Burn (Story of CI #3) (12 page)

Lázaro drew back. “You?”

“I…worked….with…you. Don’t take…her.”

Lázaro’s face hardened. “I don’t believe you. Seeing you doesn’t bring back my memory. She comes with me, or one of you dies.”

Lázaro wanted to leave them here to burn. Unless she went with him and did whatever he wanted.

What was she supposed to do?

She was ready to say yes, anything. Just let Alejo go.

Apparently she hadn't come up with an answer nearly fast enough.

"Fine," Lázaro clipped. "Have it your way. You die with your integrity, having refused to help a monster like me recover his. Ten seconds. You'll have to run like hell."

He limped out of the room and slammed the door. Wara didn't hear it lock.

WARA REALLY EXPECTED TO SEE DEATH coming, some kind of evil crimson vapor seeping out of the vent over their heads, filling the room with the poison that would kill them. But when Lázaro left, she saw nothing. No ominous hiss as the gas Lázaro had promised came towards them. Nothing smelled weird.

"Maybe he's lying."

She knew the words sounded exactly like they were, grasping at false hope. But Wara couldn't help it. Her brain was still in a fog.

The alternative was unthinkable. They couldn't stay here, but there was no way Wara could take the key and set off the ten-second timer on the bomb.

Because she knew Lázaro knew exactly what was going to happen here. Alejo was much more drugged than she was, and there was no way he could get away from the explosion in time, even if Wara did unlock his padlock.

She was the only one who could reach the key.

Lázaro wanted her to leave Alejo to burn.

Next to the vent, the little black camera was trained on them, capturing their last moments for the sick enjoyment of whoever Lázaro took his orders from.

Alejo's eyes were closed, and he opened them slowly, watching Wara. "He's not lying,” Alejo said. “Look at your arm."

Her eyes flew to her skin and she sucked in a strangled breath at the faint red rings splattered across her forearm.

Darn it!

Something was already affecting her skin!

She forced herself to leave the support of the table and rattled the chains as far as she could towards Alejo. His forearms, stretched over his head, were already getting blotchy with rosy rings. She sank down to her knees at the edge of the cot, chains slithering behind her like a metal serpent.

"I'm so sorry," Alejo fixed his eyes on her, "but you have to listen to me." She knew that voice. It was the now-I'm-going-to-tell-you-how-it's-gonna-be voice. He always got that way when things were bad. "You can never think that this was your fault," Alejo said calmly. "Do you understand?"

Wara stared at him, clenching her chained hands together. After she grabbed the key, it would take her one second to have the key in place to unlock her own padlock. She went through the motions in her head, maneuvering the key in the lock, popping it open and ripping her hands out of the chains.

If she didn't make any mistakes, the whole thing would take at least five seconds.

If she was faster freeing Alejo, it would take another three seconds.

They would have two more to get out the door.

And she would have to drag him.

"
Wara!
Do you understand?"

She fought back a groan and set her jaw.

"Go through what you're going to do in your head," Alejo told her in that voice that was smooth like unrippled water. "You can do this. When you get out the door, if he’s waiting…fight him. He’s injured. You’re stronger. Run."

"No!" Wara felt her spine curve forward. She hated the way he was talking to her, trying to manage her, to talk her into leaving him here to die. She whipped her eyes up to Alejo's, furious with him, even though she knew it made no sense.

"I can't unlock both of us in time," Wara said bitterly. "He's right. But he said I can pick. And darn it, I'm picking you."

His face paled. "No. Don't do it, because I won't go. I'll stay here with you and we'll both die."

Wara wanted to wail. The rings on Alejo's arms were now a fiery red, and they ran all the way up his neck, gashing one cheek. He was starting to wheeze. Whatever poison Alejo had in his system, it was speeding up the effects of the stuff from the vent. She closed her eyes and tried to focus.

She could pick padlocks, but making something that would work was just going to take too long. They didn't have time.

This was real life, and Wara wasn't MacGyver.

"Wara," Alejo wheezed. "Go!"

She couldn't do this.

There was no way she could do this.

"No." She glared at him, teeth grinding together so tightly it hurt. "Either I get us both out, or we stay here together."

Alejo's eyes widened and she saw the thoughts dancing across his hazel eyes. He knew she was serious. He saw her eyes flicker over towards the key, read exactly what Wara was about to do.

She was running through every move again, mimicking how she was going to go for the key.

And unlock both of them.

