No Escape by Julie Moffett
Chapter Twenty-Six
Lexi Carmichael
I was the most nervous I’d been since we’d arrived at the castle.
First, I was in a bathing suit. Granted, I’d put one of our shower towels around me, but it didn’t make me feel any more comfortable. I’d already shown more than enough skin to too many people as it was in the short time we’d been at the castle. I was not looking forward to doing more of it.
Second, knowing our challenge would involve water caused my anxiety to spike, which was why Slash had shot me a worried glance when my team determined the water challenge would be ours. He knew how much water scared me. Although I could dog-paddle if I didn’t have any other choice, I worried panic would drown me before my swimming ever did.
Get a grip, Lexi.
I glanced at Oscar, who looked as uncomfortable in his swimsuit as I did. We shared a little smile, acknowledging our mutual discomfort and like-minded reactions. It was strange, but I’d discovered that Oscar and I had a lot more in common than I’d ever expected. He seemed to dislike crowds, social situations, and dressing up as much as I did. We both were a little (okay, a lot) quirky. Of course that made me feel more comfortable around him. I guess it’s true that kindred souls seem to find each other and, apparently, marry socially adept partners.
On the other end of the spectrum, despite being seven months pregnant, Vittoria looked as glamorous as a movie star in a sleek white two-piece, her thick black hair falling in stylish ringlets around her back and shoulders, proudly showing off her pregnant belly. Stefan and Tito could have passed for Greek gods with their ridiculous arm muscles and abs of steel. Even my mother-in-law looked lovely in a sea-green bathing suit.
Nope, I wasn’t feeling insecure whatsoever. Ugh.
I gulped air and tried to look confident as we followed the gamemaster toward the left wing of the castle and down a flight of stairs. We stopped at a long glass wall, through which we could see a large indoor pool.
“Welcome to the water challenge,” Brando said. He pointed to his left, where two dozen red swim caps hung on the wall. “Please choose a cap that fits and put it on. Then take a dry towel from the opposite wall.”
So, we were going to swim. My anxiety hiked up another notch as I found a cap that fit. I pulled it onto my head, feeling a strange lump embedded in the back. It felt awkward but not uncomfortable, though the cap came lower down on the nape of my neck than I expected.
“Hey, there’s something in my cap,” Tito said, running his fingers along the lump. Guess we all had the mystery lump.
“Please do not touch it,” Brando said. “I will explain in a minute.”
Shrugging, I tucked my ponytail inside the cap and helped Vittoria into hers after she asked for assistance. She had so much hair, it took me a few minutes.
When I finished, she looked down at her protruding belly and winced. “The baby is kicking hard. Hey, Lexi, want to feel it?”
I totally, absolutely did not want to put my hands on her stomach. I didn’t like strangers touching me, and I didn’t like touching strangers. But Vittoria wasn’t a stranger—she was soon to be my sister-in-law. The spreadsheet guidelines reminded me I needed to go out of my comfort zone for family, so I nodded.
“Sure,” I said somewhat hesitantly. “What do I do?”
She took my hand and pressed it against a part of her belly. “Hold it there and wait.”
I held my hand there. Sure enough, a minute later I felt a strong kick. My mouth dropped open. “I felt it! The baby kicked my hand.”
“Si. He or she is quite the active one. Gio and I are going to have our hands full.”
“That was really cool. I didn’t expect that to be so cool.”
She smiled. “You’re going to be an aunt. Aunt Lexi.”
“Yes, I am.” Weirdly, I felt proud. “Neither of my brothers has kids, so this little one will make me an aunt for the first time.” I leaned over close to Vittoria’s stomach and lowered my voice to a whisper. “Hey, you in there. If anyone ever tries to make you take ballet lessons or play on the football team and you don’t like it, your uncle Slash and aunt Lexi will be on your side. And, by the way, math is cool.”
I straightened and smiled at Vittoria. Now I was going to have to look for coding books for babies when Slash and I got back to the States.
* * *
When we were finally ready, Brando had us line up. He walked behind us and pushed the lump at the back of our caps. I heard a click and wondered what the heck was going on. Brando, however, did not explain.
Instead, he opened the door to the pool and ushered us in. The strong scent of chlorine assailed me, but the room was warm, certainly heated. Brando instructed us to drop our towels on a couple of lawn chairs just inside the door before leading us to the edge of the pool.
I swallowed, my blindingly white limbs now completely exposed in my boring, navy-blue one-piece suit. Thankfully, no one even glanced my way.
