Later: she was in his arms on the velvet couch while a sugar cookie candle burned on the coffee table.
“I can’t believe this!" Wara felt herself heave and she planted both palms on the mottled wood of the desk. She watched dazed as Lázaro flicked the syringe cap onto the floor and wiggled the needle into a vein on his forearm. Glassy blood beaded where the needle pierced his skin. "What happened to you?" she rasped. "How could this happen?"
This was the worst day of her life.
And Lázaro was just standing there in front of her, shooting up God knows what.
He pushed the stuff into his arm, eyes practically rolling back in his head as it hit his bloodstream. After twenty very long seconds, Lázaro yanked the needle out of his vein and tossed the entire syringe into a metal trashcan next to the door. Glass pinged against metal and Lázaro ran his tongue along his lower lip.
"God. Well, my day just got a little better."
Wara blinked back tears, still finding it way too hard to reconcile the guy in front of her with someone who had been her friend for a month, who had spent the night on her couch.
Lázaro was breathing slower, standing much straighter than a few minutes ago. He walked jauntily over to the desk, swung himself onto a wooden chair backwards and propped his hands under his chin, looking up at Wara with eyes bright like copper pennies.
"I don't want to stay here anymore,” Wara told him. She was still breathing raggedly and leaning one hip into the desk to keep her knees from shaking. “Unless you have an army of guard dogs or evil henchmen out in your patio, I'm leaving now. From your video, it looks like about twenty feet across your yard to the gate. I bet I can outrun you. Unless you plan to just shoot me. Call your boss back right now and trade my corpse in for more drugs."
Wara blinked. What was she talking about? The words sounded awful.
Lázaro's gaze had wandered to the antler lamp. His eyes jerked back to her. The half-dreamy glint was gone, replaced with irritation. "Oh no, dear. If I presented the boss with your body now, he'd know I've been lying to him. That wouldn't do. Besides, I don't think you've been listening to a word I've said. I'm desperate."
Wara shuddered at the feral gleam in Lázaro's eye. He was on his feet in an instant and the chair crashed against the desk as Lázaro grabbed both of Wara's forearms, pinning her to the wood. Pain streaked up to her shoulders, radiating from Lázaro’s fingers digging into her flesh. Wara was too stunned to even pull away.
"I am tired," Lázaro said fiercely. "Just plain tired. Do you have any idea what it’s like to live like an animal, doing whatever 'they' tell me to do, without any idea who I am or what I believe in?"
Hot streaks of pain ran all the way up Wara's arms and into the marrow of her bones. She tried to yank her arms away, but Lázaro was totally unyielding. "Believe me, dear," he said, "you think you know who I am, but you have no idea. I have the power to keep terrible things from happening, to Boyfriend and a lot of people in Timbuktu who just want to help.
Lázaro's face was hard as he released Wara's arms and threw himself back from the desk. "That, my dear, is why you won't try to run away from here, bash my brains in, or any such thing that might occur to your pretty little head. Even though you could, theoretically, outrun me."
Wara rubbed her arms and dropped back into the armchair behind the desk. Her heart was slamming into her chest. Lázaro marched around the desk and Wara tried not to cringe. He stabbed at one of the screens, brought up some security camera footage.
"There we are," he clipped. "Do you know what you're looking at?"
Nothing was looking familiar. It didn’t seem to be the scenes of this house that Wara had seen earlier.
But one of the guys standing in some random hallway looked very familiar. It was Alejo, dressed in khakis and a long-sleeved t-shirt under a body armor vest. Wara gasped, loud and hoarse.
"This is live," Lázaro frowned at her. "Maybe a ten second delay. This is the Baptist Mission House where Boyfriend and his team are staying."
Wara felt the blood drain out of her head. It was the mission house. She recognized those Rubbermaid containers in the hallway, the black plastic bags stuffed full of junk.
"This is where I work, too," Lázaro said. "For Tsarnev. In Timbuktu."
It kept getting worse and worse. Lázaro hadn’t just shown up in Mali to bag Wara? Rupert and Alejo thought they were luring Lázaro to Timbuktu to take him out, but Lázaro knew the city all along.
