Free Burn (Story of CI #3) by Rachel Moschell Page A

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 hellish. "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