Burn (Story of CI #3) (5 page)

Wara just stared at him. “That’s how it works? Just convince him to stop?”

Alejo’s eyes slid shut and his shoulders slumped.

"Alejo'll have to take him out, Wara." Rupert's gravelly voice broke the silence. “The Eastern Star Lázaro worked with are not small time players. After that, Marquez went off the grid. That means whoever he works for is bigtime. He’s not going to give up til he’s finished the job and you’re dead. It's either he kills you, or his bosses kill him."

Wara blinked at the empty dishes in front of her, horrified. She felt her armpits prick. “We’re talking about…Lázaro,” she croaked. She knew the eyes she locked with Alejo’s were much too frantic. “Weren’t you guys…friends? At some point? Alejo, he doesn’t remember who he is. What if he just needs…help?”

“He tried to kill you.” Alejo’s eyes narrowed and he looked away. “That’s all the excuse I need.”

IF ALEJO LIVED TO BE A THOUSAND, he might never forget the look in Wara’s eyes.

He’d thought about this. On the entire hellish trip here to Morocco. There really wasn’t another way.

But the sick sheen of Wara’s forehead drove home something he hadn’t really wanted to consider.

“Weren’t you guys…friends?” Wara squeaked. “At some point? Alejo, he doesn’t remember who he is. What if he just needs…help?”

This guy pinned Wara down in the middle of the night and tried to kill her with poison arrows.

But Alejo did know him. He’d worked with him.

Wara had dated him.

“He tried to kill you,” Alejo felt himself growl. “That’s all the excuse I need.” But inside he just withered a little bit more. He was sick of this, felt rotten to the core from all the violence and brokenness.

“If we capture Marquez and turn him over to the authorities,” Rupert was explaining, “he will be on the loose again before you know it. Bolivia and the other countries where he’s committed crimes have corrupted legal systems. We have to assume the people Marquez works for are powerful. Organizations like that invest a lot of money in their assassins. They’re not gonna leave him to rot in jail.”

Alejo wanted to finish this discussion before he had to see Wara’s stricken eyes again. “I know Timbuktu,” he said to his empty coffee mug. “It’s my turf. Lalo and Caspian and I know it like the back of our hand by now. When Marquez comes after you, we’ll have the advantage.”

“What if he doesn’t?” Cail frowned. “Come after her? Doesn’t he think she’s dead?”

“We’ll leave a trail for him to follow,” Rupert said. “Wara’s tickets to Mali, the visa, credit cards. All in her real name. Obviously Marquez isn’t after Wara for personal reasons, because he doesn’t even know who she is. My guess is this is some kind of test from whoever he works for. When Lázaro finds out she’s still alive, he’ll have to do whatever it takes to finish the job. He can’t let the people he works for find out he failed. Guys like him usually don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Everyone was frowning now. Wara had crossed her arms tightly in front of her and was staring vacantly at the leftover couscous.

This appeared to be the end of the briefing.

Not exactly ending on a happy note.

Alejo still felt very, very cold. It was about a hundred degrees colder here than in the Sahara.

“Wara,” he broke the silence. “Can we take a walk?” They really needed to talk.

She looked at him with wide eyes. “I…I need to go upstairs and rest awhile first. If you still feel like it…maybe…later.”

She looked so sad. It made Alejo angrier.

“Ok, thanks,” he said. “I’ll be awake. I drank a lot of coffee.”

Silvia said she’d do dishes. After Wara disappeared upstairs to her room, Rupert found Alejo staring out the porch door at the white stars. He clapped a hand on Alejo’s shoulder, making him wince. Every muscle Alejo had was aching.

“Aren’t you worried?” Rupert asked.

Alejo frowned. “Of course. I’ll feel better when Marquez is dead.”

“Worried she’s gonna hate you, Alejo.”

Alejo blinked at him. “She knows the guy has gone psycho,” Alejo said slowly. “Yeah, she used to know him, but he tried to kill her.”

Rupert looked disgusted. He flashed Alejo the look he reserved for especially slow students. “She didn’t just ‘used to know’ Marquez.”

Alejo did not want to think about this. “They were together for a few weeks,” he said, waving the time away into thin air with one hand. “She was just lonely. It was one of those things she regretted later.”

“That’s what she told you?”

Alejo scowled. “Yeah, that’s what she told me.” Rupert was still frowning. “It’s not like she was in love with him,” Alejo snapped. “Wara is quite clear about that.”

“Look, sometimes pride won’t let us admit we cared for someone we think we shouldn’t have,” Rupert started to say.

“What’s your point?”

Rupert exhaled loudly. “It’s getting too late for this. I’m off to sleep.” He waddled off in the ugly cardigan, probably to get more coffee.