Wara heard herself make a strange choking sound, felt her breath hitch in her chest. Something was wrong with her windpipe. Alejo flinched.

"Don’t," he stopped her, pinching his eyes shut. "You can't." His tone dropped off to a hoarse whisper. "Tell him you'll go with him."

Wara felt her heart skip a very long beat. She tried to move closer to him but just couldn't reach him. The tips of her fingers barely brushed the skin of his wrists next to the padlock.

She knew Alejo was right; she wouldn't be able to get them both out of here. But he knew she couldn’t leave without trying.

"I can't watch you die," Alejo choked.

Wara blinked hard against tears of frustration. She saw the sick anguish that the thought of her with Lázaro was painting all over Alejo's face. But it was the only way Alejo wasn't going to die right now. She was furious when a tear leaked out of her eye and slithered down one cheek. Hands chained together, she couldn’t even brush the thing away. She sucked in a breath and a sickening wheeze echoed around the room.

Wara turned towards the camera filming away above them. "Okay!" she screamed at it. "I'll go with you! I'll do whatever you want! I know who you are and I'll tell you everything. Please!"

The dark glass camera lens kept right on filming, and no one came to save them.

Wara groaned. Everything was beginning to haze over and she felt an iron fist pressing into her belly. Alejo was gone; he was totally passed out on the cot, looking like some kind of leprosy patient.

And then, near the head of the cot, something chirped and the shiny lime green light died. Music blared to life overhead and Wara cringed.

"Come out into the cold," a female voice crooned, accompanied by the sound of saxophone. "It's too hot in here, and outside the world is wide. Come out into the cold, and breathe the air you've been dying for."

Alejo didn't even flinch. The music was still blasting. Wara staggered over to the key and snatched it in her hand, because the bomb was turned off and Lázaro must have heard what she had said. She awkwardly opened her padlock and heard the chains rattle to the floor, then stumbled over to Alejo and unlocked his chains. He stirred as his arms crashed into the metal headboard.

Alejo's skin was like ice.

Wara ran to the door and ripped it open, letting in a blast of blessed, cool air. The hallway was still, cobwebs fluttering in the breeze the only sign of life. She spun on her heels and raced back to the cot, wrapping her arms around Alejo's shoulders, trying to pull him into her chest.

"Help me!" she yelled at him over the blare of the music. "You're too heavy, and I have to get you out of here."

"No…"

"Lázaro turned it off!" she yelled in his face, pulling him towards her by the shoulders. "Nothing is going to explode. But there's no air in here."

When she swiveled Alejo's upper body towards the edge of the cot, he flopped into Wara's shoulder like a newborn baby. His cheek was wet and clammy against her neck.

"Darn it, darnit!" She lay him back down and hooked her hands under his armpits, dragging him inch by inch off the cot. She slid his shoulders along the tiles until his hips and legs crashed to the floor.

Alejo didn't even flinch. Thank God, the tiles were smooth and it was easier to haul him after her, backwards towards the door and freedom.

The rush of sweet air in the hallway was like being born again. She made sure to close the door to the room with the poison tightly after them, just in case the stuff was still flowing from the vent. Wara still felt the cramping in her gut but she kept going, hauling Alejo down the hall by the shoulders, winding her way around metal bookcases and tattered cardboard boxes. At the end of the hall she knocked a door open with her butt and got Alejo through it, relieved to feel the air in this room was even cooler.

It was the Western Union office where this whole thing had started. Someone had left the front door open to the street, and fresh, sweet air was swirling around the room, helped along by a ceiling fan that was furiously whipping up papers into little whirlwinds on the counter.

The air in here must be a million times better than in the room where they'd been chained, but Wara wanted to get outside.

Better yet, a million miles away from here. But for now, outside would do.

Weirdly, Lázaro was not here in the office.

She had told him she would do what he wanted, go with him and help him figure out who the heck he was.

But he wasn't here.

Wara did not want to stay around to figure out why. She ignored the searing pain in her shoulders and braced herself to haul Alejo a few more feet towards the door.

That's when she saw the bright yellow tissue paper. Dead center along her path out the front door, nesting on top of one of the tiles, was a flower made of canary yellow paper, quivering in the breeze.

The thing was just sitting there, waiting for her, like a lonely corsage whose date didn't show up for the prom.

In case she didn't understand, a calendar was propped up next to the flower, a tiny little desktop one with the Western Union logo in Arabic. It was set to this month, and over the entire range of dates was scrawled a jagged red question mark.

