Burn (Story of CI #3) by Rachel Moschell

his head.
    Lalo left Johnny crisping red at the gate and loped down the dusty street towards the remains of the school. It was a bright day with a sapphire-colored sky, flecked with stringy white clouds. Breakfast had been good: milky tea and scrambled eggs with some blueberry muffins that Anne, the skinny missionary lady with butt-length red hair, had somehow made out here at the edge of the Sahara.
    The missionaries were letting Lalo and his team stay at the compound, now that everything was burned at the school and there were no kids to protect there anyway. Caspian was over at the hospital in case the bastards who attacked the school decided to get near the kids again. It would be good when Alejo got back here, with Cail and Wara Cadogan as reinforcements.
    It was gonna be hard for Alejo, though. No one would talk about it, say anything that would make him feel worse. But it was gonna be hard.
    In the run-down hospital in the center of Timbuktu, seventeen kids were in agony from varying degrees of burns. There weren't enough beds in the place, so most of them were sleeping on blankets on the floor. Lalo passed by the blackened gate of the Christian school and lowered his eyes.
    Four very hot blocks later, Lalo banged on the door of Amadou's family home. He and Amy had lived in the little room at the school when class was in session, helping out teaching and acting as dorm parents to the kids. The house that had belonged to Amadou's family for seven centuries was deep red adobe, set with three square windows with summer green wood frames.
    No one was coming.
    Lalo squinted into the white sun, checked out the empty street on either side of the house, and rapped on the metal door again. The heat of the metal nearly par-broiled the skin off his knuckles. Sweat was pouring down Lalo’s chest inside the vest.
    Thank God, the door scraped open and Amadou's toffee-colored face appeared in the crack. A scraggly salt-and-pepper beard marred his chin, blanketing the barely-healed gash where Tsarnev had hit him when Amadou tried to defend his wife. Amadou's eyes shone against his skin, bright red.
    "I came so we could walk over there together," Lalo told him. In the ten blocks since he'd left the mission compound, the sun had already begun to cook its way through Angry Birds’ long sleeves. It was tempting to step inside. Lalo could make out long patches of shadow in Amadou's tiled entryway, but he knew if he went in the house, Amadou might never leave. Lalo could see the man's eyes already round in alarm, bloodshot and tortured. Amadou would never be the same again.
    "Come on," Lalo said. "The kids will want to see you."
    Amadou squeezed his eyes shut, then finally nodded. He walked out into the street in red plastic flip-flops, Sponge Bob pajama pants and a stained white dress shirt. Lalo took the heavy ring of keys from Amadou's hand and locked the padlock on the ancient metal door of the house. Then he put an arm around Amadou's shoulder and they shuffled through pebbles and dust down the lonely street towards the hospital.
    They made the rounds of the hospital, and Amadou held up admirably. Several little faces practically glowed when they saw their school director. Lalo felt peace when Amadou actually decided to stay longer, holding the hand of one rail-thin little girl lost inside a wool blanket on the tiles.
    The sun was blazing overhead and the pebbles on the road outside the hospital fairly sizzled in the heat. It was probably about ten. Soon Lalo would send Caspian back to the compound to get some rest. But first, he just needed a second. Lalo cleared his throat to dislodge the lump and made it across the street to a boulder in an inviting patch of shade.
    The shade was delicious. Lalo leaned back against the adobe wall and dialed Cail.
    It would be awesome to hear her voice.
    He enjoyed working with the guys on his team, Alejo and Caspian. But he and Cail understood each other.
    "So Cail," he said when she answered her