by Rachel Magee
“Dolphins are my favorite animal, and I’ve never been this close to them in the wild. Weren’t they spectacular?”
Aiden shrugged and tried to look humble. “I arranged for them to be here as a thank you for helping me.”
She playfully pushed his hand away and turned her full attention back to where the dolphins had been, breathing out a contented sigh. “It doesn’t get much better than this, does it?”
No. No it didn’t.
Aiden finally lowered his paddle into the water and started to turn the kayak around.
“I guess we should start heading back before people think we got lost at sea.”
“If we have to.” She waited until they were facing the correct direction before helping him paddle. “Don’t tell Georgia, but this was the highlight of my weekend.”
“Mine too, so your secret’s safe with me.”
True, seeing the beautiful creatures so close was inspiring, but there was something else about this boat ride that resonated deep inside him. Something that had a whole lot to do with the girl sitting in front of him.
Chapter Eight
So far, today had been pretty perfect. Spending the day on the beach with her friends was always a recipe for a good time, but her kayaking adventure with Aiden had elevated it to a whole new level. Paige found herself humming as she got ready for the bachelorette party and her rosy glow continued all through their happy hour.
She couldn’t help but think life was good as they walked into the escape room. In theory this portion of the bachelorette party was supposed to a fun, bonding time. When Georgia mentioned it to Paige, they both agreed that being locked in a room searching for clues with some of their favorite people would produce moments they would remember forever. It had set off an afternoon of storytelling and giggling over old college stories.
In reality when the game host pulled the door shut the rosy glow from Paige’s perfect day started to dull before the lock even clicked into place. It had less to do with being trapped in a sinking submarine with only an hour’s worth of oxygen and the riddle of a madman to help them get out, and more to do with who else was locked in the room.
“Do you have any idea how many people have been in here touching things? It probably has more bacterial growth than a bargain motel room. I’m not touching one single thing until we wipe it down. Who has the antibacterial wipes?” Elle glanced around the room with a look of disgust. Paige knew Georgia often lacked patience for her opinionated cousin, but she hadn’t realized how thin that patience had gotten until she saw the annoyed look on Georgia’s face. In an attempt to ease Georgia’s tension, Paige jumped in.
“I don’t have wipes, but I did bring hand sanitizer.” She pulled it out of her small crossbody purse and squirted some of the Midnight Passion scented gel onto Elle’s hand. She had purchased this particular scent because she was curious as to what midnight passion would smell like. Now, the scent would forever be associated with a musty room and a germ-conscious cousin.
“So now what?” Georgia asked. She stood in the center of the room and rotated slowly.
“I guess we look for clues?” Ciera wandered over to a control panel with lots of flashing lights. “The trouble is, I’ve never been in a submarine so I don’t know what looks normal and what’s out of place.”
“We need to attack this in a logical order. I say the first thing we do is figure out the madman’s message,” Hadley announced.
Elle, who was still rubbing sanitizer into her hands, glared at Hadley. “This is Georgia’s party. I think Georgia should tell us what to do.”
Before any more hostile words could be exchanged, an ear-piercing alarm blasted through the room, causing Paige to jump.
“What’s that?” Ciera yelled over the high-pitched shriek.
The noise was so loud it made it hard to think. Several of the girls, including Georgia and her cousin, stood looking dazed, pressing their hands over their ears. Ciera and Hadley examined the control panel, hitting buttons next to all of the flashing lights. Paige started to help them when, from the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a guilty-looking Sasha standing on the far side of the room.
Paige made her way through the chaos over to her. “Do you know what happened?”
Sasha chewed on her lip and pointed to a large, round, red button on the wall. In bold block letters it said “DO NOT TOUCH.”
“That was the button that got pressed? The one button that says don’t touch.”
Sasha gazed at the floor, looking like a kid who had been caught getting in trouble. “I wanted to see what happened.”
Hadley, who had heard the conversation, huffed. “Great. So now what?” She glared at Sasha, as if she were hiding the answer.
“I tried pushing it again, but I think it only made the sound louder.”
Paige examined the button and discovered tiny letters all the way around it. She leaned in closer. “Wait, I think it says something here, but it’s hard to read.”
“To counteract your oversight, turn your attention to the light,” Sasha mumbled. “But I don’t know what it means.”
Georgia pointed to the large light switch on the wall next to the hatch. “Maybe there? Try flipping that.”
Elle turned her nose up in the air. “Can you imagine how many people’s hands have been on that switch? I’m not touching it.”
One of the other girls in the room flipped it down. The noise stopped at once and the lights flickered. A message scrolled across the screen at the top of the room.
“Your foolishness has cost you ten precious minutes of oxygen. Pay attention so you are not so careless in the future,” Georgia read. The giant digital timer on the wall went from 58:03 to 48:03.
“Sorry,” Sasha mumbled and hung her head.
“It happens. We just have to figure out the puzzle a little faster,” Paige said, then turned to Hadley. “Read us the riddle again.”
