“Mmm…that’s good,” Jill says as she finishes a sip of her drink.
“I agree. It’s just what I needed tonight,” I reply.
Our wait only lasts a few more minutes and then we’re led to a table for four. We take our seats, with Beckett sitting to my left and Jill to my right, placing JC across from me at the square table.
“Good evening. I’m Justin and will be your server tonight. Can I get anyone a refill on a drink, or something new?” he asks.
“I’ll take a glass of water,” I tell him before opening my menu.
“Same for me,” Jill says.
Beckett lifts his beer glass up that’s still three-fourths full. “I’m still good.”
“I’ll take another one,” JC states, holding up his near-empty glass.
“Sounds good, did you guys want to start with any appetizers, or do you need a few minutes to look over the menu?” Justin asks.
“Do you recommend anything to start with?” Beckett asks him.
“The soft pretzels are very popular. It’s served with beer cheese and spicy mustard. The second-most popular starter is the Bru Board. It has an arrangement of cheeses and meats, along with some marinated onions, tomatoes, and is served with grilled baguette.”
“Either of those sound appealing to any of you?” Beckett asks the table.
“I wouldn’t turn down the pretzels,” Jill says.
“Me either,” I add.
“Sounds like the pretzels it is,” Beckett tells the server, then turns to JC. “You want anything?”
“Let me add an order of the BBQ nachos.”
“Do you want pork or chicken?” Justin asks him.
“Let’s go with chicken.”
“All right, I’ll get those put in and your drinks out in just a few minutes.”
“So, you said you’ve got a charity event next weekend to attend. Which one is it supporting?” Beckett asks Jill.
“Oh, it’s benefiting one of the women’s shelters here in town. Mainly a bunch of doctors’ offices and other medical professionals getting together, so I use it as an excuse to network with potential new contacts, as well as others that I’ve had a working relationship with.”
“What is it that you do?” JC asks Jill.
“I own an ultrasound company. We have one location where patients can come to us, but I also provide technicians to doctors’ offices if they own or rent their own machines and want to have in-house ultrasounds available. We mostly work with OB/GYN offices, but we also work with a few others, and have a long list of offices that refer their patients directly to us when needed.”
“Sounds cool. Great charity recipient,” he says, finishing off his beer.
“It really is. They are always in need of monetary donations as they help women get back on their feet. Most are escaping abusive relationships and many, if not most, of them do so with children and no money, or possessions, except the clothes on their backs.”
“Do you have the coordinator’s contact information?” JC asks. “I’d like to make a donation.”
“Absolutely. I can text or email you all of it if you want to give me your contact information,” Jill says, pulling her cell out of her purse. They exchange contact information before we turn the conversation to lighter topics.
“I’m so full. That was an excellent meal,” I state as we leave the restaurant.
“I agree,” Beckett says from next to me. His hand rests at the small of my back, and I wonder if he even realizes he’s touching me like this. It feels so intimate, but I can’t allow myself to think too much of it. He’s just being a gentleman, not trying to get into my pants.
“Thanks for dinner, you didn’t have to pay for all of it.”
“It’s my pleasure, and really not a big deal,” he says.
He wanted nothing to do with my protests to help pay for dinner when the check came earlier. It wasn’t a date, so I didn’t feel like it was right for him or JC to pay for us, but he insisted and slipped his card into the cardholder and handed it over to our server.
“Meet you ladies at the escape room?” he says as we approach my car.
“We’ll see you there,” I tell him as I unlock the doors. Jill and I both slide in and watch as the guys walk a few spaces away, then climb into Beckett’s car.
“So…” Jill says, drawing the word out. “He seemed to be a little cozier with you tonight. I think you’re wearing him down. I don’t think he’s going to last much longer in the friend zone.”
“You think?” I ask, still not sure what’s going to happen between the two of us.
“Mhmmm…”
“JC seemed pretty interested, and I thought it was sweet when he asked for the contact information to make a donation.”
“Yeah, that was a little shocking, but I know some of these guys are always looking for charities to make donations to for the tax benefits. The shelter usually gets a few local celebrity donations each year. Last year, one anonymous donor even matched everyone else’s donations up to half a million. It was amazing!” she tells me.
“Wow, that is pretty amazing. I should ask my office if they want to make a donation.”
“I know they can use every dime raised,” Jill says as we drive down the road.
“So, do you think we’re going to break out?” I ask, pulling into the parking lot of the escape room.
“Heck yeah!” she cheers. “Hopefully it isn’t too hard, and we can work together to get it done.”
“I’m excited. I’ve wanted to do one of these for a while now.” As we climb out of the car, Beckett and JC pull in and take the parking spot next to us.
“Ready for some fun?” Jill asks after the guys climb out of Beckett’s car and meet us on the sidewalk.
“Sure are. Let’s get inside and checked in,” Beckett suggests.
We walk in and up to the front desk, where I let the girl know of our appointment time.
