Burn (Story of CI #3) (11 page)

SOMEWHERE IN THE DUSTY LABYRINTH OF ancient Fez, there was supposed to be a Western Union shop. Alejo and Wara walked side by side, dodging mangy street dogs and plump ladies carting heavy market bags.

Alejo wasn’t having much luck keeping up a conversation with Wara as they scanned the signs for the familiar little yellow Western Union square. Alejo hated how her lips pinched together at the corners into a puckered line. She was really freaked that Marquez was going to show up at any minute, even though that was impossible. She hadn't really believed Alejo's explanation that for Marquez to track Wara would take some time.

Alejo hated Lázaro for doing this to her. Whatever Lázaro's reasons for trying to hurt Wara, that decision had sealed his fate.

Alejo couldn’t let him go.

He cracked his neck to one side and tried to wipe his face clean of emotion. If looks could kill, the Arabic carpet shop sign they had just passed would be swimming with the sharks.

The question that she decided to ask pierced right through his heart like a lance. “Did you know them very well? The kids that didn’t make it, and Amadou’s wife?”

Alejo didn’t even look at her, but he felt his nose twitch. The sun kept baking down on them, and he kept scanning the buildings for the sign.

“We played with the kids. Sometimes,” he heard himself croak. “Yeah, we were there for four months before…last week. So we got to know the kids. And Amadou and Amy were heroes. The other day Rupert talked about that documentary they were in? It’s because they headed up this huge operation to save manuscripts from the rebels, last time they took over Timbuktu in 2012. Amadou’s operation smuggled out thousands of manuscripts, that got safely to Europe. That’s why AQIM hates Amadou so much. That and because he and Amy converted from Islam.”

“Was his wife in the school when it burned?”

Alejo didn’t know if he’d ever be ready to talk about this. He saw Amy grinning at the school kids, wearing dangly gold earrings with a huge hoop nose ring and tie-dyed dresses. She’d always kind of reminded him of a darker, plumper Wara, all laid-back and hippy and a little bit snotty.

“She was killed by AQIM,” Alejo choked out.

And now he was supposed to keep Wara safe from Lázaro Marquez.

"Hey, I think I see it," Wara said from his side. She sounded sober, probably still thinking about what happened in Timbuktu.

Sure enough, a flash of yellow caught Alejo’s eye. A Western Union sign was taped into a dank window, next to a chipped wooden door with a green copper bell. Moroccans sure knew how to stuff the maximum number of shops into the tiniest possible building. There was another carpet shop sign right under the Western Union one, and six stories of gray-toned apartments clawed for the sky above the shops.

This had to be it. The email Wara's mom sent to her phone said the money had to be picked up at this particular Western Union. Getting money from the US in a Muslim country had gotten trickier with the new anti-terrorist regulations.

"Yep, this has to be the place your mom said," Alejo nodded. He narrowed his eyes at the building. "What are you gonna do with so much money?"

"Make you get drunk tonight. With me," Wara said without smiling. She was still so not happy about the plan to get rid of Lázaro. The whole thing made Alejo's heart hurt. "Well, maybe,” she said. “For sure I know I'm not going to get a manicure." She flicked him the tiniest hint of a smile.

Wara never got manicures. Sitting there for an hour to get her nails done was so not Wara.

They pushed their way past the tinkling copper bell and into the Western Union shop. The door scraped shut behind them with a very annoying sound like fingernails over chalk. The floor space of the entire shop was about the size of a closet, tiled in mushroom brown swirls. A guy in a black djellaba stood behind the counter, face half-shaded by the rim of a gray speckled baseball cap.

There was something Alejo didn't like about this place.

Maybe the fact that there was no air in here and it smelled like a foot locker.

"Asaalam aleikum," Wara greeted the guy in her rather excellent Arabic. She crossed the tiles to the counter in literally two steps. She and Alejo had to stand practically shoulder to shoulder to avoid the mildewed boxes and crates piled around the miniscule shop. "I, uh, have some money I need to pick up." She passed over her Wara Cadogan ID. Now that they were supposedly trying to lure Lázaro in, the more times she used her real ID the better.

"Sure, ma'am," the tanned employee mumbled. "Please fill out this form."

Wara scribbled in the answers on the typical Western Union carbon copy form with a pen from the counter that looked like it was about to fall apart. When she signed her name and passport number, the guy in the djellaba cleared his throat and tapped a finger at the bottom left corner of the form. "I'm gonna need him to sign too." And he stuck a finger towards Alejo.