Because he worked for Alexei Tsarnev. And of course, Tsarnev worked in the area of Timbuktu.
“How did you…get this?” Wara croaked. How could Lázaro just have video feed inside the mission house and no one even realize it? Lalo’s team and Amadou had been scouring the streets for any sign of Lázaro in Timbuktu.
“You have no idea who I am,” Lázaro clipped at her. “But by now your friends do. The night you were taken, dear, Hannibal Czako permanently disappeared.”
It took Wara much too long to process this. Then she felt her jaw sag in shock.
“Yes, that was me.” Lázaro raised an eyebrow at her. “I have access to everything. Tsarnev, leader of AQIM in the region. Your friends. And them.” Lázaro grunted and stabbed at the screen, changing the video feed. Wara found herself blinking at a room full of school-age Malian children, sprawled two to a bed on metal cots. There were IV bags hanging from hooks on the wall and bedpans on the floor by the beds. A plump lady in a large-print dress bustled around wearing a tri-corned nurse’s hat.
The Timbuktu hospital.
“I saw your face when you came back to the mission compound after visiting them the day you arrived,” Lázaro said. Wara still couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that Hannibal the security guard was Lázaro Marquez in disguise. He must have made his skin paler with makeup, worn blue contacts. The security guard had not looked anything like Lázaro.
She remembered Hannibal wearing a scarf and gloves, like a lot of foreigners did in the desert to keep out the sand. The extra clothes would have covered up the scars. Wara hadn’t paid much attention to Hannibal, but now that she thought about it, he had walked a little unsteadily.
None of them had realized it.
Lázaro had been there in Timbuktu, all along.
And he had everything under surveillance, would have heard Lalo’s team talking about Wara arriving. He knew even before Wara bought the plane tickets and applied for the visa.
“I’m sure Boyfriend told you about the day the school went up in flames last week.” Lázaro went on over Wara’s confusion. He paused and narrowed his eyes at the screen. "I planted the bomb."
Wara's mouth drained itself dry as a desert before she could even process the words. She reeled back, thumped her head against the hard stuffing of the chair back.
"Too many of the kids survived," Lázaro went on. "The second screw up Tsarnev orders me to fix. Along with killing you, I’m supposed to get right on that. Back in Timbuktu, on the double."
He must have seen Wara gaping at the screen, mouth opening and closing like a strangling fish.
"Listen," Lázaro was trying to get her attention, still twitching happily from his cocktail of drugs. "I. Don't. Like. Killing kids." He heaved a dramatic sigh and drew back from the desk, frowning. "Why do you think I came after you? Gave you a chance to help me remember instead of buying myself more happy drugs with your life?" He raised an eyebrow at her.
There was nothing to say.
Alejo had been devastated when the kids he was supposed to be protecting had died in the explosion. She knew it had killed Alejo inside to see the survivors in pain in the hospital.
She was staring at the living kids from the Christian school now on Lázaro's screen. And she was here with the murderer of the children who didn't make it. Helping him.
"I have another bomb ready to go at the hospital,” Lázaro said crisply. “Ready to fix another one of my mistakes, so Tsarnev will give me what I need. I don’t even need to go back to activate it. If
I don’t enter the security code through my phone every four hours, the thing will blow. Immediately. So don’t even think about trying to take me out like Boyfriend did. You wouldn’t want those cute kids to get barbequed.”
Wara felt herself gag, slapped one palm over her mouth and buckled over, trying not to vomit.
Lázaro looked away. "I'm pretty sure I'm not the kind of person to worry my pretty little head for very long about doing what Tsarnev wants, despite Just As I am and walking down the church aisle to get born again. In the end, who cares about a bunch of skinny kids from Africa? If it's not me putting them out of their misery, it'll be some nasty African parasite or AQIM when they break into the city and I guarantee you, my way will probably be much quicker. But what if I'm the kind of person who would just walk away?"
Lázaro's voice faded to quiet. Wara watched his hollow eyes trace circles around the shadows the lamp light was throwing onto the jade and pink pattern of the rug.