Even though earlier he’d felt like he was about to pass out on the table, now Alejo really didn’t think he could sleep. After months without coffee, he’d gulped the stuff down like there was no tomorrow. He was now officially wired.

Seeing Wara again was great, and the coffee was making all sorts of ideas do crazy dances around his brain. For the first time in months he was thinking of a future that might involve something good, hopefully Wara.

Yeah, the idea of killing Marquez was ugly, but the guy had only brought it on himself.

Alejo wanted out of the violence and death, and Lázaro had to be the last one. Because until he was dead, the faraway peace Alejo was dying for was just going to be a ridiculous dream.

Bolivia

Six years earlier

MIST ROLLED OVER THE SAGE-COLORED hills, weeping with long Andean grass and white flowers. It was three in the afternoon, but the sun still played behind the mist, barely warming the soggy air here at the edge of the lake, thousands of feet in the Andes. Sixteen giggling ten-year olds pushed along the trail in front of Wara, winding around the midnight blue water fringed in reeds. Their tennis shoes sucked at the moist dirt and their coffee-colored faces glowed under wide-brimmed hats.

"Hey, counselor!" One of the boys planted his shoes wide in the mud and grinned at Wara. He was trying to stand taller in a faded red hoodie that said, "Bubba-Gump Shrimp Company." This one definitely had a crush on her. He'd been trying to get Wara's attention the entire week of camp.

Just as long as he doesn't try to kiss me tonight at the bonfire.

Wara almost snorted at the ridiculous idea. "Yeah, Pablo?" She flipped her braid over one shoulder and scratched at the red bandana covering her unwashed hair. The water in the cabin showers at Camp Kewina was beyond frigid. She hadn't taken a shower since leaving the city.

But Pablo didn't actually want anything. He just kept grinning at her with a row of very uneven teeth, then took off at a run. He shouldered a few of the scrawny girls out of the way as he tried to get to the front of the line in a show of ten-year-old speed. Wara rolled her eyes and turned to the guy at her side, good-looking as always in shades of honey and tan. Her co-counselor was looking mighty fine in a faded flannel and olive green shorts.

Wara wasn't about to deny that she'd been going through a hard time since she came to Bolivia as a missionary five months ago, but being assigned to work the week at camp with this guy from another church had cheered her up significantly. The guy was a cutie, and amazingly enough, he liked her. Campers or no campers, he was always flirting with her. Just as bad as Pablo, but significantly more sexy.

"Lázaro?" Wara punched him in one muscled shoulder. "He's getting away again."

Lázaro's eyes widened at her, then shifted towards the escaping camper. He frowned and pulled the brown checked wool cap down lower over his eyes. "Hey! You, Pablo! Get your butt back here on the double!" Lázaro's booming voice cut through the lakeside peace, scaring the crap out of a few slim brown birds nesting in the reeds. Skinny Pablo threw another huge grin in Wara’s direction and pulled to a stop at the front of the line of campers, waiting for the rest to catch up.

Lázaro winked at Wara as the path opened up into a clearing full of spiky plants and boulders. "This is where they get to play," he said, then yelled an announcement to the group that they could spread out to climb the boulders. Everyone shrieked and ran towards the rocks as if they were mounds of candy fallen from a birthday piñata. Wara watched them in puzzlement, then jerked as hands pressed into her eyes, leaving everything dark.

"Counselor, will you sit by me at the bonfire tonight?" Pablo said into her ear.

Oh my gosh! These kids! All week, the teasing never stopped. She liked them, but tomorrow it was totally time to go home.

Pablo still wasn't taking his hands off the eyes. "And I'm gonna add you as my friend on Facebook, ok?" he rambled on. "Maybe when I let you go you can spell me your last name?"

The hands pulled away and Wara reluctantly turned towards her ten-year-old tormentor, only to find Lázaro's gorgeous eyes right behind her. She did a double take, peering around his shoulder for the kid. The question was forming on her lips when her co-counselor placed a hand under her chin and tipped her face towards his. Wara was five foot five, and Lázaro was a few inches taller, just tall enough to make her have to tilt her face upward to look into his eyes.

She heard herself swallow, loud and squeaky.

"Counselor, when I grow up will you marry me?" Lázaro asked her, but the voice was Pablo's.

Wara grinned nervously. "Oh my gosh. How do you do that?" She could have sworn it was the kid, right behind her. This Lázaro Marquez was like the perfect outdoor guy, always making fires from sticks and carving wooden birds for the campers with his red MacGyver Swiss Army knife. This morning he had thrilled the kids by imitating a whole slew of forest animals. And now he was copying voices.

Ok, she had a crush.

And holy cow, Lázaro was going to kiss her.

He leaned in, ignoring the kids screaming and unpacking their little lunches of egg sandwiches and fresh lima beans.

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.

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."