Wara felt all the air leave her lungs, as if she were back in the room being poisoned all over again instead of here breathing normal air three feet away from freedom. The flower mocked her, obscene and sickening.

She and Lázaro had a date.

That's what he was trying to tell her.

Today he had let her go, but he would be back.

ALEJO FORCED HIMSELF TO DRINK the water, slumped on the tweed couch in Rupert's basement. There were three full pitchers of lukewarm water on the coffee table in front of him, dented, pale blue Tupperware affairs that looked like something his mother owned back in the nineties. Outside the house, everything was pitch black. Cicada chirps rose in waves from the cedar trees. The basement was dim, just a lamp in the corner by the silent TV lighting up the little rectangle of couches and the coffee table and the big pitchers of water.

At the other end of the couch where Alejo slouched, Wara was curled up in leggings and an orange hippy sweater with a wide neck, also sipping water and not looking extremely happy. She couldn't stop shivering, and the sight was tearing Alejo apart.

But for two people who had been poisoned eight hours ago by God only knew what, they were actually doing pretty well.

Marquez had taken away their phones, but Wara managed to find a way to call Rupert while Alejo was passed on outside the Western Union. As soon as Rupert picked them up in Fez, he had called in a doctor he worked with who made them wear oxygen masks for an hour, then drew blood and sent it off for a tox screen.

Alejo really wasn't holding his breath for the results.

The stuff Lázaro Marquez used was not likely to register on your average tox screen. It was probably something natural, like that poisonous slime that oozed off the backs of neon frogs from the rainforest. The sicko probably cultivated a spread of magic mushrooms in the backyard of wherever the hell he lived.

And then there was the water. Dr. Smith had ordered the two of them to drink gallons of the stuff to flush out all the poison from their systems. So here Alejo sat with Wara, sometime after midnight, choking down glass after glass of water, then shuffling off to the bathroom in turns to pee.

This was not exactly the fun evening they had planned before entering the Western Union office.

But then again, there hadn't really been three hundred dollars from Wara's mother waiting for them either, had there?

Alejo felt his brows pinned into a very low V. He spun his glass onto the coffee table with a thud and turned towards Wara, who was wearing a matching expression. She looked so annoyed that his own face relaxed.

"Are you traumatized?" he asked her. She started and bit her lip, fingertips white around the full glass of water.

"What? This isn’t funny. Yes, I'm traumatized. You were really heavy."

Alejo blinked. “Yeah, I feel…bad about that. Your shoulders…"

Wara stabbed him with bleary eyes. "That's the worst thing you can think of to feel bad about? I…it's my fault that you almost burned to death. He is supposed to kill
me.
For whatever reason. This happened just because you came with me. He wanted me to watch you die." Her voice turned all gravely and Wara cleared her throat loudly and drained half the glass of water. "’Scuse me. Bathroom."

She padded across the carpet towards the bathroom down the hall on shaky legs. The rest of the house was totally silent. Cail and Rupert were staying here, but seemed to have gone to bed long ago. When Wara was out of sight, Alejo felt his shoulders sag and something sharp digging right into his heart.

It was too much.

He hadn't protected Wara from Marquez, hadn't even been paying attention in that shop.

She could have burned to death. Right in front of him.

And he'd told her to go with the assassin to save herself.

Had that really been the only solution?

Alejo felt a cold river of sweat snake down his back.

The idea of Wara being anywhere near the explosion had destroyed him.

The toilet flushed down the hall and the bathroom door creaked open. A second later Wara dropped back onto the couch, snatched up her water and gulped the rest with a flick of her wrist as if it were a shot of tequila.

"I'm traumatized," she said, while sourly refilling her glass from the pitcher, "because I thought I was going to have to leave you to die. I don't think I ever felt something so horrible in my entire life. I said what I had to, to get you out of there."

Her fingers on the glass were quivering and Alejo knew they were both thinking of how she had screamed she would go with Marquez. The thought of Wara with him was enough to make Alejo's blood boil, but when they were there in that room, he had to tell her to take the surest chance she had to get out of there alive. Right?

Then Marquez had just disappeared, leaving Wara behind. But there was no way in hell he wouldn't be back. Wara told him about the sick little flower and calendar. The name Wara Cadogan was not connected officially in any way with CI, so Marquez shouldn't be able to track her here to headquarters. They’d been very careful to avoid any tails on the drive back from Fez. But it was only a matter of time.