The pool had five swim lanes and appeared to be about thirty feet long. Sunken stairs led into the water at both ends. The bottom of the pool sloped quickly toward the center, and the marking on the side of the pool indicated the deepest part was three and a half meters, or just over eleven feet of water. Identical stylized drawings of a fish had been drawn on the long walls of the pool.
A hot tub that looked like it could seat eight or ten people sat to the left of the pool. The tub was sunken several feet below the pool deck with steps leading down to it. Apparently, it wasn’t working, as it held no water and had a maintenance sign in the middle of it.
Along the deck, a long-handled aluminum pool skimmer with a mesh scoop hung on the wall. Next to it was a coiled pool hose that could be presumably attached to a vacuum, although I didn’t see one. Along the far wall, two dozen metal cans had been placed side by side on the floor. They looked like the old-fashioned gas cans with removable lids I’d seen strapped to the back of jeeps in some World War II movies.
Odd.
“Now, if I may have your attention, I will present the challenge to you,” the gamemaster said. “If you look at the bottom of the pool, right in the center, you’ll see something floating.”
We all leaned over, peering into the water. I saw a large light-blue square.
“That blue square is a float attached by a one-meter chain to a heavy weight that lies on the bottom of the pool,” Brando explained. “Underneath that weight, beneath more than eleven feet of water, is the golden disc you seek. Before you try to dive in and grab it, let me warn you that the swim caps you are wearing cannot get wet. They’ve been alarmed and will sound if they touch water, other than a light spray, or if you try to remove your cap. If anyone’s alarm goes off, the challenge will immediately end, and you’ll have forfeited the game.”
Okay, that was weird. “Our heads can’t get wet?” I repeated to make sure I understood him correctly. “The challenge is to retrieve the disc without activating an alarm. That’s it?”
“That’s it. Retrieve the disc and have it on the pool deck before the clock runs out without activating the alarm on your caps.”
“But how do we get the disc if it’s underwater and we can’t get our heads wet?” Vittoria asked.
Brando smiled. “That’s for you to figure out, my dear. Now, if you have an emergency or if you decide to end the game early, just push the red button on the wall over there. The challenge will be terminated immediately.”
He studied us for a long moment, his eyes stopping on me. “I will add that no one has ever completed this challenge. A few teams eventually figured out how to do it, but they lacked the time to complete the necessary tasks. So, I sincerely wish you good luck, because if you solve it, your team will be the first. According to the pool clock, it is now 1:25. I’ll see you in precisely two hours.”
He walked away, locking the pool door behind him.
“Great,” Oscar said, eyeing the pool. “An impossible challenge.”
“Nothing is impossible,” I said absently, already calculating. “It’s just a puzzle we have to figure out in a compressed timeline. We can do this.”
For a moment, we all stared into the pool at the weight lying at the bottom of more than eleven feet of water. Although I’d told Oscar nothing was impossible, retrieving that disc in two hours without going underwater seemed almost inconceivable. Except there had to be a solution, so our job was to find it.
“I’m going to start with the obvious,” Stefan said. “How about one of us swim out there, keeping our heads out of the water, to get a closer look at the float and weight? I’m happy to volunteer. I can tread water for several minutes.”
I studied the lump and its location at the back of Stefan’s cap. “It’s risky,” I finally said. “If we get any water on the cap, we’re finished. Let’s see what else we have to work with first.”
Vittoria pointed to the skimming pole hanging on the wall. “Could we use that to snag the float and pull it up? The pole has a hook on the end of the handle, so maybe we can use it to our advantage.
“I don’t think that the pole is long enough unless it telescopes a lot,” Oscar commented.
“Guess there’s one way to find out.” Tito walked around the pool and removed the pole from the wall to see if it could be extended like a small folding umbrella. He pulled on it, but it didn’t extend. “Well, there went that good idea.”
“Maybe if we were able to get closer, we could reach down and hook the float,” Juliette suggested.
Her comment got everyone running around to see what might float. Vittoria tried putting one of the pool recliners in the water, but it sank quickly to the bottom. She doubled down and dropped another one, trying to stack them in the water. However, the recliner drifted as it sank and only partially landed on the first recliner.
“Those are heavy,” Juliette scolded. “You shouldn’t be lifting them in your condition.”
“They weren’t heavy,” Vittoria protested. “I promise.”
“She’s right,” I said. “The typical aluminum recliner is light enough to lift, even if you are seven months pregnant.”
