Copenhagen Cozenage

by Kristen Joy Wilks

  OK, she wasn’t bleeding out. Now what?

  I thought back to my cousin’s confrontation with our abductor. Freja had told Maks I was the old man’s granddaughter. They must both work for Axel Rasmussen, harassing and photographing innocent citizens for his wretched sketches. Axel was an old man…could he be my grandfather? But if he was my grandfather why hadn’t he spoken up when Freja e-mailed me? And why on earth would an artist need my family heirloom? He already had those horrendous pictures of me and August’s dog. Hmmm…Axel Rasmussen was family. I wrapped several strips of duct tape around the makeshift bandage. They’d been married. My grandmother and Axel Rasmussen must have been married.

  My grandmother had sent the packet. One to me and one to August’s grandfather. August’s grandfather wasn’t just the quiet owner of a theater supply business, he was also a man who spent his life investigating the jewel heist of 1958.

  Oh, my goodness, had she stolen the necklace and hidden it from Axel Rasmussen? Then years later, racked with guilt, she gave the secret away to some strangers across the Atlantic? Did she trust us, a man who’d witnessed her crime when he was ten and the orphaned granddaughter she’d never met, more than my grandfather?

  I had arrived in Denmark determined to finally discover where I had come from. To find my family and settle a tiny piece of my heartache, to move on. How could I ever become anything good? My heritage was looking more like a cesspool of deception than the beautiful well of mystery I’d imagined.

  I mean, what kind of grandfather had his own granddaughter mugged on purpose?

  I sat in the cellar staring up at the ceiling. It was so different than the ceiling at the marble church. But the beautiful dome and perfect acoustics hadn’t seemed to whisk my prayers up to the throne of God. I was here in this cellar, after all. I had not prayed for cold, cement floors and debilitating injuries. I’d asked for answers and family and roots. I’d received an unmitigated disaster. What was God thinking? I left my eyes open as I prayed again, honest and hurting and done. If God couldn’t handle that, we were sunk, because that’s all I had left inside.

  OK, God. I realize that you knew where I was born. You knew about these crazy people who are my family. But what does that mean? What am I? They are cruel and calculating and cold. What does that make me? Do I even have a chance? I slumped back against the steps and lay still in the dim light.

  Silence sat with me, brooding. What an awful life my grandfather must have lived. Deceiving those around him, year after year. The thought gave me pause. He must not have the key. If he did, I wouldn’t be lying here with a broken arm. But I didn’t, either. The key was in my purse. Maks had my purse. No, they would have the key if it had been in my purse.

  A small trickle of blood oozed out of the bandage on Freja’s head. I tore off the final piece of duct tape and pressed it firmly against the scarf. I eased away from Freja and rested against something cushy by the back wall. It squished into my hair and smelled of vanilla and cream. Oh well, it was soft. I simply didn’t have the energy to sit up and identify my back rest. Instead, I let the terrible odyssey of the day run backward in my mind.

  Went to brunch, got ready, walked barefoot from The Gravel Road, betrayed by August, was hit and robbed by Maks, followed dog to The Gravel Road, got desperate call from Freja, saved and kissed by pirate…whoa, whoa, whoa, my beautiful watch had fallen off after the plunge from the pirate ship. Where had I put it?

  The dog. It was stuffed in Leroy’s collar along with the cell phone and my last shred of dignity. August had my key and my phone.

  I sat up too quickly. A wave of nausea clenched my stomach down to the size of an apricot pit, and part of my hair stuck to the pastry cart I’d been leaning against. I smoothed my hair away from my face. My hand came away full of whipped cream and blood. My substandard nursing had left both of us looking rather unsightly.

  My cousin lay still, but she was warm. I searched through her pockets. No phone. I looked again. Nothing. I checked her pulse again. She had whipped cream smeared against the entire left side of her suit, but her only injury was the nasty gash on the back of her head. She must have bounced off the pastry cart on the way down. I watched her for a moment as she slept.

