clipped.

Caspian came on the radio. “I’d like some bananas,” he said. “I’m wicked hungry.”

“Got it.” Cail left her post and started to walk the few blocks back towards the compound, weapon ready. Moussa the doorman let her in, looking as unruffled as usual. Yeah, militants were outside his city, but Moussa had seen it before. Not that he was happy about the whole thing.

Johnny was patrolling around the front door, and Cail assumed the other two guards were out back. Lalo wasn’t in his room. The chipped green door was closed, but she banged a lot of times and no one answered. Cail pushed inside and saw the little cot with the smooth gray wool blanket, all nicely made. Lalo’s Angry Birds shirt was slung over the sink basin to dry. His sandals were next to the bed, though. Which was weird. The boots were also over in the corner.

Didn’t Lalo care about walking around barefoot? Because there were scorpions running around this place. Bigger ones than there had been in the mountains in Pakistan where she did guard duty at the girls’ school.

Jonah and all his team seemed to be in their rooms. All the doors were closed tight.

Cail walked down the hallway, frowning, checking the retro 50’s living room, the kitchen, and all the bathrooms for Lalo. Everything was empty, so he was either outside or in one of the Ancient Text rooms. She decided to check first outside.

Cail tiptoed down the hall and pushed open the door to the laundry area. It was a long concrete space, roofed in tin and open at the end to the patio outside. A wide cement sink ran along one wall, lined with scrubbing brushes and laundry powder. Everything smelled warm and humid and like lavender.

Cail blinked, because Lalo was in the laundry room, sitting on a stool, surrounded by three inches of bubbles and water on the laundry room floor. And Lalo had his Glock 17 tucked under his chin, aimed right at his brain.

She was terrified of startling him, but Lalo saw her right away. His eyes flipped lazily her way and he sighed.

Cail made a choking noise and her eyes flew to the laundry room exit that went to the patio. The metal door was shut. None of the guards outside could see what was happening.

“Lalo!” Cail breathed. “Put it down. Please.”

She was about five feet away from him. He couldn’t be about to shoot himself, right here in the laundry room. Not right before her eyes.

Darkness flashed across Lalo’s eyes, and it was painful. Then he sighed again, put the safety back on his pistol and lowered it to his thigh. “I didn’t think I would see you here,” he said. “I felt bad about leaving a mess for everyone, and thought the laundry room would be best.”

“Oh my gosh.” Cail was almost seeing stars. She stumbled down the step and splashed through the water to Lalo, folded him in her arms. He felt very, very cold. The water soaked through her boots, warm and sweet.

Cail didn’t let Lalo go for a long time. Finally, she released him from her arms and picked up his pistol, carried it over to the concrete sink, far out of his reach. She hauled an empty stool through the water, right up next to Lalo and sat at his side.

“What are you doing?” she whispered, begging him to look into her eyes. “I can’t believe…”

Lalo’s face looked pretty blank. “You
can
believe it. You know this is the best solution,” he said. “If I’m dead, they can’t use me. Or you.” He paused and met Cail’s eyes. “They won’t need you, if I’m dead.” Lalo’s eyes were hollow.

“But I can’t do it,” he finally said. “I’ve thought about it, a lot, over the years. Never more than today, though. But I just can’t.”

“Good.”

Lalo’s eyes flashed a little. It was better than the blank stare. “No. It’s not good,” he said. “It’s because I’m afraid.” His voice started breaking up. “I know that evil is real. I’ve seen it. And when I see the things that I see inside my head…somehow, I think the evil is in me. It has to be. The things that they did to me, where I come from…how could evil not be inside of me? And so I can’t do it.” Lalo flipped his long fingers up like a pistol and made the motion of blowing his head off. “Because I’m too afraid. Of what’s waiting. Of what I might see, and never be able to wake up and escape.”

“Lalo, I don’t want you to have the courage to kill yourself,” Cail hissed. “I want you to have the courage to live!”

Lalo actually looked angry. “To live so I can watch them make you suffer? So they can use us to hurt other people? Cail, you know this would be the best thing to do. For everyone. But I’m too freaking scared to do it.”

“It’s not best for everyone,” Cail enunciated slowly. “This is the truth: I would rather be with you, no matter what they do to me, than keep living, safe, knowing you are gone forever. I don’t want to live that way.” Stupid tears were welling up in her eyes. “Do you believe me?”

Lalo’s eyes flickered back and forth across the wall. Then his shoulders slumped. “Damn it! Yes. I do believe you.”

That seemed to give him hope and despair at the same time.

“Lalo,” Cail told him, “what they did to you is not your fault. The evil is not inside of you, any more than it’s inside all of us. You are not what those people did to you, the scary stuff you see in your head. You know evil is real, but doesn’t that mean that good is real as well? That there’s something stronger than evil?”

“You mean Jesus?” Lalo said.

Cail stopped. “Jesus knows the world is full of evil,” she said. “But that didn’t stop him from valuing us, caring about the world and coming to save it.”

“I don’t see it,” Lalo sighed. “The world doesn’t look very saved.”