“Upon entering this room, you’ll be blindfolded and handcuffed to a table. As soon as I leave the room, you can remove your blindfolds and start your escape attempt. I will tell you that the key will be within reach of two of you. Please do not try to move the filing cabinet or desk. Otherwise, anything else in the room can be moved in your search,” the escape room employee tells us as we stand outside the room. She hands us some sleep masks. “If you’ll line up in two lines and place these over your eyes, I can get you guys into the room.”
“You guys ready?” Jill asks once we’re handcuffed to the table.
“As ready as we can be,” JC says.
“I’m so excited!” I squeal.
“All right, folks, your time starts now,” we hear over the intercom. “As a reminder, you have unlimited clues available to you, but if you want to receive one, you all must agree to asking for it first. If you use five or less, and break out in under thirty-five minutes, then you’ll make it onto our leaderboard for this room. You can use the whiteboard attached to the back of the door to keep track of things you find or need. Good luck, and we’ll see you in an hour or less.”
I lean my head down and remove my eye mask. I start searching all over for the key. The guys are both closest to a wall, and I spot the key hanging from a small nail. “Beckett, the key is right there on the wall.”
He grabs it and unlocks his handcuffs before getting mine. As soon as he has mine undone, he starts searching the room while I unlock Jill and JC’s handcuffs. We all follow his lead, looking around for clues. The only light we have is from a lamp in the corner. With the low amount of light, it’s hard to see much, but we can tell that things are written on the walls using an invisible ink.
“Okay, so we’ve got a safe on the wall with an electronic code that is five digits long. A lockbox on the desk that has a padlock requiring a key, and four locks on the filing cabinet. One is a directional lock, one is a number and letter mixture lock, and the other two are four-digit locks,” Beckett says, taking inventory of some of the things to open in this room.
“I imagine these numbers on the wall mean something,” I state, pointing them out.
“How many are there?” Jill asks.
“Well, they appear on two sides of a line. I wonder if we only use the ones on one side?” I ask the group.
“Let’s write them down on the board,” JC suggests, and I start calling them out to Jill. “There are too many numbers for the electronic code, but I bet we use them for something else.”
“I agree,” I tell him as we continue our search. I walk to the corner of the room, where a pipe is situated from floor to ceiling. It has a wheel attached to it, so I start twisting it and realize the pipe is opening up!
“Guys, I think I found something!” I eagerly yell. Once the pipe opens, I reach in and pull out a key on a keychain. “I bet it works for the lock,” I state, walking over and trying it in the lock. It opens it right up and inside are some slips of paper that are all cut, but have some words and color codes on them.
“I bet this is a hidden message,” Beckett says as we attempt to put the pieces together on the table we were locked to.
“I think you’re right,” I state. “Just, what could this mean?”
“Look at how specific number and letters are underlined. I bet it’s the code to one of the locks!” Jill points out. We try it and, sure enough, the lock opens.
That drawer provides a large sheet of plastic with some random markings on it that make absolutely no sense to us, so we put it aside for now. “Should we ask for a clue?” Beckett asks as we’re all stumped, and we all agree to it.
“Can we get our first clue, please?” I ask to the monitor.
“Is everyone in agreement?” the employee asks.
“Yes,” we all chime in at the same time.
“Okay, have you found the numbers on the wall?”
“Yes.”
“Have you found the bars on the wall with something inside them?”
“Yes,” we answer together again.
“Have you opened the bars?”
“No.”
“Follow the numbers on the wall. You’ll notice fonts are different, pick the same fonts to find the code to open the bars.”
“Thank you.”
We go back to the numbers on the wall. Sure enough, they’re in different looking fonts. We quickly separate out the ones that open the compartment she pointed us to.
“Okay, so we have a block with a symbol on it,” JC states as he shakes the block. “It definitely has something inside it, but I can’t tell how to open it.”
“Do you think it could be a magnet that opens something else?” Jill asks.
“It could be. Have you seen this symbol anywhere else in the room?” JC asks us.
“Not yet, but let’s keep looking,” I suggest. As I’m searching the walls, I find a light switch and flip it. The room suddenly becomes brighter.
“Holy crap, we have light!” Beckett exclaims on a laugh.
“No shit. I was starting to go crazy with only the lamp,” JC says as we all look around the room in a new way.
“That symbol!” Jill points to the bottom of the wall, just about an inch above the floor. “Let me have the block, I’ll see if it’s a magnet,” she says, grabbing the block and holding it up to the wall.
As soon as she does, a large click sound fills the room and a panel in the ceiling pops open, dropping a package.
“Holy fuck!” I screech and smack my chest from the shock.
“Fuck!” Beckett mirrors my sentiment. “I wasn’t expecting the fucking ceiling to open.”
“No shit,” JC says, picking up the package from the floor. We look it over and find another code on it that opens another lock.
We continue, figuring out piece by piece, getting stuck a few times and having to get clues to help us along.
“I can’t believe we escaped with only two minutes left!” I exclaim as we leave the room. “That was such a blast!”
“It was quite hilarious how loud the two of you screamed when we unlocked that trap door in the ceiling and the packaged dropped out,” JC says, still laughing about it.
“It was not,” I protest.
