by Sharon Timm
They are going to hide us in plain sight, Sam thought.
She remembered the policeman who had watched as they took them away. "I didn't get a chance to tell you," she said excitedly. "One of your men was behind us on the bridge. He saw them push us down the alley. As I climbed onto the boat, I looked back and saw him peek around the corner of the alley."
"The only problem is...they aren't..." Luca grunted in pain as the boat rolled into another turn, "looking for a fishing boat, returning from sea. They are looking for a small boat which could be anywhere by now."
Their conversation was interrupted by the squeak of the handle twisting the latches on the door above. Two men descended the steps and forced them to stand. Luca was blindfolded first, then an oily rag was cinched around Sam's eyes and the light from the doorway went black. Their hands were tied behind their backs and they were lead ashore. Sam listened, in the evening silence, for clues to her location. She heard nothing except gentle bumping and creaking sounds in the night.
They were shoved across a solid platform. It didn't make hollow sounds under their feet like a wooden dock would, and it felt like stone or concrete. A door opened ahead and they were led into a building. There were no sounds. Sam tapped the floor gently with her foot. It was softer than the platform they had crossed and made no hollow sound. She pushed the toe of her shoe forward and created a small mound. She guessed it was a dirt floor. Breathing deeply, she tried to identify an acrid smell she was convinced she had smelled before.
Their captors led them blindly across the building. Sam did not sense any turns, did not hear any doors opening or closing. She thought, too late, of counting her paces. She counted twenty three paces before they stopped. If twenty three paces was less than half of the distance they had covered, they must be in some kind of huge warehouse or something. They hadn't turned or stopped or slowed, so there weren't any doorways and nothing obstructed their path. The warehouse must be empty, she thought.
She heard a metallic sound. Like soft steel brushes on a drummer's cymbal. She couldn't place the sound but she'd heard it before. A key slipped into a lock, turned and she heard a padlock snap open. The sound of chain links, clanking past a metal post, reminded her what the other metallic sound had been. It was the sound a chain link fence makes when it flexes. They were being locked in a chain link cage!
They stood helpless, blindfolded and bound as the door was locked and their captors walked way. Sam listened carefully to their faint footfalls. There was a distinct echo in the building. She coughed loudly to confirm it. They were locked in a cage in the far corner of a large, apparently empty, warehouse. The door at the far end opened and closed and a key slammed the bolt home. The handle rattled as the guard checked that the door was locked.
Sam and Luca were alone.
CHAPTER TWELVE
"Luca," Sam whispered. She told him what she'd heard and what she thought. "Bend your head down toward me," she said. She felt for his blindfold with her lips.
"Now, you want to kiss me?" Luca asked playfully though the pain in his voice was evident.
Sam grasped the blindfold with her teeth and pulled it down. "Can you see anything?" she asked.
"Not much, Sam." he answered. "Let me get your blindfold off." She felt his cheek brush hers as he pulled the blindfold down.
She turned her back toward his and fumbled to free his hands. He did the same for her. They were free now. Free to explore their surroundings. As free as they could be in their tiny cage. Sam could see shapes around them in the semi-darkness. The building had a row of skylight windows, high up on the perimeter walls. The street lights outside reflected dimly through the windows casting ghostly shadows across the dark interior of their prison.
The large building they were in looked like an abandoned factory. She had been right about its length and thought she could see the outlines of some equipment, scattered around. It was, in fact, mostly empty. Sam heard Luca groan behind her.
He was still standing, rigid and trying desperately not to move. She imagined his almost unbearable pain. Sam hurried to explore their cage. She needed something to make him more comfortable. In one corner, she found a stack of thick paper sacks, like the kind bulk flour or cement or sand is sold in.
Next to the empty bags were some full bags. She cringed as she reached inside, hoping there were no spiders or bugs inside. Her fingers found a loose granulated substance. She hoped she wasn't handling some kind of toxic chemicals, fertilizer or something worse, Sam arranged the empty bags against the far wall, making a makeshift bed for Luca.
