Out of the Ashes

by Lori Dillon

  “Corbelli, you have a visitor.”

  She heard a shuffling sound, then David’s tall form appeared from the hidden shadows of the cell.

  He looked tired. Dark circles marked the tan skin beneath his eyes. She wanted to think she saw a brief flicker of happiness in those brown depths, but when he glanced at the guard standing beside her, the emotion vanished, if it had been there at all.

  Sera turned to the guard. “Could you open the door, please?”

  “No. You can only speak to him through the bars.”

  Disappointed, she tried again. “Then, may we have some privacy?”

  The guard gave her a curt nod and took a few steps down the hallway. He stood far enough away that if they whispered, he wouldn’t hear them, but close enough that if David tried to reach through the bars to harm her in any way, the guard could be there in a matter of seconds.

  The thought sent a chill through her. Could he, would he, hurt her?

  The man she’d come to know wouldn’t. But did she know the real David? Had that been him all this time, or was he someone else entirely? The David she thought she knew wouldn’t have killed anyone, yet the man standing behind the iron bars had. She’d seen him do it with her own eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Sera.” His low, soft voice drew her attention back to him. “I never meant to kill Giovanni. I know you cared for him.”

  She felt some of the tension in her body ease. Here was the David she knew, the one who’d chiseled his way into her heart.

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “But he’s dead just the same.”

  Yes, that was true. All the apologies in the world were not going to change that. Instead, she tried to focus on what she could do to help David.

  “Are you all right?”

  He smiled, but the humor never reached his eyes. “Just peachy.”

  She tried to ignore his sarcasm, knowing it was his way of trying to relieve the seriousness of the situation.

  “Do you need anything? Can I get something from your apartment? I think they’ll let you have a book or—”

  “No. You shouldn’t even be here. You need to leave right now and never come back.”

  Hurt lanced through her. He might as well have reached through the bars and slapped her.

  “Why?”

  He lowered his voice to barely a whisper, and she had to step closer to the bars to hear him.

  “When they find out who I really am, they might come after you.”

  Sera glanced at the guard standing just a few feet away to make sure he couldn’t overhear their conversation.

  “Maybe they won’t. What about your I.D. papers? They fooled the authorities before.”

  “Only on the surface. When they trace them—and they will—they’re going to figure out they’re fakes. There is no David Corbelli from Naples.”

  Sera felt her throat tighten. She hadn’t even thought of that possibility.

  “Then, we have to get you released before they find out. It was self-defense. We have to make them believe that.”

  “How? You were the only witness. And so far, it doesn’t appear that they believe you. They think you’re protecting me.” David gripped the bars set in the small, glassless opening. “Besides, I don’t think there’s time. They’ll be sending for background information on me from Naples any day now, if they haven’t already. Information that doesn’t exist. It’s only a matter of time before I’m found out, and when that happens, I’m a dead man.”

  “No!”

  Sera couldn’t believe how resolved David seemed to be to his fate. Where was the man who had fought for her honor? The one who, just a few days ago, defended her life with his own? He’d fought for her then. Why wasn’t he fighting for himself now?

  “David, let me help you,” she whispered, glancing once more to make sure the guard was still far enough away. Turning back to David, she dared him to lie to her. “I know you’re not alone here. I know you have someone you’re working with.”

  The hardening of his features was barely perceptible. But she spied it in the clenching of his jaw, the narrowing of his eyes, and she knew that her hunch was right.

  “Don’t deny it. That’s how Giovanni found out about you. He said he saw the two of you together. Tell me who it is and where you’re supposed to meet him. Maybe he can get help.”

  “From who? The army?” He snorted and shook his head. “You forget, I’m not supposed to be here. The Allies aren’t going to raise the alarm by trying to rescue one man behind enemy lines and risk blowing an entire mission. There are too many lives at stake.”

  Sera placed her hands on the bars, just below where David’s fists gripped them with white-knuckled force.

  “At least let me try.”

  His grip eased, and his hands slid down the bars to cover hers. Like a shock of static electricity, Sera felt a bolt of recollection travel through her body and back again, radiating from where their joined hands clasped the iron bars together.

  David’s sharp intake of breath told her that he felt it, too. Something more than a touch passed between them. It was a shared awareness, a brief blending of their souls into one before they were split back apart again. The sensation scared the hell out of her.

  David was the first to return to the equally frightening reality at hand.

  “No. It’s too dangerous. I won’t put you at risk like that. It’s only a matter of time before they discover who I really am. When that happens, you need to be as far away from me as you can be. I don’t want to pull you any deeper into this mess.”

  “I’m already in it. I lov—”

  “Don’t!” His arm shot through the bars with the speed of a rattlesnake, startling her into silence. He pressed two fingers to her lips, stopping the words that threatened to rush from her heart. “Don’t say it. Don’t give me something to hope for when there’s very little chance of me making it out of this alive.”