  Who was this mystery cousin? Her parents had kept her. She must have grown up around the grandparents I had never known. Had her childhood been full of family picnics and walks along the canal holding her parents by the hand? Or did her past contain some of the sharpness and shadow that I had endured?

  I turned away and looked around the cellar. There were bags of sugar and crates filled with vanilla and cloves and almond extract, but no phone.

  “Therefore if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. The old has gone. The new has come.”

  What? Bible verses, at a time like this? Really Lord, I know I asked about my poor little scars and my sorry little heart and my dumb little past. But can’t You prioritize? Let’s deal with my adoption issues after You help me find a phone, all right?

  “Therefore if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. The old has gone. The new has come.”

  I groaned and leaned my head into my good hand. OK, fine. I asked for a phone and instead I get this verse. I replayed the words in my mind, trying to wrap my thoughts around the meaning. Could it really be that simple? Forget the history, the pain, the terrible back story that brought me to today? Forget, move on, belong to God. It sounded ridiculous. But what else did I have? My past was a wash. Without letting that old, rotting flesh slough off of me, could I ever become something better? I don’t know if I can do this Lord. How can I just be new?

  “Ah, Sovereign Lord, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for You.”

  But it didn’t make sense.

  “Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God.”

  I pulled an impossibly deep breath into my lungs, one that made my chest groan and my ribs ache. Then I let my hurting head ease back against the pastry cart. Fine, it’s Yours, Lord. This impossible little scrap of life that I can’t do anything with anyway is Yours. It’s not nice or pretty or particularly sane. But it belongs to You. I won’t micromanage it. I won’t snatch it back. You can have it. I let the breath out and sank down against the floor. I’m going to need some help, though. I’m not sure I can do this. And not just the getting out of the cellar part. Please send someone, Lord. Someone who loves You.

  I had almost fallen asleep when a thought darted through my mind.

  Maks had a phone.

  Although…maybe I didn’t need a phone. If I could incapacitate our huge abductor, Freja and I could just walk/hobble out of the cellar and march right to the police. I pulled myself to my feet using the cart of éclairs and authentic Danish Danishes.

  I would need a weapon. I looked around the cellar again. A fifty-pound bag of sugar might have worked if I could have lifted it with only my left arm. There wasn’t much to choose from, not even a heavy rolling pin. Then I spotted an old mop propped up in the back corner. The mop might work. Perhaps I could use Maks’s own size against him.

  18

  The Mop

  I gritted my teeth through the motion and smacked another can of pineapple juice against the door.

  Footsteps shook the door in its frame as someone barreled down the hall.

  I tightened my grip on the mop handle and crouched on the floor just to the side of the door. If I could nudge his balance or turn his foot the tiniest smidge, Maks’s weight would do the rest.

  The knob rattled and then the door slammed open. It smashed against the opposite wall, but that was not the loudest sound in the dim little cellar. Nope. Maks busted through the doorway without pause or consideration. He never looked down, but man, did he go down.

  At the same moment as his furious entry, I slammed a long-handled mop into his feet.

  The jarring pain and the results were both spectacular.
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  Maks launched off the top step like a great white shark breaching the waves to snap up a seal. But there were no seals. Only cart after cart of Danish pastries waiting to be crushed by Maks’s soaring bulk. He hit the back wall, rolled over in midair, and thumped down onto three pastry carts. Silence hovered over the chaos. Was he dead?

  I rushed down the steps clutching my arm tight against my side. I hadn’t wanted to kill anyone, not even Maks. I wiped cream cheese off his neck and felt for a pulse. It was strong and there was no blood. His arms and legs were the proper shape and his massive chest rose and fell in a slow, steady rhythm. I pressed my forehead against the cool concrete wall for a moment.

  OK, look for a phone or just run?

  The door stood wide open to the hall beyond.

  I hobbled over to Freja and rolled her over with my foot. I stared down at my cousin, the family I had prayed for, the family I wished I had never found. She didn’t stir.

