He said nothing but I could feel him working it out from all angles.
“That is a very good idea,” Nicolina said. “It will be some time before Seraphina can fix the door.”
For an instant, it was just Evan and me locked in a moment of tense struggle—powerful, a little sexy—but I was determined to emerge as the woman on top. That was my thing. I tipped the scales by adding what I hoped as just a touch of wry humor: “And I’m Ms. Phoebe to you and don’t you forget it.”
13
The last thing I wanted was to return to that tunnel under any circumstance but I was so focused on retrieving what I needed, I would have tried walking over hot coals. Evan agreed to play guard dog only on the condition that I remained in contact with him every step of the way.
“If I detect any issues, anything at all, I’ll be through there in a shot,” he whispered as he fastened the flashlight he’d jiggered together onto my hood, “Ms. Phoebe.”
“Right,” I said, shrugging the strap of my plastic-wrapped carpetbag into a better position over my shoulder. “And you’d probably get wedged in somewhere along the way. It’s a tight squeeze, I said. I’ll be fine.” I turned to study the opening, which, now that I had a high-powered lamp to penetrate its gloom, looked a lot like a gaping wound.
The phone in my hand vibrated. I swung back to him. He was standing in there thumbing me a text: What are you after? Tell me.
He looked up and mouthed, Ms. Phoebe.
I put a finger to my lips and mouthed my reply: Be back soon. Next, I pocketed the phone and headed for the tunnel, pulling up my mask along the way. Evan had found a rubberized clown mask, which he’d lined with tissue and widened the nose and eyeholes. Though it was no less uncomfortable, I could certainly see and breathe better.
Taking a deep breath, I bent over and dove into the corridor. Having done this twice, I was better prepared. I knew where the most troublesome parts were, where I almost tripped twice, where the mold and rat droppings had slimed the floor to the point of making a gooey mess. By keeping one gloved hand on either side of my body, I could steady myself while proceeding in a bent-over run.
Surprisingly, not having Seraphina ahead of me made it easier. For one thing, I could see better and, if not exactly feeling more confident, at least I knew the path ahead. Sort of. Whatever the case, I managed to scramble to the warehouse steps without a single tumble.
Inside the building minutes later, I removed my mask and raincoat, hanging both on the corner of a loom that jutted out from under a tarp. My text to Evan was brief: I’m in the warehouse.
All clear back here, he responded.
I admit that knowing he was watching my back was fortifying. Forget that it was unlikely he could get to me quickly, anyway. Right then, I was focused on being inside a weaving studio alone. It was like standing inside a cathedral, hushed and hallowed with all that I revered. But I had to get to work.
So I hoisted my carpetbag farther up my shoulder, pulled a flashlight from its depths, and strode across the weaving floor to the next set of stairs. My single light didn’t provide enough illumination so I used my phone light, too—anything to dispel those shadows crowding in around me. The feel of that empty, abandoned place was something I was determined not to dwell on. I’d return in daylight and take a proper look at those looms, as Nicolina promised.
I traipsed back up the squeaky staircase to the office floor, past the vault room, and around the corner into the library. I couldn’t wait to switch on the desk lamp. Crazy, I know, but feeling those shadows crowding in behind me spooked me to no end. “Just an empty building,” I whispered, relieved when the little lamp sent a pool of soft light around the small room. Placing my carpetbag on the table, I shot Evan a quick text: In the library. Not long now.
Removing the earliest two volumes from the shelves, I wanted desperately to take both but I couldn’t carry two. Each volume was nearly two feet by two feet—even taking one wasn’t going to be easy—but what if I missed something? I’d take the earliest volume for sure, I decided, since it would more likely hold the clues I wanted, but I’d photograph the second.
With that in mind, I hastily began taking photos of the foxed yellowed pages with my phone, careful not to damage the brittle parchment. This time I wore proper plastic gloves that Evan had conjured—too big but workable—and yet my heart pained at the possibility of tearing a single page.