  The guard was instantly at her side, but Sera ignored him. Anger flared in her and with it, a desperation that seemed to come from her very soul, giving her the strength to be strong enough for the both of them.

  “Damn it. I will not let you give up. I will not let you die.”

  *

  Sera felt as if every eye in Pompei was on her, that every person she walked by knew where she was headed and what she was doing. Guilt tugged at her conscience for lying to Maria about going to Mass early. With what she had to do, she would probably not make it to church at all today.

  At least she figured God would understand her reason. A man’s life was at stake.

  But the Angelicos would not understand. Although Maria already knew that David was an American spy, and she’d told Sera that she and Heberto would do all they could to help get him out of jail, they wouldn’t have let Sera come here today. It was too risky. Even now, as she continued on to her destination, she wondered if she was doing something she might regret for the rest of her life.

  She glanced back to make sure she wasn’t being followed. All around her were faces, some familiar and some not, heading to church or on their way to visit family and friends. All doing innocent, everyday tasks.

  Unlike her. With each step she took, she was one step closer to betraying her country.

  But her heart didn’t see it that way. With each panicked beat that hammered in her chest, she was one step closer to saving the man she loved.

  And she did love him. As they had stood there with those damn bars separating them, she’d realized that she loved him with all her heart. And once she knew that, she wasn’t going to let a little thing like treason stop her from saving his life.

  Sera took a deep breath, knowing she clutched at her purse just a little too tight. She was probably glancing around herself just a little too much. If she didn’t pull herself together soon, she might utterly fall to pieces. How did David have the nerve to take this risk every week?

  It had taken two more visits to the jailhouse and some persuasive
arguing on her part, but she’d finally forced him to divulge the information about his contact. And now here she was, on her way to meet with a stranger, another American spy walking among her own countrymen.

  As Sera neared the edge of town, she came to the old mill which had been closed since the start of the war because of a lack of wheat to grind. This was where David told her he was supposed to rendezvous with his friend today.

  The man wasn’t hard to spot, sitting on the low stone wall surrounding the mill yard, smoking a cigarette. With his dark blue cap tilted slightly on his large head, he looked just as David had described him. She approached him cautiously, not sure how he might take her being here instead of David.

  “Frank?”

  He paused with his arm in mid-air, his smoking cigarette dangling between two stubby fingers. His dark eyes squinted at her from under the brim of his cap, the only acknowledgement that he even heard her.

  Sera dared to take another step closer and cleared her throat. “Are you Frank?” She whispered the words in rusty English, causing those slitted eyes to pop open in surprise.

  “Maybe. Who are you?” he asked in Italian.

  “I’m a friend of David’s. He sent me.”

  “Why didn’t he come himself?”

  “He couldn’t. He’s in jail.”

  If Frank had been surprised when she first approached, he now looked totally flummoxed. Glancing around them to make sure no one was within hearing distance, he returned his piercing focus to her.

  “Well, that would explain why he was a no-show for our rendezvous last week. What the hell happened?”

  How much to tell? Sera had gone over the speech in her head the whole way there, and she still wasn’t sure how much she should reveal about Giovanni’s reasons for hating David so much.

  “One of the other archeologists… he suspected David was spying on the Germans.”

  Glancing at the numerous cigarette butts littering the ground at Frank’s feet, she recalled how Giovanni said he had figured it out. She tried not to be angry at the man in front of her, the man who had inadvertently put David at risk. Right now, that same man might be David’s only hope.

  Continuing on, she deliberately skimmed over the facts, just as David had instructed her to do.

  “He was going to turn David in. There was a fight between them, and the archeologist was killed. Now David is in jail for his murder.”

  “Murder? David? I don’t believe it.”

  “We’re trying to prove it was self-defense, but it’s taking some time.”

  He arched a bushy eyebrow at her. “We? Just who is we?”

  Sera silently berated herself for letting that slip out.

  “Myself and two very close friends.”

  “You and two friends? Damn it. How many people know about him?”

  “Just the three of us.”

  “What about the police? Do they know?”

  “Not yet. So far, the forged I.D. documents have fooled them, but it won’t be long before they learn the truth. The police have already sent a request to the authorities in Naples to verify them. We’ve got to get David out before that report comes back.” Sera took a step closer to Frank and reached out to squeeze his hand. “Please. You have to help him.”

  Frank’s expression softened a bit as he looked at her hand resting on his, then back to her face.

  “You must be Sera.”

  Surprised that he knew her name, she nodded, pulling her hand away to return it to the death-grip she held on her purse strap.

  “He told you about me?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  The inflection he put on those words made her wonder just what David had said about her. But now wasn’t the time to think about such things.

  “Can you help him?”

  “I don’t know.” Frank rubbed his hand down his face. “This is a damn shitty situation he’s gotten himself into. I’ll report it to our superiors, but I can’t make any promises. David might be put in more danger if too much attention is suddenly focused on him from outside sources.”