“If you want to get out alive,
It’s crucial to stop the dive.
To achieve that, you’ll need to know
To what depths you’re Willing to go.” Hadley looked up from the card in her hand. “Is there a dive meter anywhere?”
Ciera pointed to a gauge next to her. “There’s a meter here. It’s spinning around backwards and there’s a stop button right next to it.”
Sasha squinted at the gauge. “Well, it says to stop the dive, so push the button.” She went for the button.
Georgia, Paige and Hadley all lunged for her. “No!”
Even Ciera’s sweet smile looked strained when she turned to Sasha. “I think we should try to figure out the clue before we press anything else.”
Sasha didn’t look like she had any idea why, but she wasn’t willing to cross Hadley. She backed away from the control panel and leaned against the wall.
Then a voice came from above. “Can I help you?”
“Yes, can we get some appetizers in here? Or maybe a bottle of champagne. What do you have out there?” Georgia’s other cousin asked.
“Tara? What are you doing?”
“I thought we could use some snacks, so I pressed the help button.”
“That’s not really what the help button is for,” the voice from the ceiling said. “You have two helps remaining.”
The intercom clicked off and the electric board lit up that read “hints requested: 1.”
“So that’s a no to the snacks?” Tara asked.
Hadley massaged her temples. Georgia looked like she might start yelling. Paige made a mental note that kayaking on the surface was far superior to being trapped in a submarine in the ocean’s depths.
“New rule. No one touches a button until we all agree on it,” Hadley said. “Since Georgia is the bride, she’s the only one who gets to press things.”
Tara crossed her arms in front of her che
st and sat down on the floor. “Whatever. This game is stupid.”
Elle shrugged. “I wasn’t planning on touching anything anyway.”
Hadley went back to reading the clue. Paige leaned over the control panel next to Ciera. “I guess we need to figure out what level we’re willing to dive to. There has to be something around here that tells us.”
“How about a hundred,” Sasha said. Everyone stopped what they were doing to look at her.
“Why a hundred, sweetie?” Ciera’s voice had the faint strained sound that was her telltale sign of being annoyed.
“Isn’t that where you need to get out? Like at the surface? And we are trying to get out, right?”
“Surface level is zero,” Georgia said. Hadley rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to what she was reading.
“Zero? That seems like a funny place to start. Everyone knows one hundred is a perfect score. Nobody wants to get a zero.”
“The number measures how many feet below the surface you are, so surface level is zero,” Ciera explained.
Sasha looked thoughtful. “Oh. They should probably explain that before they locked us in here.”
“I think I found something.” Georgia diverted the attention back to the game as she pointed to a note pinned on a board. “It’s a memo about someone named Will. The word ‘Willing’ is capitalized in the riddle, maybe it means something.”
“Is there a depth next to it?” Paige asked.
Georgia shook her head. “Only a date. March 21. What do you think that means?”
“Maybe transfer it into numbers? 321?” Paige suggested.
“Worth a shot. Does everyone agree?” Everyone nodded their approval. Everyone except Sasha, who still looked to be working through something in her mind.
Georgia turned the dial and hit the button. The flashing lights stopped and a hidden drawer popped open, revealing a small box locked with a tiny padlock.
“Guess we need a key.” Hadley examined the box. “It must be hidden somewhere in this room.”
Everyone scattered throughout the small room, searching every nook and cranny for the next clue.
As the time ticked down, the clues got harder to figure out. With about thirty minutes remaining, Tara sat down on the floor and pulled out her phone, saying she had enough. Georgia used one of the helps to see if someone would come let one person out of their room. Paige wasn’t sure if saying yes was standard policy or if Georgia’s voice sounded so frustrated they didn’t dare say no.
With ten minutes remaining, Sasha accidentally bumped into the 3D puzzle they were putting together and knocked it over, making them have to start over. She said she’d help by finding all the straight pieces for the edge.
“It’s a sphere,” Ciera told her. Sasha nodded and searched through the pieces on the floor.
Paige couldn’t help but compare all the ways she and Sasha were different. For the first time since meeting Sasha, she wondered why Brody was attracted to someone who seemed to be the complete opposite of her. What did that say about the relationship they’d shared? But that was a topic she would have to consider at a different time. Right now her goal was to figure out these clues so they could get out of this room before what was left of her rosy glow got swallowed up by its darkness.
There were two minutes and twenty-seven seconds left on the clock and they were down to their final clue. All they had to do was figure out the correct order to put the eight digits into the security keypad to open the door into the override room.
“Why can’t we try putting them all in different orders?” Sasha asked again.
“It takes off twenty seconds every time we’re wrong. We have to get it right in less than six attempts.” Even Ciera’s normal saintly patience was starting to sound a little strained.
“Come on, girls. We can do this.” Paige tried to keep her voice peppy. “Hadley, read the riddle one more time.” The four friends kneeled on the floor around the clue and the paper numbers.
“If you start out From Here to Eternity you won’t have much more. Then remembering from where you came will get you out the door.”