“It was,” Beckett says, also laughing.
“Fine, it might have been a little funny.” Jill caves to their laughter.
“Welcome back, and congratulations on breaking out. If you’ll stand over here, I’ll snap your picture stating y’all escaped. We automatically post the pictures to our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages, so feel free to tag yourselves in them or save them from there,” one of the employees instructs us.
“Thanks, it was a lot of fun! We’ll have to come back sometime and try out one of the other rooms,” I state to the group.
“We’ve got ten different rooms, all with different themes, and ranging in difficulty from easy to extreme.”
“What level was the one we just did?” Jill asks the kid.
“It was one of our beginner rooms, so an easy level.”
“Well, crap, if it took us almost the entire hour to crack an easy room, we’d never make it in an extremely hard one.”
“We have lots of groups that come and work on a room until they figure it out. Then they move up to the next level.”
“How many times do they usually end up repeating a room?” she asks.
“Sometimes on the second try, but I think we’ve got one group on their fifth or sixth attempt to crack our hardest room.”
“Yeesh!” JC says. “Sounds interesting.”
“It’s a pretty fun one. Some of our rooms are actually double rooms, so you don’t exit out of the door you enter in from, but yet the rooms don’t necessarily have two doors.”
“Huh, so like hidden trap doors then?” I ask.
“Something like that. I can’t give away too many secrets, but just like the room you guys broke out of, they all can have hidden items or trap doors.”
“Cool,” we all reply, then stand still while the kid takes our picture as we hold some props and a sign stating we escaped as well as one with the amount of time we finished in.
“This was a fun evening. Thanks for the company,” Beckett tells both of us as we all approach our cars.
“It was a great time. Thanks again for dinner,” I tell Beckett.
“Anytime. You coming to tomorrow’s game?”
“That’s the plan. You guys ready to hit the road after that for the week?”
“Yeah, just part of the job,” JC pipes in, then turns to Jill. “Hey, don’t forget to send me that info so I can make a donation, please.”
“Will do. I’ll send it to you now,” she says, pulling her cell out and typing away on it. “Sent. You should have it in your email now.”
“Perfect. I’ll try and remember to call them on Monday before we fly out.”
“I’m sure the coordinators will be happy to hear from you.”
After we all exchanged pleasantries, we part ways. I head for Jill’s place to drop her off, then make my way home. I’m beat and ready for bed after my long day. After arriving at my apartment, I start stripping out of my clothes on my way to my bathroom.
Once done with my nightly routine, I pull on some sleep shorts and a tank top, then slide into my bed. I melt into the sheets, and reach under my pillow for my kindle. I usually fall asleep every night either reading or listening to an audiobook. I’m currently engrossed in the newest release by one of my favorite authors and can’t wait to see what happens at the end of the story.
Chapter Seven
Beckett
The past few weeks have flown by, as this time of the season tends to do. We’re still struggling to get back to a winning season—things will click one night and then totally fall apart the next. It’s pretty frustrating for everyone, and the guys are trying their hardest to figure out what it is that works when we’re on and what can be applied when we’re not. It’s still an adjustment to working together and making things click. Sometimes it just takes time, as we’re all r
ealizing this year.
After tonight’s game, we finally, finally have a few days’ break, thanks to the Christmas holiday. Three days of no practice, no games, nothing but time to relax. Most of the guys are looking forward to the time off, and some will even fly home for the short time off to spend it with their families. That obviously isn’t an option for me due to the travel time that getting back to Sweden requires, so I’ll just hang around and probably end up at Scott and Becca’s house, as they like to host players who don’t have family to spend the holiday with.
“Hey, man, you ready for tonight?” I ask Tyler as we both start to get dressed for the game.
“Yep, feeling good. But I’m also looking forward to the next few days off.”
“I hear you on that,” I tell him, reaching out to bump my fist against his outstretched one. Unlike many locker rooms that place their goalies by themselves off to one side, in our locker room, our locker spaces are in the center. The forwards and centers are to our right and the defensive guys are to our left.
I look up after securing my pads and watch as the rest of the guys mull around the room, going through their own pre-game rituals as they prepare for the game. We’re due out on the ice in about fifteen minutes for warm ups, so I get back to my own pre-game routine, finishing just moments before it’s time to hit the ice.
By game time, I’ve worked up a nice sweat, so I wrap a towel around my neck as I take my place at the end of the bench. Some stadiums don’t have long enough benches to allow the backup goalie to sit, and we have to sit on a stool in the tunnel or just behind the bench. I’ve even played in a few arenas where we have to sit in the tunnel the Zambonis enter through, as well as the teams, since no tunnel is connected directly to the bench. I hate those arenas, as I feel pretty disconnected from the team the entire game.
“Let’s go!” I holler out to the starting line as they take their positions on the ice for the puck to be dropped.
The first two periods pass by, with only one penalty called against each team. We’re tied at two each going into the third period. It’d be really nice if the guys can pull off the win ahead of the holiday break.
The Hardest Shot: Indianapolis Eagles Series Book 7 Page 6
