Had she really been so much like this, years ago? It seemed like another life.
Faith finally called her and the cheery ring of an incoming Skype call bounced around the room. "Hey." Cail gazed into the webcam, cocking her head to one side. She fidgeted a bit, remembering the rose tattoo across her neck and collar bone. "The kids let you have a minute of peace?"
"Oh. Gosh." Faith looked pale and bedraggled. Despite turtlenecks being out of style for a couple decades, she had still managed to hold on to a bubble-gum pink one. The thing looked like it had been thrown into the basket from the dryer and then sat for weeks without being folded. A chocolate splotch on the left shoulder looked suspiciously like poop.
"Yeah, Abigail feel asleep," Faith huffed. "The boys are watching a movie about the Civil War, all snuggled up in their pajamas." She blew out a long breath and tried to smile into the camera. "They're such a blessing. And by the way, have you talked with mom recently?"
Cail frowned and shook her head. Uh, no. Not in months.
"We're having number six. In January. We didn't want to tell anyone until we were a little farther along."
"Oh. Wow. Congratulations." Cail felt her eyes widen. Her nieces and nephews were adorable. But she had absolutely no idea who was who. There were just so many, and it had been a long time since Cail had been back in Nebraska. She wasn't sure she could name all of Faith's boys.
That was sad. Maybe she could make some kind of list and memorize it or something. Faith was still talking on the screen, flopped back against the leather couch in her sad pink turtleneck. Now that Faith had mentioned the pregnancy, the bulge at the bottom of the pink top was pretty obvious. In the background, cannon shots echoed through Faith's living room. The Civil War movie.
"So, Mom and Dad have been, like, so busy," Faith sighed. "Last week was the revival meeting where they always preach. It was the home school conference, too. Matt and I got to man the courtship booth."
"That sounds fun." Cail cleared her throat.
She still remembered all those books she had read about courtship. No dating, but when the guy is interested in you he can call up your dad and ask permission to marry you. Then the guy gets to hang out with the dad so they can get to know each other. If the dad approves of the guy, guy and girl get married.
Cail hadn't actually gone through the whole experience, thank God. There hadn't been an abundance of interested males lurking around, waiting to spend Friday nights in serious chit-chat with her dad, pastor of the church and father of fourteen.
For the life of her, Cail couldn't think what to say. She hadn't had a date in a decade. They talked a little more about cute stuff the kids were up to, and then Cail said goodbye, still thinking about her parents.
Dad and Mom would be really busy right now because, now that Faith had reminded her, it was that time of year again. The Revival. And after that always came the Annual Homeschool Conference.
It would be nice to use all that stuff as an excuse not to call, but she had found some excuse or another to not talk with her parents for the past four months. With a slow groan, Cail dialed their home telephone from Skype. Between talking with her family and seeing Jonah again, her emotions were going way too much into the past. Cail felt the anxiety hugging her ribcage like an iron corset.
MAYBE YOU SHOULD PRAY ABOUT THIS, her obsessive compulsive disorder insisted very loudly. ASK GOD TO BLESS THE CONVERSATION.
She knew it was just her mental illness talking, because the whole idea felt so awful. So urgent. Cail used to think that feeling was God talking to her, but there came a point where she decided that if God's voice felt so awful, she couldn't stand to listen.
It wasn't God, as things turned out. It was an anxiety disorder, and if she let herself dwell on those thoughts, the OCD would take over. She would have to go back on the pills.
Cail felt her fingers trembling against the smooth black plastic of her tablet. She propped her knees up a little higher and tried to smile into the screen, then remembered that when her parents answered they wouldn't be able to see her because she was calling their landline.
"Hello?" Mom's voice came on the line, thousands of miles away in Nebraska. For the first few minutes, Cail couldn’t concentrate. She knew she asked her mom about the Revival and her garden, and Mom said something about the weather. Cail did her best to focus despite the panic that tried to convince her something was very wrong and she needed to do something about it.
The whole thing made her feel very, very tired.