Totally absorbed in my work, brittle page after brittle page passed by while I took photos and attempted to read the cramped script—a mix of Italian and Latin: forget that—pausing to gape at this magnificent compendium of Renaissance textile design.
The phone pinged a text in my hand: Taking too long. Are you all right?
I texted back: Lost all sense of time. Coming now.
Damn. Reluctantly, I replaced the second book on the shelf—there was always tomorrow—before carefully wrapping the first in plastic and tucking it under my arm. Any archivist would have a conniption seeing me handle these priceless works that way but hopefully, someday soon, care would be taken with the entire collection. They badly needed a conservation doctor. Switching off the light, I stepped into the hall.
How is it we know something is wrong before our senses provide the evidence? I stood still as death listening to the empty building. The creaks and skittery noises I recognized as settling wood and rodents but something was off. Only when I crept to the top of the stairs did I hear the whispering clearly. I froze. There was no way in hell anybody should be in this building. Evan, maybe? No way. He’d call out or text. I pulled out my gun and released the safety.
When I took my first step down the stairs, I caught a whiff of something noxious like lighter fluid. At the same time a plume of smoke began billowing around the base of the stairs illuminated by my light like a roiling snake. A stab of fear shot through me. The only way out was down. I risked taking several more steps until I was nearly at the bottom, feeling heat on my skin and fear in my gut.
“Who’s—” My cry died in my throat. A rolling billow of flame was moving toward me from the end of the room, licking at old wood, devouring scraps of fabric, consuming the entire tinderbox of a studio. I could not see signs of a single human being, just an aggressive expanding fire. Turning, I dashed up the stairs, feeling heat on my back and legs as if the flames were chasing me up. One glimpse behind me filled me with terror.
I panicked. Where could I go, how could I escape? With fumbling fingers, I called Evan, yelling, “Help! Fire!” before dropping the phone back into my bag. Shit! Maybe I could go inside the vault and shut the door? Iron and steel withstood fire, didn’t they? How stupid that was, I realized. I’d suffocate or roast long before ever getting rescued. Maybe I heard an alarm, maybe I didn’t. I didn’t care, I had to escape.
Running back into the library with the flashlight in hand, I slammed the door shut and shoved the table under the windows, dropped my bag and book on top, and climbed up to flick the shutter catch. The shutters released immediately but the casement’s mullioned glass frame had a lever so rusted that I doubted it had been opened for decades. Nothing I did made it budge even when I banged it with the butt of my gun. Next, I tried grabbing a knitting needle to lever the thing open. No luck. In pure desperation, I released the safety, aimed the gun, and fired at the catch. It blew apart instantly, allowing the casements to fly open with a shatter of broken glass.
The blast of cool night air that followed was like the kiss of life. By then, fire was lapping at the wood behind me and thick smoke was snaking tentacles under the door. But air also feeds fire. I fumbled with my phone and called Evan again. “At the rear canal window!” I cried before shoving the thing deep into my bag again. No more time for calls.
Flames crawled up the wall and licked at the sill. I balanced on the window ledge with hands grasping the frame until I felt a searing burn on my left hand. Snatching it away, I grasped the edge of broken glass, ignoring the sharp bite into my palm, intent only on what lay
below. A straight drop into the canal three stories down. It was nothing. Hadn’t I dived from promontories higher than this, and what was the cool depths of a fusty canal next to the churning sea? That didn’t bother me. What bothered me was losing my carpetbag and relinquishing my hold on that treasured volume of Renaissance design. It was crazy but since my imminent death by roasting was delayed, all I could think about was what to save. But what could be rescued by tossing those disintegrating pages into the canal? The inks would run, the paper would pulp, everything of value would be ruined by water as readily as by fire. And now it was too late to save them all, anyway.
Soon the whole room would go up in flames and all the volumes with it. What could I do? And yet I wavered, reluctant to let go. Then I saw the boat zipping toward me down the narrow back canal.
“Jump!” Evan called out. A surge of relief hit me so strongly I could have kissed the man had he been close enough. As it was, he pulled his speedboat under the windows and called for me to jump again. I knew he didn’t mean to jump into the boat itself. From this height, I could break a leg or damage the boat or both. He meant for me to jump into the canal.