  I hooked my good arm around her waist and tried to drag her. She slithered out of my grasp. I got down on my knees and attempted to shove her up the steps with my shoulder. Freja thumped over once and stuck. The pain in my arm throbbed in my ears and I had to lean against the wall to catch my breath.

  There was no way I could drag her up those steps and through the door. We couldn’t escape together and besides that, my fairytale cousin, my precious relative, had betrayed me. What I could do was leave Freja here and go for help. No one would blame me for taking my chance to escape and coming back for her when I had a police officer or a firefighter or someone with a large gun or perhaps an industrial-sized flame thrower.

  Maks was enormous—a fierce and capable minion.

  I doubted the hotel staff would be sufficient to contain him. It would take someone with special talents that I did not possess. And he could awaken at any moment. Why should I stick around just to get pulverized? I closed my eyes, wanting my unconscious cousin out of sight for a moment.

  She had betrayed me. She had worked with our grandfather and Maks to con me.

  But leaning against the concrete wall with my eyes closed reminded me of that horrible moment in the hall when Maks stuffed me under his arm and slapped duct tape across my eyes.

  Freja stood up to Maks for me and had been hurt because of it.

  What if he woke up? What would he do to Freja?

  I glanced across the dim room, searching for a brilliant plan that only required the use of one arm. What to do? I looked between Freja’s slumped form and the open doorway at the top of the stairs.

  Go get help. That was my only option.

  The crisp snap of men’s dress shoes against polished flooring made me drop to a crouch at the bottom of the steps. My heart thundered in my ears and my hands began to shake. Was it one of my grandfather’s minions? Or Axel Rasmussen himself?

  I could not handle any more horrible relatives. I sank lower, hidden by the steps.

  A tall man with brown hair zipped past the door. He was speaking into a phone clipped to his ear. He was dressed like the hotel staff, but what if it was a disguise? Should I risk calling out?

  I started to straighten from behind the step, but my throat was so tight and dry I couldn’t make a squeak. I tried to swallow.

  The man backpedaled and leaned through the doorway for an instant. He scowled as his gaze scanned the mess. I choked out some word that almost sounded like “help.” He slammed the door and locked it with a snap.

  I stared up at the locked door. Terror crawled down my throat and burrowed in my chest. I scrambled up the steps and pounded with my good fist. Mistake. The jarring sent my world fading to black. By the time I could see again the man was gone. He was gone and both Freja and I were trapped with Maks the Malevolent. I stared at the door in silent horror as the minutes boomed past in my head. Finally, I remembered Maks’s phone.

  The phone wasn’t in his pockets or on the floor beneath him. I turned in a circle. Could it have flown across the room? I checked every nook and cranny, and then sifted through the pastry carts. I finally found it buried in a sad smear of demolished éclair.

  I snatched it up and dialed my own number. It rang three times and went to voice mail. I tried again. I left a message again, but the results were the same. Why wasn’t August picking up? I stared at the phone for a moment, and then dialed his number. I know, I know. I shouldn’t have been able to remember his number. But I was just that pitiable. I memorized it, OK? A cute guy hands me his phone number in the airport…I couldn’t help myself. And if he knew what was good for him, that insufferable flirt would pick up this instant.

  Voicemail.

  “August, this is Morgan. I’m trapped in the sugar cellar under the Nimb Hotel. Maks broke my arm and Freja won’t wake up and you have my grandmother’s watch. You owe me so much I don’t know where to start—Beep.

  I smashed the phone into a pear Danish and tried to put my head in my hands. The whole broken arm thing made that an agonizing mistake. I leaned against the wall and tried not to make any whimpering noises. When I had gained some semblance of control, I took a breath to clear my head and dialed 911.

  A sharp beep pierced my ear, followed by a calm voice in Danish saying something about 112. My Danish-to-English dictionary was gone so I blazed forward in English hoping that the operator was bilingual. Right when I got to the part about Maks and the basement, a grating buzz made me cringe. The phone clicked and the screen went dark. What? I scowled at the phone and then glared over at Freja. I wiggled her shoulder with my foot.