She took him by the arm and helped him lie gently down on the bags. He passed out from the pain and slumped against her. She took advantage of his unconscious state to move him onto the bags and elevate his wounded leg slightly on one of the half-full bags. She tried to inspect his wound but could not see in the darkness.
She felt the soaked bandage. The entry wound had stopped bleeding, but the exit wound was oozing blood. The torn flesh around the wound made a depression, the bandage covered it, but put no pressure directly over the bleeding. She had nothing with which to make a fresh dressing and was reluctant to tear any more of his clothing or her own. Their clothes were damp from the sea spray of the ride in the open boat. They had to keep warm. She crawled around the cage feeling for something to stop the bleeding. She found a small, smooth, almost cylindrical stone. It was sharp on one end like flint.
She slipped the stone between the bandage pad and the binding to maintain the pressure directly over the wound.
Luca was still unconscious. His body trembled under her fingers and his teeth chattered slightly. Suddenly, Sam realized that she was cold too. She tore a bag open and flattened it out. Moving to Luca's uninjured side she pressed her body against his and cradled his head. She pulled the makeshift paper blanket over them both to slow down the heat loss and settled in for the long night ahead. It was her turn to hold Luca as he had held her the night before.
Sam ran her fingers through Luca's hair. She rested one hand on his chest, which rose and fell with his slow, rhythmic breathing. He would wake up soon in agony, but for now, he was safe, relaxed and mercifully immune to the pain. Sam touched his chiseled features with her fingertips. The electric sensation of his skin against hers rekindled the glowing feelings for him that she had tried, since the day before, to push out of her mind.
She should be back on the ship by now. This should all be over! She wanted her life back, and yet, even in her current predicament she was relieved to still be with this man. She ran her hands over the muscles of his chest and stomach, exploring the beauty of the injured man in her arms. Luca had touched her soul like no man had been able to do in many years.
Since her husband died, she had pushed every man away. She remained in control and placed barrier after barrier in the way of anyone's attempts to make contact with her feelings. She had so shielded herself from pain that she had almost forgotten how to feel.
Luca touched her feelings again. He'd evoked the strongest emotions in her, emotions which spanned the spectrum of feelings. He'd enraged her when she was taken into custody, embarrassed her on the ship, filled her with pride when he commented, to his men, that she knew about teeth. He'd plunged her into heart-pounding fear on their escape from the city, and taken her to his vineyard, the most peaceful place she'd ever known. Luca's song had sent ecstasy coursing through every nerve in her body and taken her breath away. He'd pulled her into his arms and kissed her, arousing in her a deep passion and kindled her anger at the same time. Just the night before he'd held her in his arms and made the nightmares go away. He'd made her feel safe. She'd been almost naked in his arms and he had covered her with a blanket. By this action he'd evoked the strongest and most frightening emotion of all. Trust.
Luca stirred in her arms, a low moan broke from his lips as he moved his injured, leg and woke up. "Sam?" he asked.
"I'm here Luca,' she rubbed her hand across his chest. "I'm right here."
<
br /> "I must have, uh, dozed off." Luca stammered
"You passed out. How is your leg?"
"It hurts. What are you doing? Trying to take advantage of me in my moment of weakness?" Luca tried to be humorous but the pain was evident in his voice.
"No more than you took advantage of me last night, Luca. I'm trying to keep you warm." she answered.
"That is very nice of you, Samantha," he mumbled. "Where are we?"
Sam could tell the pain was beginning to make him delirious. He was trying hard to keep his wits about him but Sam knew she had to get him to a hospital as soon as possible. She had to find a way.
Sam summed up the situation. "I can't see much, but I think we are in a big warehouse or factory or something. We are locked in a chain link cage, chained shut and padlocked. I'm not sure where we are, but if you're very quiet you can hear that bumping and creaking sound the boats make in Venice."
"How long have we been here?"