I pulled inside to grab my carpetbag and the single precious volume, the smoke so thick by now I could barely see. I heard rather than saw the flames devour the other volumes as the glass shattered across the room. Fumbling for the objects while holding my breath, I returned to the window.
“Items coming down. Catch!” I cried. I tossed the priceless volume out the window, which he caught with ease. Such a good catch. Next, I tossed out my carpetbag, which he also caught, and then my jacket and my sneakers one after the other.
“For God’s sake, Phoebe, will you just jump!”
Another boat could be heard echoing against the ancient walls. Sirens pealed in the night. With flames making a grab for my legs and the room succumbed by smoke, I held my breath and jumped.
14
The canal was that brutally cold after the heat of the fire that I thought my blood would ice in my veins—punishing cold, colder than time. For a moment I had the uncanny sense that I had plunged straight into Venice’s frigid heart and that I’d freeze there until the breath left my body. But the water wasn’t that deep because my feet briefly touched bottom.
Still, seconds feel like years in terror-time as I kicked my way up. Breaking the surface, all I saw was black churning water with the roar of boat engines and sirens over all. Waves of water engulfed my mouth and eyes as I gasped for air while spinning around and around trying to orientate myself. There were two boats, I realized, and shouting, lots of shouting, and then a gunshot. Suddenly hands grabbed me from behind and lifted me backward into a boat where I kicked away like some furious tuna. “Damn you!” I cried as I struggled to wipe the water from my eyes.
“It’s me! Lie still,” Evan called. So I lay still for seconds, coughing up water while the boat pealed down the canal. A bullet pinged somewhere to the right.
“Stay down! The bastards are shooting!”
Like I couldn’t tell that. Flipping onto my stomach, I struggled to my knees. “Give me your gun!” I called. I could see it sticking out of his jacket holster as he stood manning the steering wheel, his back exposed to bullets.
“No!” he called back. “I’ll outrun them!”
Hell, why didn’t men ever listen to me? I assessed the situation in a flash: our boat racing away with the pursuers gaining on us in what appeared to be their own superboat. Evan had whipped us into a main canal while performing various diversionary maneuvers by making one sharp turn after another. But that wouldn’t be enough. We had a zero head start and they’d soon be right on top of us.
I was thrown against the side a couple of times before I could reach into my jacket to remove my own gun, safety catch still unreleased, and turn to face our pursuers. They were gaining fast.
Nicolina had provided me with a gun that was more than adequate for what I intended but that hardly mattered when my hands where shaking so badly that I couldn’t grip the handle and my left palm hurt like hell. I must have burned it or cut it or something but damn if that would stop me.
“Don’t try it! You could get shot!” Evan cried.
Oh, please. A treasure of art and design was burning and I might get shot? I was so furious just then I could take on a boatload of thugs and more. I held the gun with both hands, propped it on the back of the stern seat, and fired at the prow of the approaching boat. And missed. I turned to Evan and called. “Slow down, will you? I need a second to hit the hull full-on.”
Understanding crossed his face. He let the boat drift. We ducked, both of us keeping down as the other boat approached. They had cut back on the throttle, too, and now puttered toward us cautiously. I estimated the distance—six, five, four yards until I could read the model name on the prow. I totally ignored the two figures standing behind the water-splashed windshield as I took the first shot below the waterline. Evan did the same thing, firing twice into the hull, but he had the idea to fire a flare at the boat’s windshield, too.
“Brilliant!” I cried while the night blazed neon pink. Literally.
“Happy you approve!” he called back as he returned to the wheel to rev into the boat equivalent of warp speed.
I gazed back at the pandemonium. The flare had temporarily blinded our pursuers and, with a little luck, their boat would start taking on water. Meanwhile, we were zooming down one of the side canals. Just before we turned the corner, I caught a glimpse of the reddened skyline far across the city. The studio in flames! I began shaking so badly I could barely contain myself. Evan leaned over and dropped his jacket over my shoulders, warm with his body heat. I turned my back to him and shrugged off my soaked turtleneck and wrapped myself in his jacket.