They each gave ideas about how to arrange the numbers that might make sense with what was written. They tried two of their attempts with no luck. Paige was starting to get frustrated, and if the look on her friends’ faces was any indication, they were feeling the same way.
“Well, the first four numbers are 1953.” Sasha said from the wall behind them. They all turned to look at her.
“Why do you say that?” Ciera asked.
“It says to start with From Here to Eternity. That movie came out in 1953, so those have to be the first four numbers.”
Well. Paige couldn’t help but be impressed. Georgia arranged the paper numbers on the floor so those four were first. “That leaves us two, four, six and seven.”
“Wait.” Paige rearranged them. “That’s the number over the door where we walked in.”
There were only fifteen seconds left on the clock. Hadley shrugged. “It’s worth a try. At this point we have nothing to lose.”
Georgia typed in the numbers. Even though they really weren’t sinking and regardless of what happened the exit door was about to spring open to a balmy Florida night, everyone held their breath. Georgia pushed enter.
Lights flashed and the word “Congratulations” scrolled across the screen. “We beat the clock!” Ciera threw her hands in the air to cheer.
“Barely.” Georgia breathed out a sigh of relief. Ciera flung her arms around her.
“Doesn’t matter. We still won!”
They all spilled out into the courtyard to take pictures declaring they had beat the clock and that they were, in fact, geniuses, before climbing on their bikes and heading down the path to their dinner destination five blocks away.
As Aiden had warned her the first day, riding a bike in a walking boot was not easy. She’d never thought about how much ankle flexion went into pushing a pedal.
Earlier, she’d been able to find a rhythm, but as the night wore on and she got more tired, she struggled to keep her balance long enough to move forward at any sort of obtainable speed. And now her friends were so far in front of her that she couldn’t see them anymore. She pulled over to the side of the path to catch her breath and wipe the sweat from her forehead.
“Do you need help?” Sasha pulled up next to her and stopped, which caught Paige off guard. She thought everyone was in front of her. Where had she come from?
As if Sasha could read her mind, she answered, “I had to make a phone call, so I stayed behind. How’s your ankle?”
Paige shook her foot to try to get rid of some of the tension, but it didn’t help. Between the pain in her ankle and the added weight from the boot, her entire leg throbbed. “We’re almost there. I can make it, then I can prop my leg up for a while.” She pushed off, moving slowly and wobbly, kind of like a new baby giraffe learning how to walk. She imagined all the people in the passing cars pointing and laughing. But Sasha didn’t point or laugh. Instead, she rode slowly, right next to Paige, without any sort of judgment in her eyes.
“It’s amazing how much pain one little ankle can cause. I got a minor sprain last year during filming. It hurt so bad I could barely walk on it, but I had to push through because of the production schedule. When we were done filming I stayed in bed for two whole days so I wouldn’t have to feel the pain.”
“That must have been tough. Right now, I can’t imagine trying to walk normally.”
Sasha tucked a strand of her perfect hair behind her ear. “It put my acting abilities to the test, that’s for sure.”
Were she and Sasha really bonding over ankle injuries? This night was not going at all how she’d imagined.
“Thanks for your help in there. We wouldn’t have made it out in time if you hadn’t figured out the clue.”
Sasha’s mouth pulled to the side in thought as she steered around a pothole in the bike path. “That was an easy one. Movies I know. Submarines, on the other hand? They didn’t teach us that in cosmetology school.”
“I don’t think any of us know a whole lot about them.” Paige offered a sympathetic smile. Maybe Sasha wasn’t as bad as they had made her out to be. “You went to cosmetology school?”
“Yeah. After high school my dad said he wouldn’t pay for any more acting classes unless I had training in a career that actually paid money. Since I was still doing small stage productions and budget photoshoots at the time, I was doing all my own hair and makeup. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to know more about it.”
“Makes sense.” It also explained why her hair always looked so good.
The path got more crowded as they neared the beachside food complex where they were having dinner. It was one of the major hangouts for this little beach town, featuring six different counter service restaurants around a central courtyard. The faint sounds of the band playing on the main stage mingled with the talking and laughter of the crowds on the trail. The bike traffic brought them to a stop and they had to get off their bikes.
“I guess we should walk it from here,” Paige said.
“Can you push yours on your ankle? I’m pretty good at handling two bikes. My older sister used to make me push hers up the hill to our house when we were kids.”
Paige shook her head. “Thanks for the offer, but I think I can make it. Walking is a lot easier than riding.” Also, all the concentration it required to push her bike while hobbling on one leg took her mind off thinking about how Brody’s new girlfriend might not be so bad after all.
Aiden had just handed over his credit card to pay for the appetizers when he spotted Paige limping up the crushed shell pathway to The Courtyard with Sasha by her side. He held his hand up to wave. Paige’s whole face brightened when she saw him, and he had a strange suspicion that his own face did the same thing. Being around her made life feel easier, sunnier. The more time he spent with her, the more he liked it.