  “I know. That’s what he told me. But we have to at least try. Maybe someone could intercept the report before it gets back to Pompei or something?”

  Frank grinned at her. “Not a bad idea, if we can manage it. Say, you wouldn’t be interested in working for our side, would you?”

  Sera couldn’t stop the stiffening of her spine.

  “No. I’m only interested in saving David’s life.”

  Frank’s grin faded, and he nodded at her.

  “Me too. I’ll do what I can, but I won’t be able to come back until next Sunday. It’ll be up to you to stall the authorities on this end until then. Can you do that?”

  “Yes.”

  How she was going to manage that, she wasn’t sure. But she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to try.

  As she turned to walk away, Frank called after her.

  “You’re one heck of a woman, you know that? I guess you were worth disobeying orders for, after all.”

  Sera stopped and turned back to face Frank.

  “What do you mean?”

  Frank gave her an odd look.

  “No, I don’t guess he would have told you.”

  “Told me what?”

  “Once you found out about him, David was given orders to take you out.”

  The thought chilled her, even though she’d wondered the same thing more than once. She swallowed hard around the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat.

  “I wonder why he didn’t?”

  Her voice had come out in a whisper, and she wasn’t sure Frank even heard her.

  Frank winked and turned to leave.

  “Probably for the same reason you’re here right now.”

  Chapter 27

  Sera poked her finger into one of the plaster-filled holes on the body mound. The once pasty goo felt firm under her fingertip. She sat back on her heels, staring at the earthen dome as the afternoon sun beat down on her shoulders. Completely hardened now, the plaster cast was ready to be unearthed.

  But she wasn’t ready.

  She didn’t want to do it without David. The cavity was their find, and she didn’t want to finish the last part of the excavation without him.

  Thankfully, Professor Moretti understood her hesitation and agreed they could wait. After all, the body had been buried here for two thousand years. It wasn’t going anywhere any time soon.

  Of their own volition, her eyes moved from the mound, across the excavation field, and up the stone wall to the tower where David used to sit. For a brief second, she thought she saw a shadow move, and her heart leapt, imagining he was there.

  But he wasn’t. He was still sitting in that tiny jail cell, where he’d been for over a month, waiting for the officials to clear him of a crime he didn’t commit. Or to find out who he really was and convict him of something worse than murder, if that were even possible.

  As if drawn by an invisible thread, Sera rose to her feet and walked around the mound to the base of the wall. She started climbing, as she had done several times each day since she’d been back to work without David.

  Assuming his usual vantage point on the crumbling outer wall, she looked out over the German encampment, sighing heavily as she leaned back against the tower. Up here, she somehow felt closer to him, and the site didn’t feel quite so lonely without him.

  She watched the German soldiers moving about the camp, not really certain what she was looking for. Their numbers and activity had definitely increased since the Axis surrender of Sicily three weeks before. The army below was larger and more reinforced than ever, even to her untrained eye.

  Thinking back to the day when she’d first met Frank, she remembered he had jokingly asked if she’d wanted to work for their side. At the time, the suggestion had appalled her. She had to laugh at herself, because now she was doing just that, spying on the Germans.

  But she wasn’t spying for Frank or for the Allies. She w
as doing it for David, even though he would probably wring her neck if he knew she was taking such a risk. But it was her way of helping him, since she felt so powerless otherwise. Plus, doing it kept her in touch with Frank, giving her a reason to meet with him every Sunday, just as David had been doing before he was arrested.

  At the thought of Frank, she wondered how he was doing on his end. She wondered if, right at this moment, the army was devising a way to rescue David before it was too late.

  Heaven knew she wasn’t making much progress with the authorities herself. They kept putting her off, telling her the circuit court judge was busy in Salerno and would make a decision regarding whether or not to charge David with murder when he came to Pompei, providing the report from Naples arrived.

  Sera tried to tamp down the panic creeping up inside at the thought of how much damage that one piece of paper could do. So far, David had survived two close calls with the damning report. The first never arrived from Naples, apparently lost somewhere along the road, and after two weeks of waiting, the local authorities had sent for a second report. That one had arrived a week later, but in such mangled condition, it was no longer legible. So a third request for background information on David had been sent, and the waiting had begun again.

  She couldn’t understand what was taking the last report so long to get there, but she was thankful for each day that it didn’t arrive. Each delay offered them one more day that David was safe, even if he had to spend it behind bars.

  Sera tried to hold out hope that it was a sign that everything would turn out all right. But as each day passed, the sense of hope grew weaker and weaker.

  *

  Riding her bicycle through town on her way home, Sera felt incredibly alone, even though she was surrounded by people she’d known all her life. Since David’s arrest, she’d worked the site by herself, except for the few times Heberto or Olympia offered to help. But they had their own areas to excavate, and so she was mostly left to herself. Being alone had never bothered her before. In fact, she used to relish the solitude of the dig, the peaceful quiet of the excavations.