Prism - By Rachel Moschell Page 0,65

so different from the other Martirs.

“Were you really good friends with all those guys I saw up there?” she asked.

Alejo dragged the wicker chair back to the corner and sat down, considering how much he was going to tell her. Finally he said, “Most of the guys that were there at first—the guys that carried you up from the road--were only there for the weekend, for training. I wasn’t only in charge of my team, but of training all the guys in most of South America. That’s why they’re going to be so mad.” That last sentence was muttered. “Four of the guys were on my team—we were like brothers. Gabriel, Stalin, Benjamin, and Lázaro. Well, not Lázaro. He’s new. But Gabriel and Benjamin and I shared a house together in Coroico. And Stalin and I have been friends for ten years.”

The memory hit her, leaving a sour taste in her mouth: Alejo worked with Lázaro. Back when she knew him, Lázaro had said he was a Christian. Wara did not even want to think how he had reached the point of becoming a radical Muslim who was about to cut her throat.

And she really didn’t want to talk with Alejo about it.

She wandered over to the bed and collapsed on it with slumped shoulders. She felt sick and weary to the bone. Wara twisted Noah’s silver ring on her finger, her only comfort in this awful place.

22

sickly pink

WARA WAS EXHAUSED. SHE WAS SUFFERING, and Alejo had done this to her.

He watched her, sitting there on the horrible bed in this place he’d brought her to, playing with a silver ring on her finger. Her eyes were ringed in dark circles, glazed over and in another world She shivered and absently scrubbed at her bare arms, trying to get warm.

Alejo’s heart hurt.

He got up and walked over to her backpack by the door and found a black sweater his mom’s friend had brought for Wara. “Its cold in here,” he offered it to her. It was dark outside now, chilly and menacing in the shadow of the darkened Andes. She looked into his eyes as he handed her the sweater and her face was bathed in red from gaudy chandelier. Her nose was a sickly violet and yellow, puffy under her reddened eyes. It had to hurt. A lot. Alejo closed his eyes slowly, then opened them. “I think we should try to rest.” He dragged his feet over to the couch. The ugly thing was three cushions wide, good enough for a decent night’s sleep. He curled up facing the wall and stuffed a small, hard red pillow under his head.

“Whenever you’re ready, you can turn out the lights,” he told Wara. “I can sleep anywhere, with lights or without, so don’t worry about me.”

As if she would. Alejo grimaced at the back of the couch. He had no idea what else to say. Wara switched off the light and covers rustled behind him, then everything fell silent.

Way too silent.

Suddenly, the horror of the day pressed into him with a vengeance and it hurt.

Franco Salazar was dead, and he couldn’t say he was sorry.

He believed what he’d told Wara, that he couldn’t just sit by and watch while thieves attacked the man in the story of the Good Samaritan…or while Franco Salazar abused kids. But he’d never really thought about other people who could be hurt in the middle of delivering justice to the bad guys.

He’d never laid eyes on Noah, but Alejo had seen his sister’s tears, heard how the guy played with his little brothers and sisters and made sure Nazaret got home safe late at night. For all Alejo knew, that silver ring Wara was always playing with was a gift from Noah. It was obvious she cared about him, a lot.

Always before, when Alejo killed, he had been sure the man who died was scum and deserved whatever he had coming to him. Now, for the first time, someone innocent had been taken out along with the bad.

Alejo knew the reason Wara’s presence was undoing him: she was the incarnation of a person simply caught in the crossfire. He felt guilty for the other innocent people on the bus, but he had never seen them. When he looked into Wara’s eyes and realized what he had done, there had been no going back.

The combination of leaving Islam, leaving the Prism, and trying to figure out why, if he had done God’s will, he could still