“I hope we didn’t need one of those to solve this puzzle,” Stefan said with a tinge of annoyance in his voice. “We ought to be thinking this through instead of just randomly trying things. What if our solution was to disassemble those recliners and use the parts to make a longer pole?”
“I’m sorry,” Vittoria said, somewhat crestfallen. “I didn’t think of that. It just looks so impossible.”
“It was actually a good idea,” I said. “If it had worked, it could have helped us. Besides, given the location of the lounge chairs, we can hook them and pull them back up if we need them. Good try, Vittoria.”
I glanced around the room and saw Juliette exploring the cans along the far wall. “You know, Lexi, these cans are empty,” she said. “Perhaps we could fill them with water and drain the pool.”
I did a quick calculation of the amount of water in the pool. I paced off the sides, estimating the pool was ten meters by five meters or thirty-three by sixteen feet. Given the average depth of approximately seven feet and seven and a half gallons per cubic foot of water, that would equal more than twenty-five thousand gallons.
“It’s a good idea, Juliette, but it won’t work. Even if we could somehow drain one hundred gallons a minute and keep it up, it would take us more than two hours to drain even half the pool. Given the size of those cans, and the fact that there are only six of us, we’d be lucky to drain thirty gallons a minute. Plus, we have no place to put the water.”
“We could dump it into the hot tub,” Vittoria offered.
“We could,” I agreed, “but it’s only a fraction of the size of the pool. We might get the top foot of the pool in the hot tub, but that’s it. And that wouldn’t be enough to get down to that float.”
Tito paced back and forth along the pool deck. “What if we tied a bunch of the cans together and made a raft to float out into the middle of the pool, where we could try to snag the float with the hook on the pool skimmer?”
“Does anyone see a rope?” I asked. “Or any way the cans could be tied together?”
While we were talking, Stefan started to go down the steps into the water. “Brrr…the water is cold.”
Juliette said something to him in Italian, and I presumed she was reminding him not to get his head wet.
“I’ll be careful, Mama,” he said. “But I wanted to see if things looked any different from a water-level perspective.”
He walked gingerly down the steps and sat down, so the water came up to his chest. He stared at the water for a long moment.
“Do you see anything?” Vittoria asked.
“Not really,” he said in frustration and stood.
The motion sent ripples of waves down the length of the otherwise motionless pool. The waves continued as Stefan sloshed out of the pool. My eyes tracked the ripples until they crossed the point over the float in the center of the pool.
“Wait. There’s something there,” I said. “There’s something under the water right over the float.”
By the time I said it and the others had turned to look, the ripples were smaller and nothing was visible. “Do that again,” I instructed. “Stefan, make a few gentle waves in the water, please.”
Stefan stepped back into the pool and began making waves, careful not to splash his head. Again, the ripples changed as they passed over the float, but now I knew for certain something was there, invisible, and just under the water.
“I didn’t see anything,” Vittoria said, frowning.
“There’s something there,” I said. “But we need more waves. Tito, Juliette, can you help him?”
“Of course,” Juliette replied.
She and Tito stepped into the pool next to Stefan. Carefully they bounced up and down in the water to make even bigger waves. Suddenly, an obvious square pattern emerged. From my rough calculations, it was about thirty inches per side.
“I see it,” Oscar shouted. “Lexi’s right. There’s something there.” He leaned over the side. “I can’t quite tell what it is, but it looks square.”
“It’s square,” I confirmed. “Everyone, out of the water. Any ideas how we can check it out more closely?”
“We can try poking it with the pool skimmer,” Tito suggested, dripping water onto the pool deck.
“Let’s try,” I said.
Tito took the skimmer and poked at the object. “Yah. It’s square and clear. It slides down the side under the water when I poke it, but the skimmer isn’t long enough to confirm if the sides go down more than a few feet.”
Logically, I considered what that meant. “Since it is just under the surface of the water, if we could lower the pool level a little bit, we might be able to examine it better. So, that means we have two main problems to solve. First, we figure out how to lower the water level. Second, we need to somehow get closer to the middle of the pool.”
“The cans,” Juliette said. “You said we could use them to lower the water level a little.”
Tito, Stefan, and Oscar raced for the cans and started dipping them in the pool and dragging them over to dump into the empty hot tub. The cans were heavy, and the men were straining. After watching them for a minute, I quickly realized that wasn’t going to work as a solution.
“Does the side of the can say twenty liters?” I asked Stefan.
