Chapter 35 Kleptomaniac
WREN
“You ready to become world class art thieves?” Tanner asks, pulling into the parking lot of Lock and Key Escape Rooms.
“I didn’t realize you were such a kleptomaniac,” I tease.
“Me?”
“Yeah, first it was movies, then my heart, and now art.”
“Hey! I’ll have you know that I officially subscribed to multiple streaming services after the whole porn debacle, the art we are about to steal isn’t real, and I’m going to let your bad joke slide because it makes me really insanely happy to hear you say I stole your heart.
” His hand squeezes my thigh where it’s been resting for the entire drive.
“Well, you did.” I look over at him, my heart skipping a beat.
He parks the car then leans towards me, peppering my face with kisses and making me giggle. “Now come on. We need to get in the right headspace for what we’re about to do,” he coaches me.
“The right headspace for an escape room?”
“Yes, the art heist one was labeled as ‘challenging’ on the website, and we’ll only have an hour.”
“I should’ve known you were going to treat this like a sport. Let’s just go have fun. If we don’t beat it, it’s okay. I’m just glad we’re trying something new together.”
We climb out of the car and walk into the seemingly boring brick building, hand in hand. The man behind the counter has a mustache that is as scrawny as his build. He’s wearing glasses and a branded polo. His name tag reads: Ted.
“How can I help you?” Ted asks, as Tanner and I approach the front desk.
“I called earlier about the art heist escape room,” Tanner says.
“Is it just you two?” he asks.
“Yep, is that a problem?”
“Nah. Usually I’d pair you with another couple, but it’s been a slow day. Y’all ready to get started?”
“Yes,” I say, squeezing Tanner’s hand, bouncing up and down a little. We follow Ted to a set of lockers outside of an unmarked door.
“Y’all can put all of your belongings in here. No phones or cameras are allowed in the room. You just enter a pin, and then when you're done with the game you use the same number to open the locker and retrieve your items.”
Tanner and I place our phones inside, and then he locks the door.
“You can bring in one piece of paper and a pencil,” he says, handing the materials to Tanner. “Are you ready to begin?”
We both nod.
“Alright,” he says, reading from a laminated piece of paper.
“You are now underground art dealers, and your new client is none other than the extremely dangerous, Italian mob boss, Lorenzo Marino. He has his eye set on the Mona Lisa for his personal art collection, and he wants you to steal it,” Ted continues to read from the piece of paper with as much enthusiasm as a dry piece of toast.
Tanner nudges me, wiggling his eyebrows, and I stifle a little giggle.
“Unfortunately, a mole has made the police aware of your plans, and the museum has taken extra precautions to ensure the painting remains safe, hiding it somewhere within the museum. You’ve received special intel that it’s somewhere in the head curator’s office.
You have one hour to find the painting and get out before the police arrive, or you’ll have to answer to Lorenzo, and he rarely lets people walk away alive. ”
He glances up from the script. “Do you have any questions?”
“Are we really going to be locked in?” I ask.
“No, but if you open the door without the code, then the game will end and you’ll lose. I can see and hear your room from the front desk, so if you need something just holler.”
He opens the door, and Tanner leads me into a long, white hallway, still holding my hand. The door clicks closed, and sixty-minutes appears on the countdown clock by the door.
“Alright, it’s game time,” Tanner says, looking around the space.
The hall is set up to look like an art gallery.
Five framed canvases line each side of the hallway along the walls, and small plaques describing the art are situated to the left of each painting.
At the end of the hall is a door with a coded lock, a placard next to it reading: Luigi Albertini, Museum Curator.
“That must be the office door,” I say, pointing. “I think we need to figure out a code to open it.” Letting go of his hand, I walk across the room. “It’s a four digit number.”
“Makes sense to me, but how do we figure it out?”
“I’m not sure. You think the numbers are hidden in the paintings?”
“That’s a good thought,” he says, walking over and studying one of the paintings hung on the wall. “Do you see any hidden numbers? Because this one has nothing.”
“There’s ten paintings and only four numbers, so maybe they don’t all have hidden numbers,” I say, looking at a different painting. “Nothing here either.”
He bends down and reads one of the plaques. “All the letters on this one are lowercase, except for one. You think it’s a secret code.”
I check the plaque in front of me and then another. “Yes! That’s it. Quick write down the letters.” Tanner begins to scribble them down as I read them out loud.
We both stare at the ten letters on the piece of paper: I B T E C O L I T L
“What the fuck does that mean?” Tanner says, laughing.
“I think we have to unscramble them.”
“LITTLE BICO? Is that the name of one of the paintings.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. I study the letters, then look back at the paintings, but nothing makes sense. “Could it be in another language?”
“Maybe Italian? That seems to be the theme of this game.”
“Wait, I think it’s a name. Go read me the names of the artists, and I’ll see if any of the letters match up.”
“Michaelangelo. Raphael. Donatello. Aren’t these all Ninja Turtles?”
I giggle. “Yes, you didn’t know the Ninja Turtles were named after famous Italian artists?”
“Wait, really?”
“Yes, now keep reading. We need one with a B.”
Tanner walks around the room looking at the plaques. “Botticelli?”
“That’s it. Is there a number on the plaque?”
“There’s a year. 1485.” I jump up from the floor and run over to the keypad lock. Carefully, I type in each number of the year, and the door clicks open. “We did it,” I squeal. Tanner runs at me full force, picks me up, and spins me around. “Hell yeah! Come on; let’s keep going.”
“How much time do we have left?” I ask, as he sets me back down and places a kiss against my forehead.
“Forty-three minutes.”