"A couple of hours, I guess." Sam checked her watch. "It's one thirty in the morning, now, but I don't know what time it was when we got off the boat." The hours had rushed by. It seemed like only moments had passed since they'd been forced at gunpoint into a boat.
Sam was still lying next to Luca under the thick paper blanket. His head was cradled against her shoulder and her hands rested his chest. He reached up and held her hand, squeezing involuntarily as waves of pain coursed through his thigh.
"What are we going to do, Sam?" he asked softly. “I’m afraid I won’t be much help, here.
Sam had been thinking about that since she had walked, blindfolded through the door. She didn't have a plan. Yet.
She'd inspected the cage quickly and found no weak spots. She wondered if she could find a way out. She wondered if she could get Luca out. She wondered, not for the first time, if either of them would get out of this thing alive.
"I'm working on a plan, Luca," she said. "I'm just not doing very well."
"What do we know?" Luca asked. Sam imagined how his analytical mind might have tackled a case with his people back in Venice. He would ask them something like that.
She ticked off the things they thought they knew. Luca nodded and winced and interjected his own thoughts.
They were sure they somewhere in the Venice lagoon. The course changes would have confused the average person but after the amount of time Sam had been on ships, her sea-legs were harder to fool. They believed they were in an old warehouse or factory.
"We're definitely not on San Michele," Luca said. "There aren't any buildings this size there."
"Why?"
"It's the cemetery"
Sam shuddered. She didn't like cemeteries. "If we don't find a way out of this, and get you to a doctor, you might get to that San Mick... place yet."
Sam thought briefly about her last trip to a cemetery. She had dropped a handful of dirt on a long, dark coffin. They handed her the flag "on behalf of a grateful nation". Doug pressed his anchors into her hand: the ones he'd been planning to give to her husband. It had been a beautiful warm day, not the kind she pictured for funerals. She did not want another funeral. She did not want to bury another man. She had to find a way out.
"Are there any weaknesses in this cage we're in?"
"I couldn't find any."
"I wonder what they kept in here," Luca said.
Sam thought a moment. "The bags you are laying on, seemed to contain some kind of fine gravel. There are a couple of bags which still have something in them. I can't see so I'm not sure what it is." As an afterthought she added, "I hope it isn't some kind of poison, we're lying on them."
"Get me a handful of the gravel, Sam. Maybe I can figure out what it is."
Sam got up and retrieved a handful of the granulated material. Each tiny granule was hard, like pea-gravel, but lighter and about the size of rock salt. She placed a small pile of the substance in his outstretched hand. He felt it with his fingers.
"I think I know what it is Sam." he said. "If I'm right, I also know where we are!" He rolled slightly to hand the granules back to Sam and groaned in pain.
"What? Where?" Sam asked impatiently.
Luca was silent, unconscious again from the pain.
Sam tossed the granules into the corner, covered Luca with the improvised blanket and explored her surroundings carefully once again.
The chain link fence was higher than she could reach. It was secured to steel posts with twisted wire. The wire ties were cut on a sharp angle to ensure no lose ends were left accessible to un-twist the wires. The diagonal cuts left sharp barbs to discourage any attempts. Two corner posts were buried in the ground. Sam tried to shake them loose but they wouldn't budge. The other two corner posts joined the fence to the brick wall of the building. Three heavy iron straps gripped each pole, fixing it unyieldingly to the wall.
Sam worked her way to the gate by which they had entered. She checked the door again. It was securely chained to a post that framed the opening. The padlock felt solid. She dragged her fingernail down the heavy body of the lock. It was smooth, not laminated. The lock was machined out of solid piece of metal, probably brass. She crouched and held the lock in line with the skylights above. The shackle of the lock reflected the dim light. It was chrome plated and shined as though it was pretty new. From what Sam could tell, it was a security lock. She made a mental note to ask Luca if he could pick locks, when he woke up.
