Prism - By Rachel Moschell Page 0,46

cleaned blood from her face while she was sleeping? The thought made her frown. She just lay there, slumped into the straw, not knowing what exactly she was allowed to ask in the presence of a terrorist who was also the brother of her best friend. How did she address the man who had broken her nose and then saved her life? Wara found she didn’t care anymore; everything had become much too confusing.

“So, who are you?” she finally asked, slowly working her way over onto her back. A painful blush spread across her face as the memory of Alejo kissing her in the tent played across her mind. She supposed it was part of his lovely escape plan, but she still didn’t like thinking about it at all. “You have a handler? Are you, like, a hit man?”

Sitting cross-legged next to her, Alejo snorted, a frustrated, annoyed kind of sound. “No, I’m not a ‘hit man’! I work for a Muslim organization that works for justice by fighting against the bad guys, Wara.”

“But you have a Bible. A really big one. Do you even read that thing?”

Of course he didn’t read it. He was a Muslim. And a murderer.

We fight against the bad guys, Wara, Alejo had said.

Well, Wara was pretty sure Nazaret’s brother was confused about the definition of “bad guy.”

Alejo sighed and pressed his lips together. “I’m not a Muslim anymore,” he finally said. Wara glanced at him, blinking away the confusion. Alejo looked away at the wooden truck slats. “I was, but now I’ve decided to follow Jesus”

Wara didn’t think she could have been more shocked if he had proposed marriage right then and there. This guy was a nutcase!

“How can you follow Jesus and…go around killing people?” she demanded. She tried to scoff, but the effort just hurt her nose. She settled for scowling at him.

Alejo turned towards her sharply. “We don’t just go around killing people. I have high-level training from Hezbollah’s militant wing, and I take advantage of that to get rid of the guys who hurt the poor and oppressed. I do things that I know are wrong, but it’s worse, Wara, to just sit around and do nothing while you watch innocent people suffer. We’re not terrorists.”

Wara wasn’t convinced. “So you follow Jesus by killing people.”

Alejo cut her off. “A couple weeks ago, my good friend Gabriel was robbed and they slit his throat. A few seconds later, a Pakistani man came along and found him lying there. He could have just left him alone—it was really inconvenient for him to help. But he did help him and he saved Gabriel’s life, like in the story Jesus told about the Samaritan.” Alejo played absently with the fringe on a canvas bag of oranges that was part of the truck’s cargo. “What if that Pakistani guy had come along while Gabriel was still being attacked? Should he, or the Good Samaritan, have just politely stepped aside and waited until the thieves finished, before stepping up to see if the victim was still alive and they could help? Or if they were stronger than the thieves and had a gun, should they have saved the man from being robbed and nearly killed in the first place?”

Wara frowned, remembering Gabriel with the friendly green eyes who had taken her down to the creek and how he had one hand to his throat as he watched them about to kill Wara.

“Jesus said to love your enemies,” she finally managed. No matter how much using violence seemed to be justified, the results could never be worth it, could they? What about Noah?

“I know.” Alejo was still frowning darkly. “But he also said he came to set the captives free, and to show love to everyone. As horrible as it is, sometimes those two commands just can’t both happen at the same time.”

Alejo was morosely silent for a moment, and Wara squinted up into the streaked sky. They were driving under the leafy branches of clustered palm trees now, and the sunlight flashed onto her face, then disappeared behind the temporary shade of their latticed leaves.

He could have killed me, but instead he saved my life, Wara realized. She would like to think Alejo was just insane, but some of what he said made sense. She just lay there, squinting against the bright sky, trying not to think about how much everything hurt.

“What about you?” she finally asked to break the unpleasant silence. “You were in charge.