She was not going to feel sorry for him.
The guy. Killed. Kids.
She felt so sick she didn't think she could stand it anymore.
"Please let me go," she whispered. It was all she could do to keep that fig and water down in her gut. "I don't think I can help you remember anymore."
"Oh, no.” Lázaro’s eyes burned at her. “As soon as you’ve told me what I want to know, the two of us are traveling to Timbuktu. Just like I told the boss. I have work to do there, you see. I can see you want to kill me, but remember that I have the power to keep things from happening, to people you care about who are out there in Timbuktu, just trying to help. To those nameless black kids who asked Jesus into their hearts so they could go to heaven. I don't want to be an animal anymore, so help me God. But if you don't cooperate with me, dear, I will make them all suffer."
Lázaro rolled his sleeve down slowly and precisely, concealing the bloody pinprick where he'd shot himself up with experimental drugs. "I'll give you some time to think about it,” he said, walking towards the door. “Dinner's on the roof at eight. I have more questions." He twisted back to face her in the open doorway, arms spread out to each side like a human scale. "Help me, or death. Help me, death for cute little kids. Help me, or Trigger-Happy Boyfriend and I meet again."
Lázaro stalked out the door, slamming it behind him.
Piranhas
LALO THOUGHT ALEJO COULD FORGIVE HER.
Alejo just sat there blinking at him as Maria came into the room and clinked little cups of tea onto the heavy chest at the center of the living room. Amadou was still sitting on the couch opposite Alejo and Lalo, flipping through pictures on his cell phone.
Alejo reached for a cup of tea and sat there in a daze as people talked around him.
His hand jerked on his knee and almost flipped tea onto the floor when Amadou loudly announced, “I knew it! I knew it was him!” Amadou leaned forward onto his knees, eyes like saucers. “Everything was so crazy that day. I didn’t even think of it until now.” Amadou saw the guys looking at him like he was nuts and shook his head. “I heard you talking about Wara just now, and I got out my pictures. I wanted to see the photo of the man who took her.”
Amadou flipped his cell around. Piranhas ripped through Alejo’s gut as he saw Lázaro, the picture they’d passed out to everyone so they could keep an eye out for the assassin.
It was Lázaro’s visa picture, back when he was twenty-something and studying in Bolivia.
Alejo blanched and tried not to upchuck his lunch. “Why are we looking at that guy’s picture?” He felt like smashing Amadou’s phone just to get rid of Lázaro’s college-student smile, but that would just be mean.
Amadou pushed the gold glasses up on his nose and wiggled the picture at the other two guys. “No one saw this man in Timbuktu, because he was disguised as Hannibal. He also looks different because of the burns. But I’ve seen him before. Looking like this.”
Alejo blinked. “When?”
“The day someone planted a bomb in the school the first time, a year ago. When the children escaped.”
Alejo felt his belly start to roil.
“I only saw his face for a few seconds,” Amadou said. “I was fixing something in the patio when he ran out of the school, yelling to get the kids out, that there was a bomb. He ran back inside.” Amadou poked the picture of Lázaro and dented half his face in. “Amy and I got all the kids outside in time. The school building exploded.”
“Damn,” Lalo winced.
“You’re sure?” Alejo asked.
“Yes!” Amadou said firmly. “As you can imagine, that was a traumatic day. I didn’t remember his face…until now. I only saw him looking like he did in this picture for a few seconds.”
“What do you mean?” Alejo asked.
“He was inside when the school went up in flames. My wife, Amy…she pulled him out to safety. Her own clothes caught on fire and she had to roll on the ground to put out the flames. We thought he was dead because he was so covered in burns. Everything was so confusing with the children running around. When we came back a few minutes later, the body was gone.”
The burns.
Lalo looked at Alejo. “It was Lázaro. He put the bomb there in the first place.”
Alejo felt his fist clench into an iron ball. “And he screwed it up. They sent him back to finish the job last week.”
“He must be working for Tsarnev.” Lalo realized. “Tsarnev was there. Alejo, you saw him.”