We walk into the next room, and it’s an office. In the middle of the room is a large desk. A bookshelf lines one of the walls, and curtains frame each of the fake windows. There’s another door, and the remaining wall space is covered with art.
“Now what?” Tanner asks.
I scan the room. “I think we need to open that door,” I say, pointing to a closed door with another keypad lock. “Look for something that could be a puzzle.”
Tanner walks over to the desk and starts shuffling through the papers that cover the top.
“Anything?” I ask, checking out one of the canvases.
“Just a bunch of museum blueprints, information on different pieces of art, and instructions for a fake art finder.” He shrugs, setting the papers back where he found them. “Nothing is popping out at me like the letters did.”
“It’s another four digit number code, so maybe another date,” I suggest, looking through a stack of books on top of a side table. Time continues to tick down and, despite our trying, we’re not making any progress.
Forty minutes remaining.
Thirty-five minutes remaining.
Thirty minutes remaining.
“Goodness, this is stressful,” I say. “We need to focus and find the code.”
Tanner chuckles.
“What?”
“I thought we were just here having fun.”
“We are, but now I want to win.”
“Then let’s win. We can do this. Do you think it’s the books? Are there numbers on the spines?”
We both walk over, and start scanning the white, black, and gray books lining each shelf. “Wait, they’re in a pattern,” I note. “Gray, black, white, gray, black, white.” I continue to say the pattern out loud moving down each shelf. “Gray, black, black.”
“That’s not the pattern,” Tanner says. “It’s out of place.”
I slowly pull the book from the shelf, and the whole wall begins to move.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tanner says.
“We’ve been looking for a four digit number, and we could have just found the hidden lever.
” Laughter bubbles out of both of us as he grabs my hand and pulls me into the secret room.
“Kiss me,” he says, spinning me toward the wall.
“We can’t do anything in here. That guy’s watching,” I whisper, my cheeks heating. “Plus, we have less than thirty minutes.”
“Kiss me,” he says, pushing his hands into my hair.
“You’re so fucking sexy when you solve the puzzles, and I’m dying to kiss you.
” I shiver under his touch, and his lips find mine.
He kisses me hard, gently tugging on my hair.
My lips part, and his tongue dips into my mouth.
It feels forbidden, and need builds between my legs.
My hips rock forward against him, and for a moment I forget where we are.
“There’s no PDA allowed in the game rooms,” Ted says flatly over a speaker, ruining our moment.
Tanner pulls away and he pushes a piece of my hair behind my ear.
“Consider that your one warning,” Ted says.
“Got it!” we both yell, laughing.
“You ready to win this?”
“Yes,” I say, still a little breathless from the kiss. “Let’s win it.”
Moving apart, we take in our surroundings. There are five Mona Lisas on one wall, and a small black box with a key lock hangs on the wall opposite the door.
“I think we need to figure out which one is the real one,” Tanner says.
“But they look exactly the same.”
“Maybe we have to get closer. You start on your end, and I’ll start over here.”
We both move from painting to painting, but it’s no use—they’re all identical.
Eighteen minutes remaining.
“Do you think we missed a clue in the office room?” I ask.
“That’s it,” he says. He begins to jog back to the office. As he passes, he lays a chaste kiss against my lips, and yells, “Sorry, Ted.”
“Where are you going?”
“You’ll see.”
He returns a couple minutes later holding a piece of paper and a small black device.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“It’s how we win. I found it in one of the desk drawers earlier.” He hands me the piece of paper, and on it is a small picture of the thing Tanner is holding. Across the top reads: Fake Art Finder. Under the photo are instructions. “Read me what it says.”
“Okay, place the black box in the center of the painting. If it beeps, it’s fake, and if there’s no beep it’s real.”
Tanner quickly starts to move from painting to painting.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
No beep. Of course the last painting is the one we need. He lifts it off the wall and turns it around. Hanging off the back is a key. He grabs it and runs over to the black box. The minute he unlocks it, a dozen white and orange ping-pong balls fall onto the floor.
“Looks like another puzzle,” he says.
Eleven more minutes.
“We’re going to have to hurry.”
“We got this,” he assures me, starting to turn over the little balls. All but three are blank. On those, the letters X, L, and V are written in black sharpie.
“Another word?” he asks.
“It can’t be. There’s only consonants. Is there a letter lock somewhere?”
“I haven’t seen one.”
“Do you think by some miracle they coordinate with the code to get out?”
Six more minutes remaining.
Police sirens and lights start to be piped into the room, and even though I know it’s not real, my heart rate soars. We both stare blankly at the balls.
“Fuck, we’re almost out of time,” he says. “I think we assume it’s the code to get out and try.”
“Are they Roman numerals?” I ask. “L is a Roman numeral, right?”
Three more minutes remaining.
“God, you’re so fucking hot when you figure this shit out,” he says, grinning. “L is the Roman numeral for fifty.”
“That’s right. And X is ten and V is five. That’s technically five numbers if you line them up.”
“Okay, yeah, but what order do we put them in? Biggest to smallest?” he asks.
“I was going to say alphabetical.”
“Okay, let’s try that. So the code would be 5-0-5-1-0.” We both take off towards the door we entered through at the beginning, and Tanner sings the five numbers over and over again like a chant.
One minute and thirty seconds remaining.
I press the numbers into the keypad as Tanner repeats them slowly. The door clicks, and the light turns green. We did it.
“Hell yes!” he shouts, grabbing and spinning me around. “You’re amazing.”
“I’d say we make a pretty good team.”
His lips find mine, and he slowly lowers me down his body until my feet touch the floor. “Yeah, we do!” he says, kissing me again.