She was finally beginning to calm down when Mom cleared her throat. "Honey," she said, "your father and I are still very concerned."
Cail could picture her mother perched on that rickety stool by the kitchen counter, classic homeschool mom in a dated jean skirt and cardigan, graying brown hair down her back in a braid. Her face was broad and set with blue-gray eyes. Cail's mom pastored the church Cail grew up in, right along with her dad. She could only preach in a headcovering, though, if Cail's dad was standing next to her to give her the spiritual authority.
Cail's mom was still mad that Cail didn't live at home.
"Mom, I'm thirty-four." Cail frowned at the glinting screen of her tablet. Girls in their church were not supposed to go to college or work outside of the home. Why did you need a college education if God's will was for you to cook from scratch and raise lots of kids you gave birth to in your own bedroom? Girls were supposed to stay under their father's authority, living at home, until they got married.
"But your father and I have had a vision," Mom said.
"Again?" Cail squeezed her eyes shut against the hurt in her chest.
"God had a special calling for you, Cail Chastity, and we are concerned that you have forgotten that. God spoke to you."
"I was influenced by a mental illness, Mom. It wasn't God. It was craziness."
She could imagine her mother wincing heavily at this. "Honey, that's the devil that wants to plant doubt in your heart. You had a calling, and it was from God."
"Mom!" Cail heard her voice strained, much louder than she had planned. "I thought God called me to be the one who fatally shoots the Antichrist in the head!" She felt hysterical. And sick.
"And now you've forgotten,” Mom sighed. “But your father and I believe that God is still waiting, Cail. His word never changes. Look at how Jonah is still single. God told us you would marry him."
Cail fought a chocking noise. "Mom, I…" She just didn't know what to say. She had planned to talk about her mom's herb garden and the weather. But this was killing her.
It was only a matter of time before her mom heard from the Jones'. They didn't go to the same church anymore, but Cail was sure her parents were going to find out she had seen Jonah in Morocco. In their small town, it might be the gossip of the year.
Jonah's sister was probably already spreading the news.
"Mom, I have to go." She didn't want to pick a fight, but she couldn't talk about this anymore because it was making her feel like fire ants were snapping their jaws at every single one of her nerve endings. Cail dug her fingers into her temple, fighting off the shivers.
"You're in Africa now, right honey?"
"Yeppers." Right now, she wished she was in the same part of Africa as Lalo. Lalo knew about all this stuff from the past. She really wished she could talk with him. "The headquarters in Morocco. But I'll be working with a new project soon."
Cail's parents thought she spent most of her time teaching kids to read and teaching English and stuff like that with an educational charity called CI. Well, she did spend some time doing that. Of course her parents wished she were handing out gospel tracts instead of doing social work, but they had long ago realized that their backslidden daughter wasn't gonna change any time soon. So Mom just made sure all her church friends had Cail's name on their urgent prayers lists.
"Well,” Cail’s mom said, “let us know now when you find out where you're going next. Your father hopes you stay far away from those Muslim count
ries. My spirit tells me there's a confrontation coming soon, and we all know who is going to be on the winning side. God's people, Cail. Not them."
Yes, Cail remembered how things were gonna go down. The whole world was going to hell at Armageddon, and the United States and others who allied with Israel would be on Jesus' side. Everyone else was getting pulverized.
Cail found herself perversely glad for a moment that she couldn't remember when her supposed moment of taking out the Antichrist was going to happen: Before Armageddon or After.
It didn't really matter anyway, because the guy recovers. From the fatal head wound. The book of Revelations laid it all out.
The only good part was when Jesus came on his white horse, riding to war with tattooed thigh.
"Well, Mom, I'd better get going," Cail sighed at her desktop photo of downtown Rabat, sprawling white buildings and neon lights and mosque towers snaking above the horizon. "Tell Dad hi from me."