  “Hey Freja, how do you dial 911 in Denmark?”

  No response.

  I tried 111, 211, 311, 411 and so on but got nothing, not even a beep. How was it possible that Maks’s phone could be destroyed by a little bit of frosting? Mine had survived Dragon Boat Lake and a plunge from a pirate ship. I rubbed it on my dress, trying to get all the sugar out of the buttons. OK, it was a lot of frosting. But whatever the quantities of destroying confection, the result was the same. We were on our own.

  I glanced over at the sleeping giant. Exactly how hard had he hit his head? His breathing was deep and steady. But eventually Maks would wake up and Freja and I would be there to greet him.

  I spent several minutes hobbling around the cellar in frantic and useless activity. My arm was screaming at me to stop and despite my desperate search, no secret passageways or loaded firearms presented themselves. Finally, I was forced to admit that I had neither resources nor a brilliant plan. What I did have was fatigue, broken bones, and an empty stomach. Yay, me!

  I scrunched up on my side next to Freja with two Danishes and croissant. At least it was a task I could bumble through using one arm. If I took half a moment to eat something, perhaps a brilliant one-armed-escape plan would present itself. I glanced down at my beautiful yellow dress. It was torn, bloodied, and coated liberally in frosting. No dog hair, though. My attempt to dress for success had been the kind of epic fail that inspired whole movie franchises. I could picture it now.

  Fashionista Failure IV: She’s been covered in dog hair, lake water, and drool. Watch the latest addition to Morgan’s travails and see if blood, frosting, and sweet, fruity filling improve our heroine’s appearance.

  Ugh. I was right back where I’d started. The only clean clothes my suitcase now contained were the ratty jeans and Star Jumpers T-shirt.

  I took a bite of the apricot cream Danish. Delicious.

  Running footsteps echoed down the hall above.

  I clamped my teeth against the pain and pushed myself upright using the wall for leverage. Then I grabbed my mop, hobbled up the steps, and crouched once again beside the door.

  A key rattled in the lock.

  19

  Theater Trick

  The mop trap worked fabulously. The second attacker went airborne toward the pastry carts, and I realized that it was a bit too fabulous.

  I had just launched August.

  An image of an annoying flirt, broken and bloody and expiring upon a bed
of mashed pastries flashed through my mind. I screamed some unintelligible bit of advice toward him and threw my mop to the side. My rush down the stairs turned into a slide. My broken arm thumped against an oversized bag of confectioners’ sugar and my screaming changed from unintelligible advice to cries of agony.

  August did a tidy flip and landed in front of me in a crouch. He looked at my shocked face and grinned, brushing his shaggy blond hair back from his eyes. “I do stunts, too. Not just fake beards and plastic rats.”

  I sagged back against the sugar sack and burst into tears.

  His smirk melted away. August hesitated and then leaned forward as though he might touch my face or pick up my hand. Instead, he scanned my body until his eyes stopped on all the duct tape looped around my arm. “Is it your arm?”

  “Charming and brilliant. How is it you’re still single, August?”

  Maks groaned in his sleep and flopped over burying his face in cream filling. I couldn’t help myself. I scooted closer to August, despite my annoyance.

  August glanced over his shoulder and then met my gaze again, looking grim. “We need to move.” August yanked a phone out of his pocket and dialed the police. He did not stay on the line as requested, but only gave them our address before snapping the phone shut. He braced his hands on his knees, assessing my face, and then offered me his hand.

  I took it, grinding my cheek between my teeth to keep silent as he pulled me to my feet. The pain flared into a blaze. The room darkened and crackling static crept across my peripheral vision. I was crying in earnest now, that horrible ugly kind of crying that comes when you are enduring more than simple pain. They were the kind of tears that come with exhaustion and heartache and disappointment. Tears that speak less about injury and more about hurt. Was this God’s answer, then? An open door I couldn’t reach, an unconscious family member I couldn’t trust, and a handsome man who smashed into the room causing hurt and mayhem at every turn?