Copenhagen Cozenage (11 page)

I shook my head and arched away from the rank smell of his breath, coffee and spicy sausages.

Maks hoisted me back up with a sigh. “I’ve got to go see the old man, but I’ll be back to check on you. It’ll do you good to sit and stew for a bit.”

A pause, then a creak.

Maks shrugged me off his shoulder.

I was falling. I crashed down a set of cold hard steps and into a chilly room. I hit the floor hard and heard a sharp snap. Blazing agony tore through my upper arm. I screamed against the duct tape and tried to suck in enough air through my nose. My hand fluttered over the injured appendage. A wave of nausea curdled in my gut.

A second thump invaded the stillness, and I felt the warmth of a body settle against me.

I tried to scream again, angry and hurt and totally grossed out. My fingers scratched against the duct tape. My breaths came faster and faster as the pain washed over me in great, curling ocean waves. My scrabbling hands grew achy and weak as I snuffled against the duct tape and my world went slowly spinning into darkness.

17

The Phone

I awoke to a fiery wash of agony tearing down my arm. I must have rolled or twisted in some way. Whatever had happened in the fall, my wound could not stand much movement. With the duct tape across my eyes, I was in solid dark. I felt exposed. I sucked in slow, deliberate breaths and tried to gain a sense of my surroundings. The floor was cool and hard against my side and something moist had puddled beneath me. Was I bleeding? I recoiled and a warm body slumped against my back.

Freja?

Careful not to jostle my right arm, I reached back toward my long-lost cousin. What if she was horribly wounded? What if she was dead? I found her shoulder and moved my hand up toward her neck. What if something was shattered and I touched blood or raw bone? I slid my hand against her neck and waited. Nothing. I took a deep breath and smashed my two middle fingers harder against her throat. A small nudge against my fingertips, and then another. Her pulse felt steady. Freja was alive.

I couldn’t tell if she was injured, but I certainly was. I felt woozy and foolish. I could use my left hand. Sight was just a few quick tears away.

I tugged and picked and pried until the silver strip was almost off my mouth. Then I bit my lip and ripped it free. It stung, but the hurt was like the brush of a kiss when compared to the amazing agony that gripped my right arm.

I braced myself against the pain and tried to yank the duct tape off my eyes. My lashes caught and I folded. There was no way I could snatch my eyelashes off my face. Who did God think I was, one of those big-muscled guys trained to feel no pain? What happened to Him not sending us trials we couldn’t handle?

A few tears leaked past the tape and I gently eased my fingers around the tender skin by my eyes. I tried not to think about how Maks would have removed it. Maks. He could come back any moment and I needed to see if that puddle was blood. I bit my lip, counted to three, grabbed the tape from the top and pulled. It felt so good to blink that I almost didn’t grieve the scattering of lashes that clung to the tape. Just a few. At least I wouldn’t have bald eyes. I was stalling. So I steeled myself and looked down at my arm.

A pitiful squeal of horror escaped my lips before I could stop it.
No, Morgan. You are not wimpy Yeoman Veronica Fluffe in this story. You are the bold and beautiful Okturra, or maybe Snarvich The Reticent, or a lady Snarvich The Reticent
. That was it. I was Snarvich The Reticent ‘s childhood sweetheart. I could handle this. I looked back, minus the squeak of dismay. My arm was bent at a nasty angle about three inches above my elbow. I stuffed down my gag reflex and looked at the floor. A dark smear of blood stained the concrete beneath me, but it didn’t appear to be mine.

Freja hadn’t moved. I scootched over and rolled her onto her back. Freja’s hair was thick with blood.

I clapped my hand over my mouth and closed my eyes.
God, I am really not cut out for this. You know that, right?
I cracked open my eyes. If I was too wimpy to stop the bleeding, this day would get a heck of a lot more complicated. I looked around for some kind of bandage. The room was full of baking supplies and day old pastries stacked on trays against one wall.

Employees probably came down as they went off shift and gathered them up to enjoy at home. Not very absorbent, though.
OK Jesus, you know I can’t do this. Freja needs someone calmer than me and really since I’m asking, I need better relatives. Someone who is not conning and betraying me would be preferable. Just sayin’.

No angels bearing sterilized gauze and stretchers appeared. But I did notice the dangling end of my scarf. I yanked it off with my left hand. Freja’s delicate accessory would make a lovely bandage. At that point, lying on the floor next to my cousin, wrapping the dumb scarf around her head, I kind of wished I’d never found my family at all.

I pulled the scarf as tight around the wound as possible and snagged Maks’s half-used roll of duct tape with my foot. I applied duct tape over the scarf and sat next to her putting pressure to the wound. The bleeding slowed, and then stopped. I slapped the loose end of the duct tape against my elbow and tried not to look at the horrible bend in the middle of my arm. Carefully I wound the tape around my middle, pinning the injured arm against my side. It was not a pretty sling, but would have to do.

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.

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.