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TV.”
    “Clearly.  Still, we should wait till nightfall.”  I thought for a second.  “Is your UAV picking up our signal down here?”
    Santino pulled his computer from his bag and consulted it.  “No.  Guess the rocks are blocking it.”
    “Figures,” I muttered.  While it wasn’t exactly a shit show, the mission was quickly turning into one of our worst.  “See if you can pick this lock so we can bust out of here real quiet like.”
    “Me?  What are you going to do?”
    “Just do it,” I told him perhaps a little too hastily.
    I ignored his hurt expression and moved towards the cowering form of the young Roman woman.  It occurred to me that I could have simply told Santino that I feared his scarred face may frighten the young woman, but my patience with his whining had worn thin long ago.  I pulled off my bag, which the Gauls had also stupidly left us, and pulled out a thin blanket.  I knelt beside the girl and tried to wrap it around her, but she recoiled from my touch, forcing me to back away.  The poor girl was so frail and beaten; I wasn’t sure how to interact with her.  I tried holding the blanket out innocently, and was happy to see her gingerly reach out and take it with a shaky hand.  I took a step back and enticed her to wrap it around herself by mimicking the gesture over my own shoulders.  It took her another few seconds before she understood what to do.
    “What’s your name?”  I asked her gently, crouching a safe distance away.
    She didn’t say anything.  She just looked at me out of the corner of her eyes as she trembled, the blanket covering everything from her nose down.
    I reached my hand out but didn’t touch her.  “I’m not going to hurt you.  I’m here to bring you back to your mother.”
    The girl’s eyes widened at the revelation, and her trembling slowly subsided.  Quietly, through chattering teeth and eyes streaming tears, I heard the girl whisper, “Julia.”
    That was the name her mother supplied me. 
    “Try and get some sleep,” I told her.  “We’ll take you to your mother in a few hours.”
    She didn’t react outwardly, but her tears finally stopped flowing and her eyes closed before she quietly went still.  She was already asleep.  The poor girl was exhausted.  I reached out and tucked her exposed arm under the blanket, careful so that I didn’t disturb her.  She may have been kept awake for days, probably for reasons I never wanted to think about it.
    I joined Santino by the bars again.  “ What do you think?  Four hours?”
    “Three,” he corrected.  “Most of these guys already look drunk enough as it is, and it’s getting late.  What I don’t get is how they expected these bars to hold us.  You blew up a coconut just by snapping.”
    “I figure they’r e either too smart or too dumb for their own good,” I deduced.  “Either they’ve figured out we faked it somehow or else they’re just too dumb and drunk to think we can do the same to iron bars.  Either way, we win.”
    “Right,” Santino agreed.  “I picked the lock by the way.”
    I looked at the bars to see they were already slightly ajar.  We could leave at any time.
    Santino waited for some form of acknowledgment from me, but when one didn’t come, he crossed his arms, leaned his right shoulder against the bars and looked at me.  He was n ever one for awkward silences.
    “Sure you don’t want to talk about what happened back at the tavern?  We’ve got plenty of time to burn.”
    “No,” I said.  “There’s nothing to talk about, especially not with you.”
    He flicked his eyebrows in to the air and looked away.  “Well, that was rude,” he mumbled.  After a second he looked back at me and seemed to perk up.  “Hey, here’s an idea, why don’t you feel free to blame me for all of your problems.”
    “I’m not,” I countered, amazed at how angry I now was.  “It’s not your problem.”
    “You’re damn right it’s my problem