Page 43 of Playing With My Heart Strings

They get close enough to my face, though, that I can see it’s Alex and not some random kidnapper.

“Good luck, Baylor,” he says softly, his voice barely a whisper, before his footsteps retreat until a heavy door slams.

“Ladies, today’s team challenge is an escape room. You’ve been split into teams of three and you’ll have one hour to work together and find your way out,” Jarrod’s voice echoes in the dark room. “Remember, the winning team will have immunity from the elimination, so work quickly. Best of luck, your time starts now.”

The lights don’t flicker on like I expected they would, so I’m still in total darkness.

“Hello?” I yell out, hoping one of my teammates can hear.

No response.

“Hello!?” I yell a bit louder. “Is anyone there?”

“Baylor?” a voice calls back. Sage, I think.

“Yes! It’s me!”

“Where are you?” she asks, a bit uncertain.

“I’m not sure. It’s completely dark in here, and I’m cuffed,” I respond, hoping that she’s in a better situation.

“Shit. Well, it’s not dark here, but I’m locked in this cage thing.”

“Guys! Are you there?” I immediately recognize Valerie’s voice.

“Valerie!” I yell and footsteps approach.

The door rattles but doesn’t open.

“Dammit,” Valerie curses. “It’s locked. I didn’t think it would be that easy, but I was hopeful. There’s a window in this door, can you see me?”

“No, it’s completely pitch black in here, Val. I didn’t know there was a window in the door. Are there any switches on the wall out there?” I ask, trying to think of how I can get some light in this room.

Her feet shuffle around outside, so I know the door can’t be too far away.

“I’m not seeing anything…” Her voice trails off for a few moments until she yelps.

“You good?”

“Yeah, I just tripped over something. Hold on, there’s a toolbox here.” She grunts, and I assume she’s lifting it to carry it over to my room’s door. “It’s locked, but there’s a padlock with three sets of numbers. Do you see anything that might help, Sage?”

“I’m looking! There’s a bunch of shit in here, oh my God.” She pauses for a few seconds. “There’s a cabinet, a bunch of tools that probably won’t help any…a whole wall of keys that will probably be useful in the future but maybe not for that…”

“Is there anything you can see with numbers?” Valerie asks.

“No…oh, wait! Yes! It’s kind of hard to see, but it looks like there’s a sequence of numbers on the wall. Three rows of nine numbers each. But there’s nothing in the very middle and nothing on the bottom right. It looks like a puzzle. We might have to do some math,” she explains.

“Oh, lovely. I’m not great at puzzles as it is, but throw in math and I’m hopeless,” Valerie mutters, which makes me chuckle a little. From what I know about them, escape rooms are just one big puzzle. But then again, not all of them include math.

“We’ll be fine. You have us to help you, and we just have to be faster than the other team,” I point out.

To be fair, with Aspen on their team, I have little faith they’ll be able to get out before us.

“Can you read out the numbers, Sage? The wall is dusty enough that I should be able to write on it,” Valerie calls out. With the way we’re all able to talk to each other, we must not be too far apart at least. That gives me some hope.

“Okay, the first row of numbers is five, nine, six, two, four, eight, three, one, seven.” Sage recites the numbers, and Valerie lets her know when she’s ready for the next row. “Okay, the middle row has four, seven, two, six, eight, and nine… And the last row has three, one, eight, six, seven, nine.”

I’m the only one who can’t see the numbers, so I’m trying to mentally picture the puzzle in my head.

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