"What?" Wara screwed up her face.

"I apologize, ma'am. It's just that here in Morocco there is a lot of burglary. We usually have two employees here to verify everything, so there's no question that you really got the money. But my co-worker couldn’t come. I need a witness."

The guy flashed a white smile Alejo's way from under the shaded bill of his hat. Alejo stifled a groan and signed his name in a hurry with the same pen.

Baseball Cap guy shuffled towards the back of the room, about one and a half steps from the counter. "Just one moment, please," he said. "I'll have your money for you right away."

Wara turned her head to look at Alejo. The honey color of her eyes seemed more fiery than usual. "Is it hot in here?" she asked him. "My legs are feeling shaky."

Alejo did feel kind of hot. But there wasn't a single window open in this stuffy little closet.

Wara must be stressed after doing the whole visa to Mali thing. And it was making her feel bad.

And then Alejo's legs started to wobble.

"Crap." The danger warning in his brain finally decided to go off, too late.

He grabbed Wara's arm to drag her towards the door but lost his grip as her knees buckled and she pitched away from him and onto the tiles. Alejo whirled towards the counter, couldn't see the guy in black. His muscles were just not responding and he went to his knees next to Wara. He tried to lift her out of there but just sprawled forward, ear plastered against Wara's ribs, chest cold against the tiles.

Everything was fading to black.

"See you in the morning, Wara Cadogan," a cocky British accent said.

Alejo lost consciousness on the mushroom tiles.

SHE WOKE UP ON HER BACK ON A rickety wooden table. Wara jerked and felt the table shudder beneath her.

She was in a stuffy room full of junk with moldy sea green walls. Whirls of colonial-style cherubs and roses imprinted the old plaster ceiling. This was not the cramped Western Union shop where she was supposed to be picking up her money.

She had passed out in the shop!

"Alejo?" Wara heard her voice echo off the plaster, disoriented. She strained to sit up on the wobbly table, startled by the clink of chains around her wrists. Her hands were chained in front of her, rusty iron with a solid silver padlock just under her thumbs. She swung her legs around on the table, still feeling woozy.

Alejo was six feet away, sprawled on the bare mattress of a cot along the wall. He was obviously just waking up from whatever had knocked the two of them out. His arms were stretched over his head and his wrists were bound to the wall with a very short length of chain.

"Alejo!" She hissed at him, but Alejo was not responding. Wara's heart slammed into her chest at ramming speed. She slid off the table, trying to keep the chain from banging around in the silence. The thing was attached to a thick ring on the concrete floor, and surprisingly she had enough length on it to walk all the way over to the edge of Alejo's cot.

There the chain links stretched taut. She couldn't touch him.

"You can wake up now," she told him tightly. She threw a glance at the door, flimsy plywood and closed. Alejo grunted and forced his eyes open, looking like a drunk who had passed out on the cot fully dressed.

"Wara?" Alejo tried to sit up but the chains cut the movement short. Alejo bit off a groan and slumped back onto the mattress, biceps straining against the chains. Whatever they had been drugged with, it seemed like Alejo got a double dose. It was all he could do to keep his eyes from rolling back into his head.

That's when she saw the key. Two feet from the head of the cot, a gleaming silver key rested on top of a little metal box. Luckily, the thing was just the right size to fit the padlock on her wrists. She was about to turn towards it when Alejo's voice stopped her.

"Wara, don't. Look at it."

She whipped her eyes towards him and saw that he had craned his neck around enough to see the metal box. His voice sounded horrible.

Wara narrowed her eyes and realized that the metal box had a dull gray screen on one side, dead and lifeless but ominous nonetheless. The thing was like a compact little scale.

In other words, a trap.

She blinked at it, then Alejo.

Who would do this?

Wara was about to open her mouth to ask that very thing when the door whooshed open behind her, letting in a blast of cool air tinged with mint and heat. Wara jerked towards the sound, nearly tripping on the heavy chain links tangled around her black hippy skirt and sandals.

Lázaro was standing there, wearing a silky black djellaba.

He was the guy from the counter, from the Western Union shop.

The baseball hat was gone, and Lázaro's hair was wild, bleached and electric around his face. His skin was a few shades lighter than the annoying employee who had made them sign the forms. Scars rippled down one side of his neck, disappearing into the black fabric and reappearing on one disfigured hand.

