Page 34 of His Angel

“Well, that’s helpful,” Oliver grumbles, turning over the cup he’s already checked twice. “Where the fuck is this other number?”

“I don’t think we need it,” Taylor says, picking up the key lock. “Sometimes they don’t have to be in order.”

“Please discard all used items in the bowl beside the exit door,” booms from the overhead speakers, making us all jump. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that we’re being watched, but with no obvious cameras hanging around, it kind of does.

“If we put in the ones we already have, there are only ten other options it could be,” Taylor continues.

“Good thinking,” Leo agrees, discarding the pictures and notes. “Give it here and I’ll try.”

“Nah, I’m good. I’ll do it,” Taylor says, leaning back.

With a shrug, Leo drops down to take another look at the ancient safe beneath the wooden bar top. The lights flicker, the sconces on the wall very good replicas of what may have existed on one of these ancient trains, if any of it were real.

“Additional clues can be provided,” the speaker interrupts again. “For a cost of five minutes.”

“Yeah, we’re good, thanks,” I reply glumly, looking around the room again.Presumptuous bastards.

“To be fair, that clock’s ticking, and we’ve still got two to go,” Oliver offers as Taylor clicks away at the keypad, to seemingly no avail. That is until, finally, the keys slot into place, and with a huge grin, he opens it to pull out a brass key.

Leo takes a quick peek at the flaring red count-down clock as the lights flicker once again, before grabbing the key and sliding it into the lock, turning the wheel as the cogs turn and turn, it feels to go on forever before it eventually snaps into place, the door opening with a loud creak.

But instead of the key to freedom we expect, it’s another fucking box, another challenge.

“Fuck.” I sigh, dropping onto the seat bench as Taylor puts the lock box, key, and cups in the bowl by the door that we’re so close and yet so far from opening. “We don’t have any more clues left.”

“This one is letters again,” Leo declares, placing it on the table beside me, the note I originally found sitting proudly beside it.

The three of them begin to look around, an almost frantic manic edge to the way Oliver pulls cushions and rips the bottles off the optics.

“We’re missing something,” I say, picking up the note and looking over the words for patterns or something. God knows.

“We could just buy a clue,” Taylor says. “We’ve got time…”

“Such a cheat,” Oliver says, rolling his eyes.

“I’m going to see if I can work on anything from here,” I say, turning the keypad towards me alongside the note. “You guys see if there’s anything out there that makes sense.”

I start with the first letter of each line, unsurprised when that doesn’t work. I get the same result when I try the first letters from each sentence and all of the random words that start with capital letters.There’s a clue in here somewhere, I just can’t work out what it is.

“Fuck it, let’s do it,” I say, throwing the note down in frustration. “We’re running out of time to buy the damn clue. If we’re going to do it, we need to do it sooner rather than later.”

“No,” Leo argues. “We can do this.”

“Sure we can,” Oliver agrees. “But do we have the time?”

Leo turns, glaring at the clock as it ticks down the seconds, one after another. Annoying as it is, I know he’s right. We can totally get this, if we didn’t have that damn clock literally hanging over our heads.

“Well, I’m in.” Taylor nods, taking a swig from a bottle of tequila he pulled off a shelf.

“Fine, let’s do it,” Leo agrees.

Five minutes disappear from the countdown clock as a voice comes over the speaker to say, “The clue is in the lights.”

Oliver goes straight to one, fumbling his fingers inside the shade and trying to find something, anything, burning his fingers as he attempts it.

“I could totally pull that off the wall,” Taylor says, rolling his sleeves up in preparation.

I don’t know why those five minutes disappearing in an instant has my hackles up, the concern that’s been building twisting into something closer to worry as each second ticks away.

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