Page 82 of Lash

Lorenzo laughs, clapping him on the shoulder. "I am sorry, my friend. It was the best I could do on such short notice."

Chance chuckles. "Nah, it’s fine. We'd be fucked without you. I'm just not as agile as I was back in the day."

"Who is? Time waits for no one." Lorenzo rolls his shoulder and flexes his leg. "Once upon a time, I would barely feel these. Now? I am not as invincible as I used to be."

One by one, we all climb into the back of the transport, Lorenzo driving and Kane up front with him.

It is a long, slow, winding journey through rolling hills, flat grasslands, wide fields, and patches of forest, gliding along paved highways and bouncing over rutted dirt tracks. Immediately outside of Brasilia, the traffic is thick, but the further south we go, the more rural the landscape and the fewer cars we pass.

Lorenzo consults a navigation app on his phone now and then—it cuts in and out of service as we pass through dead zones and areas of reception, but after about two hours we begin passing the occasional residence and other signs of habitation. And then suddenly we're at a crossroads, and Lorenzo seems stumped.

He picks a fork, and we end up in a…I'm not sure what to call it. A neighborhood? Sort of? Cobbled together houses, repaired and rebuilt endlessly, serviced by dirt roads and surrounded by scrubby yellow grass lawns, all of it nestled in the U of a dense forest, with a vast, flat, open savannah forming the open part of the U-shape.

Faces peer from windows, curious and wary. At one home, a hunched old man hobbles out, leaning on a cane, and glares daggers at us. Here, Lorenzo brakes to a squealing halt, leaves the engine idling with a noisy diesel clatter, and approaches the old man. They converse for a few minutes, the old man gesturing eastward with his cane. Lorenzo shakes the man's hand with a warm, grateful smile. As Lorenzo saunters with a slight limp back to the truck, I see the old man glance into his hand, and then shove that hand into his pocket.

"Alright, friends," Lorenzo says, climbing up to stand in the open door of the cab, addressing us all. "We have a lead. There’s a condo building east of here, and I am told that a young boy named Lorenzo lives there, or did recently."

Returning to the fork in the road, we take the opposite path. Although newer than the houses in the other area, the condo building is in serious need of repair. A yelling, screaming cluster of children ranging from toddlers to young teens ramble the sparse, yellow grass and dirt road around the condo building, kicking and chasing a football around. They don't seem to be playing a game by any rules that I can see beyond getting the ball and keeping it as long as possible.

Lorenzo parks the truck again and hops down—Solomon joins him, and together they spend a few minutes talking to the kids. As the conversation continues, Lorenzo, almost absently, toes the black-and-white checkered ball toward himself and skillfully juggles it from foot to knee to chest to head, turning it into a game of keep-away while he asks his questions. After a few minutes of this, he seems to have gleaned the information he seeks and gestures for us to follow him into the building. Kane shuts off the motor and we all pile out and follow Lorenzo. Inside, the floors are covered in thin, tattered, and stained blue carpet. It stinks horribly, as well, some miasma of indeterminate origin, and is sweltering hot. Lorenzo leads the way up the stairs to a unit at the far end of the third floor.

He scans the group and then gestures at me. "Will you accompany me, Tatiana? We need to present an unthreatening face. This will be an unexpected and frightening process, most likely, and you will lend warmth and openness. Everyone else is rather terrifying, for a young boy especially."

I shrug. "Alright. You will have to translate for me, though."

"Of course." He rests a friendly hand on my shoulder. "All I really need from you is to smile and be kind and reassuring and calm. I am an old soldier, Tatiana so my bearing is not always…approachable for women and young children. You are here to soften things a bit."

"Are you saying I'm not soft and approachable?" Scarlett asks, deadpan.

Lorenzo just laughs. "No, Scarla, you are not."

She covers the scarred side of her face with one hand. "How about now?"

Lorenzo snorts. "I think I will stick with Tatiana. The rest of you, keep watch. We cannot be sure Rafael's men will not arrive while we are here."

Lorenzo knocks on the door while everyone else takes up positions at the window, on the stairs, and at the doorway.

After a moment, Lorenzo and I hear locks scraping, and then the door swings open inward. On the other side is a woman about my age or perhaps a few years older. She has brown skin and black hair in a loose bun with blunt, squared-off bangs, large silver hoop earrings, and long, pink press-on nails. She's wearing cutoff denim shorts and a pale green tank top, her large breasts braless, and a bit of a belly. She is suspicious and wary.

Lorenzo addresses her in rapid Spanish, but all I can make out is the name Lorenzo Oliveira. The woman stares at him silently for a moment and then shuts the door.

Before the door closes all the way, Lorenzo says something that I think must be "Wait!" He pulls his phone from his pocket and brings up a photo—it actually looks like he took a picture of an actual printed photograph with his phone.

This time the woman does respond with a terse question; judging by her tone, she's asking what he wants. She points at the others visible from her place just inside her condo, asking another question.

Lorenzo answers, but she doesn't seem to find his answer satisfactory. She moves to shut the door on him again, and again he blocks it with his foot, speaking more forcefully this time.

Angry now, the woman snaps at him, shoving him and kicking at his foot simultaneously. Unfortunately for her,Lorenzo is huge and powerfully built, and he's wearing heavy boots while she's barefoot, so Lorenzo doesn't go anywhere, and she hops backward, hissing and dancing as she clutches at her toes, cursing at him.

"CONTACT!" I hear one of the men shout from the door of the building. "Three SUVs and a technical."

Lorenzo grabs me by the arm and shoves me into the woman's condo, yanking his pistol from the back of his waist. The woman is yelling, hauling on his arm, and gesticulating at me. When this doesn't work, she lets go and darts into her kitchen, emerging with a massive kitchen blade.

Lorenzo holds his hands out toward her, trying to placate her, but she ignores him, approaching him with the knife in a posture that suggests she's no novice to a knife fight.

Gunfire erupts then, coming from the front of the building—a burst of automatic weapons fire.

The woman screams, running to a back bedroom with the knife clutched in her hand. Lorenzo follows her, and I follow him. The apartment is low-ceilinged, with yellowing drywall and cheap laminate floor, a sliding glass door to a postage stamp balcony shedding the bright hot Brazilian sunlight. The bedroom is tiny, with a narrow bed, posters of famous Brazilian footballers on the wall and thin, dirty beige carpet on the floor. A boy of about ten sits on the floor at a mound of LEGOs. As his mother bursts in wielding a knife, he drops the pieces in his hand and stares at her.