Rupert found her on the firing range at the back of the property, firing rounds in a rage with her Remington under the darkened pines. The shots echoed off the trees behind Rupert's house with eerie precision, slamming into the tin cans lined up along the old brick wall. She could hear the blasts, even over the beat of Muse turned up all the way on her IPod: “You’ll burn in he-ell, you’ll burn in he-ell for your sins…”
Everyone in CI knew Cail was an excellent shot. Even now, reeling as she was from the conversation with her mother, Cail's hands were steady and deadly on the Remington.
But inside, she was shaking like a druggie on crack.
"Cail." Rupert's gravelly voice cut through the semi-darkness after she blew the last can off the brick wall and into oblivion.
She was amazed she could hear him over Muse, too.
"What?" She jerked the weapon from her shoulder and turned her head towards him, ripping out the ear buds. Her uncle wore a beat-up John Deere baseball cap over thinning hair the color of beer. He had on his preferred uniform of faded Wranglers and a tucked in flannel. Uncle Rupert had lost weight, she noted then, while Cail was on assignment in Rabat. He still had that paunch that came from sitting behind a desk after hitting fifty and leaving behind work in the field with the CIA. But Rupert's shoulders were thinner and his cheeks looked a bit more hollow.
He was standing there beside her, raising a bushy brown eyebrow at Cail. "Rough call?”
Cail lowered the rifle and suppressed a wail. “You have no idea.”
It was good to see Uncle Rupert after that yucky phone call. He’d taken care of her since she was twenty-one.
If she had gone back home, it would have been a disaster.
“That bad?”
Cail felt her bony shoulders slump forward and she stared at the ground. "Yes. Totally that bad. She’s still having visions of me and Jonah and those eight grandchildren we are supposed to give her. And the end of the world. Oh, and she's still pissed I don't live at home and help her crochet doilies and can peaches." Cail grinned, raising her eyes to meet Rupert's.
"Well, everyone can dream." Rupert gave her a lopsided smile and hooked his thumbs through the loops of his cowboy-buckle belt. Cail almost got up the nerve to tell him about Jonah and the near-knifing at the hostel but couldn't quite talk about it yet. It was embarrassing as hell and she still couldn't get herself to say Jonah's name out loud after all these years.
Rupert walked closer to her and they both sank down on a couple boulders under the pines. “Maybe it’s time to sleep it off til tomorrow. We can talk more then.”
Cail's stomach flip-flopped like a dying fish and she fought being sick. Tomorrow they needed to get everything ready for the trip to Timbuktu the following day. Tomorrow was also her reunion meeting with Jonah. He had called her cell earlier this afternoon to see if she wanted to get together and do lunch…with him and his fiancée.
It was all so unreal. Illusory.
“We have to hope Lázaro Marquez is gonna follow the trail to Timbuktu,” Rupert was saying. Then he frowned at the pines. “Wara won’t be safe until Marquez is taken out. Having Marquez after one of our own is a security risk for the whole organization, too. I want to ask Lalo to help us.”
Cail felt her entire expression sour. "You can't be serious."
Rupert looked away. Shadow fell over his face from the bill of his bright green cap, obscuring lines of age and stubble. "Listen," he said, "I wouldn't ask him if it weren't important."
Cail was already shaking her head. She couldn't believe Rupert would think of asking Lalo this. "He can't. You can't. It would be cruel."
Rupert was silent. Finally he said, "It's also cruel to let Wara live with this hit man after her. Eventually he's gonna find her. And if you knew what happened in Timbuktu, you'd understand that I can't just sit here and make Alejo watch while Lázaro hunts her down."
The burning of the school with the children inside had been nightmarish. What Lalo had told her was terrible. Of course Alejo was upset now that Wara was in danger. Cail knew he cared about her, followed her with eyes that alternated between sappy puppy love and a tiger guarding its prey. Alejo had already risked his life multiple times for Wara Cadogan.
"Are you implying I don't care about Wara?" Cail raised an eyebrow at Rupert, wondering if he was, on some level, right. Because here she was, angry at the idea of putting Lalo in danger when Wara, her friend and partner, had a very real assassin on her trail. And Lalo could help stop it. She knew he could.