Holy crap.

It had been him. Disguised as the Western Union employee.

In shock, Wara remembered the feel of the soiled tape wrapped around that ancient pen, the one she and Alejo had both used right before they passed out. Whatever had knocked them out must have seeped into their skin from the tape.

Lázaro had drugged her. Again.

Wara tried to stop blinking at him in horror.

"Hello, dear," Lázaro grinned cheerily. The perfect Arabic was gone, replaced by that clipped British accent he'd been using in Montana. Lázaro strolled over towards Wara and patted her on the shoulder, then threw Alejo a sharp salute. Both of them jerked away from him. Alejo was stiff with anger.

"So good of you both to join me," Lázaro told them in a tone that was way too pleasant. "Your boyfriend won't be able to move very well at the moment, I'm afraid." He eyed Wara over the top of his nose. “He got a special dose of one of my recipes. It's going to take a while yet to wear off. I told you I make poisons. If you remember anything from our last meeting, that is."

Wara felt sick. She heard the chains clatter as her hands shook together, and she locked her knees to keep from sinking down to the tiles.

How could they have been so stupid? In a matter of minutes Lázaro had drugged them both and had them restrained here at his mercy.

She gaped at Lázaro, those hooded brown eyes and the scars. She barely recognized him. But that smile, the white smile he flashed at them when he sauntered into the room…she remembered it.

Wara backed away from him until she felt her butt against the edge of the table. What Alejo said had made sense: Lázaro couldn't have found them so fast from the internet credit card transaction.

This didn't make sense.

"What happened to you?" she heard herself say.

Alejo jerked the chains over his head and the cot groaned under him. "Wara, don't talk with him," he said, but every word slurred and lisped.

Lázaro lowered himself onto the metal headboard of Alejo's cot and crossed his arms in front of his chest. "You do know me, then," he said to Wara, ignoring Alejo. "To tell you the truth, I have no idea what happened to me."

Lázaro let that hang in the air. His words seemed unreal. He didn't know how he got the burns? Lázaro narrowed his eyes at Wara and she felt millipedes run down her back. "And that, dear,” he said, “is why I need you."

"How did you know we would be here?" she choked. Yeah, she had imagined Lázaro reading her email, but from somewhere farther away. It was supposed to be impossible for him to be here in Morocco already. He could have read the email about the Western Union pickup, but how could he have been here in Fez already, set up this trap in so little time?

Wara felt dizzy. Lázaro just rolled his eyes at her.

"How could I forget such a simple thing," the words dripped out of his mouth. "Such a simple thing as where I sent the money to my own daughter."

Wara felt her heart plummet to her toes. It was her mother's voice!

But it was Lázaro, somehow speaking exactly like Lara Cadogan.

"I have a real talent for mimicking," Lázaro kept on with the perfect imitation of Wara's mom. It was freakier than sin. "Go figure, Wara, dear. I would love to know where that came from. If only you'd help me."

"You pretended to be my mother?" Wara was horrified. It had been him on the phone. He’d lured them here, to the Western Union.

She remembered the Lázaro she dated in Bolivia, how he had a master’s degree in Tourism and led wilderness survival treks and could start a fire out of anything. She remembered he could make a sound like any wild animal, and he was always imitating actors from TV, making everyone laugh. She remembered the week as camp counselors, the kiss behind the boulder while the kids ran among the rocks.

"Guilty as charged." Lázaro returned to his British accent. Wara felt woozy, imagining Lázaro tapping her parents' telephone line back in Bozeman. Or hiding somewhere in the house, listening to them talk so he could copy her mother’s voice.

“How did you even know I would be in Morocco?” Wara squeaked. “You thought I was dead.”

Lázaro narrowed his eyes and shifted positions. The metal frame of the cot groaned under his weight. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, love. But the last time we met, I killed you.” Wara gaped at him. For some reason, Lázaro looked annoyed. "My plan was to give you the antidote to the poison after you gave me information, but you panicked. Not very good training for an agent. Your heart was racing, the poison worked too fast. I had to give you CPR.”

Wara just kept gaping. Lázaro gave her CPR?

He hadn’t left her for dead.

He’d known all along she was still alive.

“I knew you were in Morocco because I’ve been with you all along,” Lázaro smirked. “I followed you from America.”

Wara was kind of in shock.