“Does Nicolina know the building’s on fire?” I called out to him as I poked my arms into his sleeves. He could see my bra—big deal.
“I called. They alerted the authorities,” he said, looking over his shoulder at me, one hand on the wheel.
I fumbled into my bag to retrieve my phone. Three messages from Nicolina topped the list. I speed-dialed her.
“Phoebe! Thank God you’re all right!” she rasped. I could hear sirens in the background, people shouting. “Phoebe, the studio is gone, Maria’s legacy gone!” Nicolina was crying.
“They knew I was going there tonight. They burned the place down, all that history!” I coughed.
“Phoebe, forget that. You could have been killed!”
My hands were numb, my heart number. The phone slipped and fell to the floor. I picked it up again. “Got to go,” I said. “Talk later.”
“No, Phoebe, wait—”
But I turned the phone off and dropped it into my bag. My hand throbbed, my heart too numb to feel a thing. The boat was proceeding at a nearly sedate pace now but I barely noticed, barely noticed which direction we were taking, either, only that it was circuitous with a lot of turns down dark little canals.
The studio was gone. Centuries worth of priceless design information and weaving artifacts gone. Old looms that had withstood the ages with loving care had been slaughtered, burned alive as their brittle bones went up in flames. Only the ignorant would do such a thing, the kind of ignorance that had once burned witches at the stake, turning their magic and wisdom to ash. I buried my head in my hands and sobbed.
I wasn’t sure when we arrived or even where exactly. Evan put his arms around me and lifted me out of the boat. There was somebody else there, too—Sloane, I realized—and lots of instructions being bandied about for the care of this soaked, half-naked woman.
“She needs a hot bath, man!” That was Evan.
“But we don’t have working plumbing in this infernal hellhole, Evan, you know that. You will need to rig something up.” That was Sloane.
“Then rig it up I will.”
“We can use that dreadful marble death chamber upstairs. Sir Rupert refuses to go inside the place.”
Marble death chamber?
>
“Phoebe! Dearest Phoebe! What happened?” croaked Rupert as he shuffled down a long dark hall toward me in furry bedroom slippers and one of his satin robes. He attempted to grab my icy hands in his but I only let him have the good one. “Oh, my dear, what a disaster!”
Evan answered him over my head while still holding me tight. “The bastards set fire to the building, sir. Ms. Phoebe narrowly escaped with her life.”
Back to Ms. Phoebe. I dimly remember him using my name. “What kind of monsters set fire to centuries of history, let flames ravish priceless information that will be lost to civilization forever?” I wailed. “What kind of bastards do that?”
Rupert gripped my one hand tighter. “The same kind who set fire to a building with you inside, Phoebe. Monsters indeed! Sloane, tea, immediately!”
“Coming up,” the butler called back as he dashed down the hall.
“I’m going to fix you a shower, Ms. Phoebe,” Evan whispered in my ear, releasing my shoulders and passing me over to Rupert—reluctantly, I thought.
Rupert nodded at him and led me by the arm into the shadowy ballroom. “Come, come, my dear. We shall have tea and place you beside the space heater until you thaw. You are shaking like a leaf! You fell into the canal, I understand. How dreadful!”
“I jumped into the canal,” I told him.
“Yes, well, I am missing part of the story, it seems.”
“You still sound terrible,” I told him, and then I started crying again. Really, I was a mess.
“It’s shock, dear Phoebe. All very understandable.” He patted my back. “Here, do sit right down.”
I was guided into a big blanket-covered chair in front of a modern heating device that looked like a sleek revolving doughnut but which gave off considerable heat. Rupert fussed a bit by tucking a blanket around me until finally he collapsed onto a stool nearby and tried to take my injured hand. I winced and pulled it back inside the oversized sleeve. “Dear Phoebe, I would despair if anything had happened to you. I just don’t understand who these bastards are.”
The Carpet Cipher Page 15