But they couldn't let him.
"Of course not," Rupert scoffed. "This is just real life. Sometimes there is no perfect solution. There are horrible decisions to make. And someone has to make them."
Wara was her friend, maybe the best female friend Cail had ever had. Working together the last four months had actually been fun. She was not going to let this Marquez guy anywhere near her friend.
“Marquez is gonna take the bait,” Cail told Rupert. “He’ll come. And we’ll be waiting. We don’t need Lalo to find him.”
Rupert sighed. Cail bared her teeth in a smile. She did so love getting her way.
The fact that they would have to kill the guy after Wara was not nice, but like Rupert said, life was not perfect. Sometimes you had no choice and had to make the hard decisions.
Cail learned a long time ago that life isn't fair.
Tomorrow at noon she would face that cold fact yet again.
Jonah Jones and his fiancée and the past she had hoped to never see again.
The Eye
HE SLEPT AND HIS THOUGHTS WANDERED TO HER.
He would never dare to think of her while awake, to imagine the planes of her chocolate-colored face and deep amber eyes. But when Lalo Navarro slept, he dreamed of Romina and his heart went out to her, insisting to know if she was alright. He had to know where she was.
Tonight he almost saw her, gasped just short of the details of the pale blue dress she wore, her tight midnight curls whipping wildly in the wind. The scene remained unfocused, because he was just dreaming, not trying to see her, not really.
She was barefoot. He couldn't make out the background beyond strips of camel brown and blue. Sea and sky. Unfocused mounds of white rose up from the blue, sea caps ready to crash against the sand.
That is when he felt the fire.
Fear writhed through his body like a thousand threading maggots. His vision spiraled towards the fiery eye, blazing like an alien sun with pure evil at its center, like the eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings movies.
It was beyond nightmarish.
Romina was the only one who could ever make him forget the eye.
But he shouldn't have.
He really shouldn't have.
Lalo was so close to death he could feel the hot life pouring out of his nostrils, wafting towards the fiery orb with a slow, satisfied hiss.
Gagging as he felt breath leave him, Lalo fought with everything in him to pull back.
"I. See. You," the dark eye of fire chuckled at him, gravelly and hellis
h. "And I will take your life face to face."
Lalo woke up in bed, shaking but just sitting there, not making a peep. He sat there for a long time, arms wrapped around his knees, fighting the chills even though the room was like a sauna.
It was all a bad dream. Just a screwed-up dream.
Toasted termites with locally brewed moonshine before bed and all that. His intestines just weren't used to Timbuktu cuisine.
That was it.
Lalo felt the urge to gag as he sat there on the sagging mattress, still trembling. Minutes passed, and the screams from his nightmare had brought no one banging on the door of his room at the Baptist Mission Compound.
Apparently nightmares and screaming were common in this place.
Finally Lalo rolled off the bed to find a sweater. He was sleeping bare-chested, and goose-bumps rippled across his skin, jumping over the scarred ridges where the tattoos used to be. Lalo passed the triangle-shaped mirror on the wall, foggy in the humid night air.
The face that stared back at him wasn't handsome. Narrow hooked nose, brown eyes, close-cropped brown hair. He was tall, about six feet, lean and muscled.
Lalo had been born in Colombia and was fairly brown, so he assumed the woman who gave birth to him was Colombian. Nothing was for sure, though.
They had been beyond description, those tattoos, pure evil like the eye that always threatened to find him, awake or dreaming. His father had only tattooed him in places easily covered by clothing of course. Chest. Back. Upper thighs. Nothing that could be reported to child services on the rare occasion Lalo left the compound in Colombia to go to town.
After he'd saved up the money, it took Lalo a year to find someone willing to burn the tattoos off with laser. They had been that scary.
They had left a lot of scars.
With trembling hands, Lalo pulled on a sweater and lay back down on the bed. He stared at the moldy patterns on the mission ceiling and counted bloody mosquito remains splattered across the white-washed walls.
Burn (Story of CI #3) Page 6