Alexei Tsarnev and Lázaro were working together. Tsarnev ordered Amy’s death that day.
Amy risked her life to pull Lázaro out of the burning building, and he was a part of her death.
Lázaro burned all those children alive.
The heat in Alejo’s belly was unbearable.
Wara was alone with Lázaro, wearing verses of love that Alejo had painted onto her foot.
Love is stronger than death.
But maybe it wasn’t.
Alejo closed his eyes and clamped a hand onto Lalo’s arm.
“I don’t want to just let her go,” he said. “But I think it’s too late.”
Taste
AFTER THE HORRIFIC CONVERSATION IN Lázaro’s office, Wara supposed no one would blame her if she went upstairs, sat on the bed, and acted catatonic for a while. She sat there on the fat comforter, cross-legged and barefoot, staring at the darkness outside the window.
Lázaro really was a killer, who seemed to have lost his soul.
And she could have killed Alejo.
Because when it came down to it, she couldn’t let Lázaro die.
What did that say about her?
Not near enough time went by before she heard a thump on the door to her room. There wasn’t a lock, and Lázaro swung the door open and regarded her.
“There’s a Malian lady who works here. Madonna.”
Wara blinked out of her daze at the sound of Lázaro’s voice.
“She made some dinner for us,” he said. “Up on the roof. You and I have a lot more to talk about. Madonna is the only person besides you and I in this house, and don’t even think about trying to get her to help you escape. I pay her too well.”
Wara crawled to the edge of the bed and slid down onto the tiles. They were freezing. She felt herself start to shiver.
“Plus,” Lázaro rambled on, leaning against the doorframe, “I think she has a crush on me. Some women just never learned the meaning of good taste.”
“Do you, by any chance, have any sandals I can wear?” Wara croaked.
Lázaro’s eyes drifted to her bare feet. “Sorry,” he said, still posing there in the doorway. “The dresser there has clothes that should fit you, and the bottom right drawer has some shoes. I hope they’ll be alright.”
Wara suddenly felt so far, far away from home. She had been dragged across the Sahara with only the clothes on her back, barefoot, and was now very, very lost.
She was here because she chose to be, like the son in that story Jesus told who ran away from his fa
mily and home, where he was safe.
“Thank you,” she told Lázaro. She walked over to the squatty little dresser and wiggled open the drawer to find shoes and sandals, all lined up in pairs. There was even a pile of socks in one corner. “Where did you get this stuff?” She didn’t look back at Lázaro, but sensed he was still in the doorframe and wasn’t gonna leave without her.
“I sometimes have visitors,” he said. “And other people stay here who work with Tsarnev. Feel free to use anything you want.”
Amazingly, the drawer actually held a very cool pair of sparkly red Converse tennis. They were only a half size too big, and just like something Wara would have bought herself at the Goodwill. She sat down on the floor and put the Converses on with socks, then opened the top drawer. There was a gray fleece pea coat in there that she put on over her black tank. Wara grabbed a white baseball cap with a red rose in sequins and covered up her hair with it.
“Ok. Let’s go,” she told Lázaro. He led her through a narrow door off the hall next to her room, which had been locked before. They climbed up a dark flight of stairs that led to a little open rooftop patio, fenced in by a low concrete wall and gray, lifeless buildings that melded with the night sky. A battered wood table and chairs were waiting for them, all set with plates and wine glasses and steaming dishes of food. Someone had even lit a buttercup-colored candle in a glass jar, and Wara wrinkled her nose at it. The candle smelled like a scorched lemon cake.
At least Lázaro hadn’t come to fetch her for dinner with some long black evening gown he insisted she put on. Scenes from Indiana Jones and Beauty and the Beast played through her head. At that point Wara probably would have just hurled herself through the bedroom window and into the darkness below.
“Well, have a seat.” Lázaro was raising an eyebrow at her. “I’ve been very patient. I hope you’re had time to think over what I said.”
About cooperating, helping him remember.
She was here. She’d already made that choice.
Burn (Story of CI #3) Page 21