"I’m glad we were finally able to reconnect,” Lázaro said. "I really need to finish this job. Employers getting impatient and all. I didn't really plan on Boyfriend being part of the package, but that's life, isn't it now? So cute how you do everything together.”

Wara let her eyes flit over to Alejo and got even more worried. He was watching Lázaro with slits for eyes, but whatever Lázaro drugged him with, it was definitely stronger than what he gave Wara.

Lázaro snapped his fingers at her impatiently. "Look,” he said, “the poison that's keeping Romeo sacked out on the bed like a lump of coal isn't going to wear off for another hour, so I suggest that you listen to me carefully. Despite being the bad guy in this movie, I actually prefer things to be fair. The other night in Montana, that was just a warning. You see that vent over your heads? It's the only air source in this room." Lázaro pointed with his chin towards an ancient-looking metal grate near the top of the plaster ceiling. Wara also saw a video camera, mounted on the wall and blinking at her with a fluorescent orange eye.

"When I leave here," Lázaro continued, "the room will begin to fill with a chemical, something I won't bore you with the details of but suffice it to say that it won't take very long to kill you. Your only chance of survival is to get out of this room. But here's the thing: the two of you are chained up.” Duh. Wara blinked at Lázaro. He was looking way too happy. “I did, however, leave you a key," he smiled.

Wara eyed the shiny key again, sitting there on the metal box just a few feet away. Of course it wasn't going to be that easy.

Lázaro Marquez had gone insane.

He punched something that looked like an mp3 player with one scarred finger. Wara jerked as the box under the key chirped and the dead screen glowed lime green. "It's weight-sensitive," Lázaro informed them calmly. He patted Alejo on the shoulder and grinned at him as if they were old chums. Alejo tried to jerk away but ended up flopping around like a fish. Lázaro noticed and smirked.

"I do believe," he said, "the only one who can reach the key is the lovely Ms. Cadogan. When she removes the key, she will have ten seconds to unlock one padlock and run from the room before the bomb goes off. There won't be time to free both of you, so choose wisely. Oh." The cot squeaked as Lázaro stood up and smiled at the key and what Wara now knew was explosives. "I should probably give you a little hint. This isn't Indiana Jones. My bomb is considerably more high-tech than that stone in the movie. I believe he replaces the weight with an idol, is it?" Lázaro rolled his eyes and sighed.

Wara felt her hands shaking against the freezing metal of the chains. She was glad for the table, because otherwise she was pretty sure her legs wouldn't hold her weight. "Why are you doing this?"

Lázaro narrowed his eyes at her again. "Nothing personal at all. This is just a job, love. The people I work for were quite insistent. They claim I messed up a hit on you at some point in the past I can't even begin to remember."

The dream.

In Bolivia, Lázaro was ordered to kill her but couldn’t do it. She could swear he had backed away, shaking his head no.

And now someone needed him to finish the job. So they’d know what he was capable of.

Everything in the room was hazing over like a continuation of that very, very bad dream.

One of them was going to die?

And Lázaro was just going to calmly film it to take to the people he worked for, who for some reason wanted her dead.

Wara clenched her jaw and felt her knuckles turning white on the edge of the table.

Lázaro exhaled and snapped his fingers crossly to get her attention back. "So here's the deal, Ms. Cadogan. You do have one chance to get out of here without playing my game. The other night, I brought you back to life. But there’s just one thing. When administering the CPR, my lips on yours, I had this strange vision. A memory, possibly. You and I kissed. There were those gold Asian cats they use for good luck, and everything smelled like coffee. It's the first memory I've had since the burns." Lázaro inhaled sharply and looked away. "You know who I am. If you help me remember, I will let both of you live."

"Wara, no!" Alejo's biceps were pulling against the chains, but he was still stuck flat on his back on the cot. It was obviously a huge effort for him to say anything at all. "Whatever you say, he's not going to let you go!"

Lázaro scoffed. He flicked his eyes towards Alejo on the cot with as much interest as he would give a splotch of mold on the wall. "You think we have time for this now? I have more questions than you can all answer sitting here in chains. Do you have any idea what it's like? I'm tired of living like an animal, doing whatever
they
tell me with no idea who I am or what I believe. The deal is, she comes with me and helps me remember. This is your chance to live."

Wara clenched her jaw. Alejo’s eyes were fixed on Lázaro, tortured. “I know who you are,” Alejo panted. “Take me. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”