Burn (Story of CI #3) Read Online Free Page A

was ancient. Cail's passenger-side window was open, and the night air that rushed past Wara's cheek was cool and soaked in spices. Cail was staring out her window, eyes vacant, white and gold baseball cap pulled down low over her face. It took a lot to upset Cail, but she had been in another world since the embarrassing thing that happened with her old friend in the hostel yesterday.
    Wara had never known Cail to get so embarrassed over anything. Cail hadn’t even wanted to talk about it at all, but finally snapped out the bare-bones of the story.
    Now Wara was really wondering who this Jonah guy was. But one look at Cail's wary eyes was enough warning to leave it alone, so Wara just stuffed her curiosity.
    Wara had enough stressful things of her own to think about.
    Lázaro tried to kill her.
    He didn't remember who he was.
    She closed her eyes slowly, trying to steady herself in the coolness of the glass windowpane. The Land Cruiser's tires slowed their whine as the vehicle turned out of the city and onto the smoother highway that led to the airport.
    "My app says the flight's on time," Cail clipped from the front seat. Wara popped her eyes open. Cail had turned her ghostly stare from the window and was tapping at her phone. "He should have already landed. It’ll take him a while to get through customs, though. They always just have one or two people stamping passports for the whole freaking planeload of people arriving."
    Wara slowly let out a breath and glanced down at her faded Rock and Republic jeans, hoping no one would notice how stinking nervous she was here in the backseat. She'd been way too jittery getting dressed, and really, really annoyed to realize that fact. She finally just threw on a black shirt dress with the jeans, and her favorite sandals with little white shells around the ankles. Fez at night was still hot and muggy, so she'd pulled her shoulder-length hair back into a ponytail, clipped a few beaded pins from a craft market in Rabat at the sides. Her hair was now back to her original color, espresso brown, and she had it cut with messy bangs on one side.
    Before going to Rabat, she’d finally got laser eye surgery, and it was super cool to not have glasses anymore. She still had the gold star nose ring, though. Wara loved the nose ring, and it was probably gonna stay for a very long time.
    They pulled into the airport parking lot, and Wara realized she was rubbing a chipped nail against her jeans, trying to smooth out the jagged edge somehow before getting to the airport.
    This was ridiculous.
    But it had been four months. Four whole months since she had seen him.
    Alejo was here, probably sitting on the ground at the Fez airport right this moment. He came all the way from assignment in Mali to keep her safe from the crazy guy who wanted to kill her.
    And Alejo wasn’t just some guy she really liked and thought was cute. He’d gone into one of the worst prisons in the world to save her last year in Iran. There was no way she could ever forget that.
    Wara knit her hands together in her lap and made herself breathe. Rupert was tossing coins at the guy who collected tolls at the airport parking entrance. The clunky yellow barrier ground upward and Rupert accelerated through, jerked the vehicle to the right and halted in an empty parking space. Rupert turned to the backseat and gave Wara a knowing look that was just awkward.
    Alejo and Wara worked for Rupert, and it was obvious that the two of them were really attracted to each other. Rupert was the kind of guy who was totally not ashamed to make annoying jokes about love and marriage, having those six babies together and living happily ever after. Wara had pretty much gotten used to it during the months she lived at headquarters and was in training to work with CI. Training had been awesome, because Alejo was there too, teaching her things like how to pick a lock and get out of handcuffs and jump out of a window a couple stories up without breaking