“Look at me,” Cail grabbed his hands and leaned into Lalo’s face. Her nose brushed against his. “I’m saved. I have evil and corruption in me, and sometimes I’m very messed up. I’ve been more messed up. But there’s hope. We are here, and we care about each other. We love each other.” Cail closed her eyes and felt her lashes brush Lalo’s cheek. “We are fighting the evil. You are fighting the evil, Lalo. You do not want that. It’s not you. And it can’t have you.”

Cail wrapped her arms around Lalo and pulled him into her shoulder, felt him melt into her as he hung there on the stool. His skin still felt so very, very cold.

“There is something stronger than evil in the world,” she said into Lalo’s cheek. Her own memories were enfolding her here as she held Lalo in her arms. It was excruciatingly painful.

Lalo had trouble seeing the good because he’d been surrounded by so much darkness.

Cail had trouble trusting in goodness because years ago she’d thought she was surrounded by Goodness. Bathing in it, breathing it in, living her whole life just to do whatever Goodness asked of her.

And it all fell apart.

Cail felt herself sob against Lalo. “Lalo, there is good,” she repeated to him. And to herself. “And it can conquer the darkness. And you know what? The darkness can’t have you. It can’t have you, Lalo. I won’t let it.”

Nebraska

Fourteen years ago

THE COURTROOM SMELLED LIKE SICKLY sweet lilac. Even huddled in the witness stand, Cail could smell her mother's perfume. The lilac scent floated among the smell of old wood and lemon, reminding Cail of home and church.

Today they might take her away to prison.

Cail still couldn't fathom she was here. There was a murder trial, and she was the suspect.

They said she tried to kill her true love, Jonah Jones.

Everyone was talking, all around her in the courtroom, saying things that seemed alien and hard and unreal.

This just could not be happening. Cail was sitting on a hard wood chair up front by the judge, just like every courtroom scene she had ever seen on TV.

She was the suspect.

They’d found the notebooks with the drawings in her bedroom, presented them as evidence that Cail had premeditated it.

Premeditated murder.

Cail could have just as easily believed she was on Mars in some other dimension.

She sat shaking on the chair, hands knit together on the lap of her long khaki skirt. She was wearing a loose white sweater over her t-shirt because the room was freezing and because she didn't want everyone to be able to see more of her than they already could.

They were all staring. A lot of people were taking pictures.

Court had already been in session for quite a while, but now it was her turn to be questioned. Cail was positive she wouldn't be able to speak, because every molecule of moisture had been siphoned from her mouth over the last three hours while the prosecuting lawyer laid out how this evil person named Cail Lamontagne was crazy as a bat and had tried to kill the nice boy from Nebraska, Jonah Jones.

At this point in the trial, a psychiatrist Cail had talked to by court order was telling the court that Cail had something called obsessive compulsive disorder. He explained how it made her have all kinds of thoughts, about religion and violent behavior.

The prosecuting lawyer made it sound like following God was just craziness, some chemical reaction in her brain. He also made it sound like the Voice telling her things she should obey wasn’t God at all, just mental illness.

Cail looked to her parents' faces for reassurance, and the set of their jaws as the psychiatrist talked made her shoulders relax. Everybody knew that worldly people blamed everything on mental illnesses, because they didn't understand about God and demons and how things really worked.

Thankfully, the psychiatrist didn't talk very long. The man hadn't been very nice anyway, but what could you expect from someone who didn’t believe in God? There had been another psychiatrist who came in to talk with her, one who was friends with her Uncle Rupert. Uncle Rupert’s friend was much nicer.

Sweat pricked Cail's armpits as her lawyer walked forward to question her. Maybe that nice doctor would get to speak up in her favor, tell everyone she wasn't crazy and she was actually just really tuned in to what God wanted.

Cail had a special calling.

But the world would never understand that.

The next few hours were like a sick dream. They asked her if she knew she had obsessive compulsive disorder. They asked if she even knew what that was.

Cail didn't know. She knew there was some comedy show on TV about a guy that had it and Cail had heard a girl at church talk about the program. But she didn't watch TV, because it was more pleasing to God to spend time reading the Bible.

Her parents shook their heads gravely, and her mother closed her eyes tight to pray. Cail finally got to leave the stand. Her heart surged as she saw her Uncle Rupert's friend go up next, looking the part of every psychiatrist Cail had ever seen in a movie in a rumpled navy suit, polka-dot tie and thick glasses.

"Tell us about the relationship between OCD and violent behavior," Cail's lawyer asked the doctor. The lady judge leaned forward and propped her chin on one palm. The judge's hair was auburn red and crimped under primly exactly at her shoulders. She kept glancing in Cail's direction with something like morbid fascination. The psychiatrist who knew Uncle Rupert cleared his throat and rubbed his pale hands together nervously.