Lázaro desperately wanted information only Wara had. He’d left her alive this afternoon so he could take it from her, any time he wanted. Once Lázaro found out everything he wanted to know, there’d be no reason for him to keep Wara alive.

They needed to leave for Timbuktu, finish this.

Suddenly, all the water swirling around in Alejo’s gut was making him wicked sick. But he’d already hurled enough on the cement outside the Western Union this afternoon, waiting for Rupert to pick them up.

Alejo was glad Marquez had been nice enough to not give Wara whatever it was that Alejo got pumped into his bloodstream.

"This afternoon…” Alejo flicked his eyes up to hers. "I never want to live through something like that again." He felt the sick panic trying a jailbreak right through the walls of his heart. Alejo stuffed the memories of lying there drugged, seeing Wara in chains. "And it’s just that…this assignment in Timbuktu was the hardest one I've ever had. The place where those kids live is so hard. They needed us."

He didn't say anything else, but the color of Wara's eyes darkened. She knew he felt the weight of the deaths of the kids from the school. The rest of it felt like it would kill him if he had to say it here, in this room.

She didn’t insult him by saying something pithy.

There was nothing you could do, Alejo.

Everything's gonna be fine.

Wara banged one foot in an orange wool sock against the frame of the couch, eyes a little unfocused as she kept sipping water. She was patiently waiting for him to finish that thought about his last assignment.

Alejo sighed painfully. "I'm going to talk with Rupert," he croaked. "I used to be able to do this. But I've changed. After Marquez is no longer a threat, I'm done."

Wara started and a weak tidal wave of water sloshed over the edge of the glass and splatted onto her knee. "What do you mean, you're done?"

Alejo leaned back into the cushions, felt his jaw tense. "I'm done working with CI. With any kind of work like this. I don't want to see violence anymore. I don't want to cause violence anymore." Wara blinked at him hard a few times while he was speaking. The orange wool sock had plastered itself against the couch. "I brought you into this, Wara. If it hadn't been for me, you never would have been in that accident that killed Noah." Alejo's heart hurt. "You would never have been anywhere near Evin Prison. I don't want to live like this anymore. I can't live like this anymore. After you are safe from Marquez, I'm done."

Wara's mouth opened then closed like a trap. Pain stamped itself all over her face. After the stress of today, her shoulders must be aching. Alejo weighed a good 190 and Wara had dragged him down the hallway and out onto the street.

"So you're saying Lázaro is the last loose end to tie up. And then you're leaving CI?" The way she said
Lázaro
made Alejo ball one fist into his thigh. The pained expression on her face was because they were talking about killing Marquez.

"That's what I want," Alejo told her.

"I…can't believe it."

"That I am sick to death of violence? Or that that sick bastard let us go and I'm still talking about taking him out?" His voice came out calm as the sea, but inside he was a volcano. Alejo felt his fist clench so tightly his fingers started to tingle.

Wara was glaring. "I can't believe you're talking about leaving CI. I just…didn't expect that. At all." Her jaw was all square and angry. "And I totally understand why you're ready to blow Lázaro's brains out," she snapped. "We have a…history. But I can't change that."

Alejo threw his hands up into the air. The heat of the volcano had reached his face and he felt lava burning the tips of his ears.

"Damn it, Wara!" he hissed at her. He felt his breath coming in puffs of smoke.

Seriously? She thought he was
jealous?

"I'm not talking about offing Lázaro Marquez because you
slept
with him! I want him dead because he tried to kill you! And this isn't going to end until he does kill you, or I take him out first."

Alejo felt his chest heaving. He didn’t remember when the last time he had yelled at Wara was. She was still glowering at him, a wet, shiny swatch painted across her eyelashes.

They sat there staring at each other with narrowed eyes, breathing hard. Alejo had no idea how much time went by. Finally, Wara swiped at each of her eyes with her sleeve. She pulled her knees up into her chest and clunked her head back into the couch.

"I understand," she said. "I just didn't expect you to say that about CI. But I really, really understand." Her voice dropped to something scratchy. "And I'm really glad you're here. Thank you."

The heat in his face had finally died down. Alejo heard her thank him for being here, supposedly to protect her, and he felt the words stab him, sharp and hot.

Today Lázaro could have killed them. Alejo hadn't been able to protect her.

To keep Marquez from killing Wara next time, or taking her away for whatever his whacked purposes might be, Alejo was going to have to take him out.

There was no other solution.