He checked the can and nodded. “That’s what it says. No wonder it’s so heavy.”
Twenty liters equaled about five gallons. That meant that if they were filled to the top with water, they weighed almost forty pounds apiece. To lower the water level several inches, we’d have to remove about 480 gallons. We had neither the time nor the strength to do that.
“That’s not going to work,” I said. “There’s too much water for us to move and not enough time. Let’s find another solution to lower the water level. Oscar and Juliette, can you circle the pool to see if you can figure out another way to get to that box? The rest of us will work on figuring out how to lower the water level.”
I looked around the pool, hoping inspiration would strike. My eyes stopped on the pool hose hanging on the wall. And, just like that, I had an idea.
“Someone, help me with this pool hose.” I ran over and grabbed the three-inch-diameter hose off the wall and hauled it over to the pool, throwing it into the water by the steps. I carefully stepped into the water and pushed the hose under. “I could use a little muscle here.”
Stefan and Tito joined me in the water. “We’re going to create our own makeshift siphon, which means we have to get all the air out of the hose,” I explained. “Also, Vittoria, could you bring one of those cans over here?”
The three of us quickly got the hose submerged. Starting at one end, I pushed it lower so the air would move up the hose. I continued walking on the hose until it was completely submerged and floating just under the surface.
“Vittoria, give me the can now.” She handed it down to me, and I filled the can completely with water, pressing the end of the hose against the can so the water wouldn’t escape and no air could get in.
I carefully brought the can to the surface. “Tito and Stefan, get out of the pool and take the can and this end of the hose and put them in the bottom of the hot tub. Set the can on its side, keeping the hose sealed tight against the can until they’re both lying down. Everyone else, help them by moving the hose as they drag it to the hot tub.”
I stayed in the pool, moving the hose forward and lifting it onto the pool deck as the rest of the team dragged it across the pool deck. Thankfully, we managed to get it right on the first try. When Tito pulled the can off in the bottom of the hot tub, water started gushing out of the hose into the hot tub.
“It worked!” I exclaimed. “Great job, guys.”
I carefully climbed out of the pool and padded over to the hot tub, watching the speed and volume of the flow. It was a rough guesstimate, but I calculated it would take about thirty minutes to remove the desired amount of water. That would make it about 2:20. That gave us just over an hour to complete the rest of the challenge.
Hopefully that will be enough time.
“Lexi, come here, please,” Juliette said. She and Oscar had returned to the deck at the middle point of the pool and were talking softly. Juliette held the dripping skimmer pole. “While you guys were working with the hose, Oscar and I took a closer look to see if we could disassemble the last remaining pool recliner for parts. We might have been able to make a useful pole retriever if we had all three recliners and were able to quickly disassemble them, which, without tools, would be highly unlikely. Added to which, two of them are currently residing at the bottom of the pool. Oscar and I tried to pull them up with the pool skimmer, but they kept slipping off the hook.”
“So, we’re out of luck?”
“Not entirely, as we’ve just discovered something that looks promising,” Oscar interjected. “Well, Juliette did.” He beamed at his wife. It was so sweet, my heart tripped slightly. I wondered if I had the same adoring expression when I looked at Slash.
“What did you discover?”
Juliette shook the pool skimmer slightly, sending water droplets over my feet. “It occurred to me that maybe that square wasn’t the only invisible thing in the pool. So, Oscar and I tried walking carefully around the edge of the pool, periodically sticking our feet in, looking for anything that might indicate the presence of another object. But we found nothing. Then I tried to put myself in the mind of the puzzle maker. He’d expect us to look for a pathway of some kind to get to the middle of the water, right? Logically, that pathway would have to be anchored to the sides. I told Oscar to get the skimmer and stick it in the pool at about a forty-five-degree angle. Within the first two meters, Oscar hit something. I think we’ve found one of the walkway anchors.”
There was a splash at the end of the pool by the cans, and I turned to see Vittoria get in the pool, with her head perilously close to the water. She was hanging on to one of the cans, using it as a float. It was rocking unsteadily as she tried to ride on the can to keep her head out of the water. As I watched in horror, she almost tipped over as she tried to find her way back to the steps, her head coming within inches of the water.
Before I could move, Tito raced over to the steps and into the water. He slowed as he got close to Vittoria so the waves from his motion wouldn’t further disturb her precarious balance.
“Hold still,” Tito instructed her. “Keep your head up and I’ll pull you back until you can stand up.”