"Yes. Well," he said. "I am very glad you asked about this. Violent thoughts, or ‘harm’ obsessions as we call them, are a very common manifestation of OCD. Cail also had very strong religious obsessions: felt she needed to say prayers the right way, repeatedly. Repeat Bible verses. Not engage in worldly activities. Things of this sort. Obsessive behavior is sometimes not recognized right away, depending on a person’s environment. For example, a mother who greatly values cleanliness will actually praise a child who is always clean and orderly, even if it’s to the point of obsession. In Cail’s case, because of her family’s strong religious beliefs, obsessive religious behavior was considered a sign of devotion, not an illness.”

“Objection,” Jonah’s lawyer said. “Can we move on to the original question? Violence?”

The psychiatrist cleared his throat. “Yes. It is important to stress here that patients suffering from harm obsessions do not, I repeat, do not, act on these thoughts. The thoughts are caused by a chemical imbalance, and cause extreme distress to these patients, exactly because the violent thoughts are totally against who the patient is and everything they believe in. These are not real thoughts, based in the patient’s character or will. The thoughts are abhorrent to the patients. This is why the patient will go to such great lengths, do so many compulsive rituals, to get rid of the thoughts.”

Cail felt her mouth dropping open. She
did
sound like that imaginary patient the doctor was talking about. Of course killing Jonah was abhorrent. And she definitely felt
compelled
to make the thoughts go away. She would do anything to make them go away.

Cail slumped forward in her seat, tears quivering on her bottom lashes. Her parents were hissing angrily among themselves. Jonah's lawyer got to question the doctor now. The lawyer was a friend of Mr. Jones' and he was not a very nice man. Cail didn’t like her own lawyer very much, either, but thankfully, Cail hadn't had to spend much time with him. Her parents had helped her by meeting with the guy, making up some strategy to keep her out of jail.

Cail was grateful, because she was in too much shock to think straight.

"This is all very entertaining," Jonah's lawyer said as he paced in his suit. "But I think we are forgetting a key fact in our little fantasy about 'crazy people never do harm to anyone.' That girl," he stabbed an angry finger at Cail, "tried to kill my client."

Cail figured Jonah was probably here somewhere. She had been terrified to look. Even when on the stand she hadn't let her eyes wander farther than her parents. Seeing the look on Jonah’s face would kill her.

But her plan couldn't last much longer.

Jonah's lawyer asked a few more questions, then said something that caused reality to fuzz. "The defense would like to call Jonah Jones to the stand, please."

How was it possible that she and Jonah were here, about to face each other in court?

She was supposed to marry Jonah. This was what God wanted. They would stand in front of their church together and Cail would wear a modest white dress. They would have eight kids with names from the fruits of the spirit and they would grow up in the same church as Cail and Jonah had.

She wanted to believe it was all still a test.

She remembered what the doctors had said, about OCD. That chemicals in her brain made her feel like she had to pray and read the Bible and always be a good person.

It couldn't be. That would mean God hadn't spoken to her.

Ever.

Cail could hardly stand the pain in her chest.

Then she saw Jonah, climbing up the stairs to the little wooden booth where she had sat. He was wearing a slate blue dress shirt and khaki pants and the braces that wouldn't come off until next year when he was twenty one. He looked skinny and very unhappy. Even from here Cail could tell his long fingers were shaking.

She couldn't take it anymore. Cail nailed her gaze on the floor and forced herself not to sob while Jonah’s lawyer interrogated him, then gave the floor to her own lawyer. She wanted to melt into the floor and disappear, be anywhere but here.

"Honey." Cail's mom poked her shoulder and hissed into her ear. "God is going to get you through this. God's will is going to prevail. Don't you forget that. The truth will come out. All those hours you spent keeping a diary and writing about God's good works…God is going to use it."

Cail blinked fast, unsure if it would be possible to feel any more sick. Her lawyer was up front holding a stack of books, and all of them were her diaries. She recognized the rose-printed cover of one, emblazoned with a Bible verse in cursive and a hot pink ribbon bookmark.

Her diaries were here. In the hands of her lawyer.

Her parents must have given them to him.

Cail's tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth as the lawyer finished some speech to the crowd, then turned and winked at Jonah Jones.

"And so," the lawyer said, slick in his dark suit, "I would like to submit to the court that the definition of OCD that the good doctor Hendricks has given us today is correct. These patients don't want to hurt anybody. It’s true that the obsessions aren’t based on real feelings, but are in fact totally abhorrent to the patient, against everything the patient really wants. And I can prove to you today that the last thing my client Cail wanted to do was to hurt this boy. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is because she was crazy-eyed, wild-hearted in love with him."

She didn't see Jonah's reaction. She didn't see anything but tears swimming in her eyes. She buried her burning face behind her long hair, desperate to hide from the world.

She had never spoken a word to Jonah about how she felt about him.

But now the whole world knew.

Cail's lawyer read on and on, sappy words that she had scribbled in her diary, lovesick and sure that God wanted her and Jonah to be together forever.

But now it all sounded awful. Profane.

She was the defendant. She was here because they said she tried to kill Jonah. And now the lawyer was reading out loud how much she loved Jonah, adored every dimple in his cute little face.

Cail retched and threw up all over the sleeve of her modest white sweater.