Page 35

“The door was left open when we entered,” I said. “He didn’t use a doorknob to get out.”

Nonetheless, I joined Alessa at the door. As she’d stated, there was no doorknob. I bent down to get a closer look. Instead of a doorknob, the door had a round indentation in the center that appeared to be the exact size of the large gold ring currently sitting in the bull’s nose.

Her head bumped mine as she tried to get a better look at the indentation. “There appears to be a smaller indentation here right in the center of the circle,” she said, tracing her finger over the tiny circle.

It was so faint I hadn’t noticed it until she pointed it out. That circular area was about the size of a large fingertip or a thumb. I straightened, noticing a keypad like the one on the outside the door to the left of the indentation on the wall.

“How do we get out of here?” Alessa asked.

I looked between the keypad, the door, and the brass ring still firmly attached to the bull’s nose. “I think to open the door we’ll have to place the gold ring in the large indentation and either press the smaller circle and/or enter a code into the keypad. Perhaps in a particular order.”

“If we can ever get the ring out of the bull’s nose,” Stefan called out. “It’s not looking promising.”

I studied the keypad more closely. “Did anyone happen to see the code our gamemaster used to get into the room?”

No one responded, not that I’d expected them to. But I’d noticed Brando had taken extra care to conceal the code from me, so it must mean something.

“I don’t remember the code, but I seem to recall that he hit the keypad only three or four times,” my mom said. “I’m sorry I didn’t see more.”

“It’s okay,” I assured her. “I presume we can’t get out until we complete the challenge anyway.” Just for the heck of it, I tried several combinations, to no avail.

“Hey, I could use some help here,” Gio said, wrestling with the knots on the harness.

“I’ll be right there,” I said.

I instructed Alessa to keep examining the walls and floor and to go ahead and begin trying random codes on the keypad. On my way back to help Gio, I stopped to check on my mother’s and Vittoria’s progress at the hitching post. Vittoria was sitting on the floor with ropes in her lap, trying to untangle them, while my mother pulled at them gently.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

My mom sighed, tucking a strand of her dark hair behind her ear. “Unfortunately, we’re worse off than when we started. It is a complete mess now. We’re attempting to backtrack to the original position and try something else.”

I patted her on the shoulder. “Keep at it.”

I did a quick time check, noticing that twenty minutes had already passed. I heard a grunt and looked up just in time to see Stefan hoist Gio onto the back of the bull. Gio began checking the harness and all the connections from his new angle. Stefan began a closer exploration of the underneath side of the bull.

“See anything, Gio?” I called up to him.

“Nothing,” Gio said. “The harness from up here looks the same as below, and there’s no apparent way to remove it. There’s nothing else up here except the rope that runs up to the ceiling.”

“Can you reach the ceiling?” Stefan asked, poking his head out from beneath the bull.

“Hell, no. Even if I stood on the bull’s head, the ceiling is well over a meter above my head. But I’ll see if I can pull the rope free from here.”

Gio grabbed the rope and yanked on it. He gave it several hard tugs, but nothing happened. It appeared to be firmly attached to the ceiling.

“Perhaps you could shimmy up the rope and see if there is a way to disconnect it?” I suggested. “I presume you’ve done that once or twice during training in the special forces.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” my mother scolded me, but before she’d even finished her sentence, Gio had shimmied up the rope until he’d reached the ceiling. Holding on with his legs and one hand, he inspected the rope attachment points carefully.

“The ropes are very well anchored,” he called out. He tried to push, pull, twist, and slide the end of the rope in its bracket with his free hand, without success.

“Check the bolts,” I said.

“I already did, but there are no weaknesses, and they’re too tight to twist off without a wrench.” He tugged on the second rope but still no luck. “This thing is anchored tightly.”

Defeated, he slid down the rope to the bull’s head, careful to avoid the horns. He made his way to the back and then slid off, making the small jump to the platform. “I just don’t see how we can release either end of that rope, short of cutting it down.”

Gio and I walked around to the front of the bull to look at the head and golden ring again. The ring was set in the wood of the bull’s nose about halfway up its nostrils. Much of the snout was hidden by the ring and the ropes.