Page 98 of No Escape

“You did it!” I reached out and grabbed her hand, yanking her toward me. “Holy crap, you did it all on your own.”

“Did you get the code?”

“I did.Wedid. Come on, we’ve got to get that code keyed in now.”

“My knees are all scraped up from crawling,” she moaned, looking down at her legs. “Vittoria is going to kill me. I’ll ruin all her wedding pictures with my ugly knees.”

“Haven’t you heard of Photoshop? Besides, she’llloveyou for saving her honeymoon.” I punched in the code. After a moment, the red light above the door turned green, just as the clock ticked down to zero.

I pulled Mia out of the room, holding up her arm with the bracelet like she’d just won a prize fight.

I briefly saw the gamemaster’s shocked face before we were completely mobbed by our teammates. There was so much shouting and screeching, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to hear properly for at least the next seven years.

Tito lifted me off my feet, squeezing me so hard I couldn’t breathe. He finally set me down, and I looked around. “Where’s Slash? How did you do it? What happened?”

“I’ll tell you later,” I said. “He’s still inside. Someone has to go tell him we won.”

“I’ll do it,” Tito said and disappeared into the control room.

Brando approached me, his expression one of complete disbelief. He held out the golden disc. “I’m truly at a loss for words, Ms. Carmichael. You and your team have exceeded my expectations in every way.”

I grinned. “Thanks, but I had the easy job. These guys did all the hard work.” I spread out my arm to encompass the team, including Slash and Tito, who walked into the room slapping each other on the back. “Especially the youngest member of our group, Mia. If it weren’t for her quick thinking and courage, we wouldn’t have made it in time. I thinkshedeserves to be presented the golden disc. Great job, Mia. How did you manage to navigate in the dark?”

“I had some extra time standing there in the doorway, so I started playing around. I discovered I could feel the path cables in the floor. They were barely raised but made of a different material. I wondered if I could follow the path by crawling and feeling the cables and staying between them. I wasn’t sure, but when we needed the other strobe light, I figured I would try it, and it worked.”

“How did you know where to throw the strobe light once you’d found it?” I asked.

“Slash told me to throw it. He said to turn it on just before I threw it because it’d help him estimate its location so he could catch it. He was worried I wouldn’t throw it hard enough, so he told me to throw it as absolutely hard as I could. So, I did, and I guess he caught it, or at least got it. Then he shouted at me to head back to you as fast as I could.”

“You’re amazing, Mia. We owe this win to you.”

The teenager bounced up and down on her feet, beaming happily. “Thanks. You guys make me feel like a million bucks. Hey, did I get that one right?”

“You did.” I grinned. “At last, Mia, you got one right.”

We laughed, and Slash gave her a kiss on the cheek after Brando handed her the disc. We clapped and filed out, chatting happily while heading back to the dining room for lunch.

As we walked along, Brando asked Slash for his thoughts on the escape room. “Tell Mr. Zachetti to lose the lasers,” Slash said. “It’s plenty hard as it is.”

“I respectfully disagree,” Brando said. “It clearly wasn’t hard enough. I’m truly astonished at your capability and resourcefulness. Whatisit about you people that makes you so special?”

“It was the teenager who came through in the clutch,” I said, grinning. “Or Slash’s parents, who refined our game plan.”

“Or the big Swiss guy who took one for the team,” Tito added over my shoulder.

“How did the other team do?” Slash asked. “Did they successfully complete the challenge?”

“Why don’t you ask them for yourself?” Brando replied.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Lexi Carmichael

“You’re back,” my dad exclaimed as soon as he saw me, jogging across the dining room at an alarming speed to wrap me and Slash in a combined bear hug. I was so shocked that he’d included Slash in the hug, I was speechless.

“Did you solve your challenge?” he asked, finally releasing us.

I managed to find my voice. “We did, Dad. What about you guys?”

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