Feeling her way to the hinges she ran her fingers carefully over the dim outline of the hinge pin. It was not bolted. It was a solid pin, peened on both ends. Each half of the hinge was welded in place. She would need a torch to cut the hinges. She moved on.
Sam pulled on the chain link fence fabric. It made the percussion brushes sound and flexed under her pull, but it was not loose. There were no weak spots. She crouched to her hands and knees and felt along the bottom of the fence. The largest gap she found was about four inches. They would not be able to crawl out either.
"Climb up, Sam," Luca suggested in a weak, trembling voice from behind her.
"Why up?" she asked.
"I think the bags are filled with minerals used for coloring glass."
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"The glassblowers roll molten glass in minerals to give the glass its color. I know cobalt comes in small blue granules that feel like the ones you handed me. If I'm right, we are on the island of Murano where the glass factories are."
"So what is that smell?" she asked.
"It’s another confirmation of where I think we are. I think it’s the soot from the old furnaces."
"So why do you want me to climb up?" Sam was pacing along the fence looking for something, anything to stand on.
"The bags weigh about fifty kilos each. I had to seize a bunch of bags once, until a stolen property case was solved."
"I see your point," Sam interrupted. "If that's the stuff that was stored here, the chances of someone tossing a hundred pound bag over a fence is pretty slim. The top might be open."
"Exactly."
Sam locked her fingers into the fabric of the fence at arm’s length. She pulled herself up and tried to force the toes of her shoes to hold on the fabric below. She held on with one hand, her full weight forcing the wire mesh into her skin. She grimaced in pain and lunged up with the other hand to grab a fresh handhold. She repeated this maneuver with the other hand and felt the top of the fence. The fabric wires were twisted into sharp angry barbs. She felt them pierce her skin. She shifted her weight back to her other hand and swiped the air above her head with her hand before dropping back to the floor. Luca had been right the top was open.
Sam reported to Luca. "It's open on top but it is hard to climb and the barbs on top would cut us to ribbons."
"Not that I would be very good at climbing with my leg."
"I have an idea," Sam said. She turned to the half empty bags in the corner and dumped their contents on the floor. She had four bags to work with. She tore two of the bags into strips. T
he remaining two, she stacked together and folded them lengthwise in half, once, twice, three times.
She returned to the fence and began twisting the strips of paper into tight paper ropes. She wrapped the fabric wires with the paper chord making a padded handhold, as high as she could reach. Then, she knelt and removed the laces from her shoes, twisted them together, doubled them and tied a loop to the fabric about two feet off the floor. She slipped one foot into the loop and pulled herself up by the handhold she'd made. She wrapped another hand hold in the fabric and descended to retrieve the folded paper bags. She balanced the heavy paper shield on the sharp barbed selvage on top of the fence and secured it in place with twisted paper chords. She tried to pull herself over but lacked a firm foot hold.
Returning to Luca, Sam took the laces from his shoes. "I love the way your mind works, Sam," Luca mumbled.
Sam returned and tied a second foot loop into the fabric. She would have to be high enough to bend over the fence at the waist and drop to the other side. Dragging herself over the top, even with the thick paper guard in place, would cause the barbs to tear through and rip into her.
She climbed and tested the second foot loop, climbed down, re-adjusted its height, then, finally, attempted her escape. She balanced gingerly on the fence and bent carefully over the barbs, spreading her weight over as many points as possible. The paper shield worked well, preventing all but the sharpest barbs from reaching her skin. She felt a prick on her knee as she slid one leg over. She eased her weight onto her right hand, which had found the padded hand-hold from the other side of the fence. Then she shook her foot free of the loop and swung carefully over the fence and dropped to the other side.
She heard soft clapping from inside the cage.
"Wait here," she said to Luca. She laughed to herself. As if he was going to go somewhere, she thought.
Sam walked quickly around the building. She checked the doors and windows gently and carefully, not sure if they were guarded from the outside. The building was locked tight and although she found several windows unlocked, they were enclosed with thick metal bars, built into the masonry from the outside.