The submarine smelled like hot glue, and I was locked inside it.
Eleven minutes in, the funder told me for the third time that the wire was out.
"It left Treasury this morning," Sully said. "I literally watched it go."
"Read me the confirmation number again."
He read it. Six digits at the end, 4-4-1-9-0-7. I wrote them on my palm with a pen that was mostly dead, because the only light in there was a red bulb behind a fake pressure gauge.
Imani's voice came through the walkie-talkie bolted to the wall. "Are you stuck, or are you on the phone?"
"Both."
Imani ran an escape-room company out of a strip-mall unit that used to be a tax-prep office. Four rooms: a heist, a haunted nursery, a mad scientist, a pharaoh's tomb. The submarine was going to be number five. Her deposits ran about $46,000 a month, steady, heavy on weekends, the kind of file underwriters approve without coffee.
She needed $28,000. I'd gotten her approved Monday at a 1.35 factor, $37,800 back, twenty-four weekly pulls of $1,575. My cut was $2,800. She signed the contract eight minutes after I sent it.
The money had a job. Her set builder, a man named Teodoro who could make plywood look like riveted steel, wanted $19,500 by 5 p.m. Thursday. After that he was gone for six weeks on a theme-park job and the sub would sit there half-built, a hatch with no ship behind it.
And Saturday at 10 a.m. she had a corporate group. Ninety people, five rooms in rotation, $9,400. With four rooms, she could fit seventy-two. Somebody's team-building day would turn into eighteen adults eating pretzels in a lobby.
It was Thursday, 11:40 a.m.
Sully had been saying some version of "wire's out" since the contract came back signed. First it was "Fed reference is coming," then it was a number he read me like a bedtime story, and the whole time Imani's bank showed nothing incoming, not pending, not processing, nothing at all.
"Sully, her bank doesn't see it."
"Banks are slow. It's in the pipe, bro."
I put him on hold and searched my inbox for 441907, because something about the rhythm of it bugged me.
One result, three weeks old, on a different merchant: a guy who rebuilt vintage motorcycles in a garage that used to be a car wash. Sully had sent me that exact confirmation number for his wire, too. That wire landed six days late, after the guy had already missed payroll.
Same number, two wires, three weeks apart.
There was no wire. There was a man reading the same six digits to everyone who called.
I took him off hold. "That's the number you gave me for the motorcycle guy."
A long breath. Then the voice changed, lower, like he'd closed a door.
"Look. Our line's tight this month. Treasury is funding in order. She's fourteenth. Maybe Tuesday."
"She needs it by five."
"Then she should've been thirteenth," he said, and I could hear him smiling.
The red bulb flickered. On the walkie, Imani said something I didn't catch, then said it again.
"While you're in there, can you test the last lock? I want the sub ready for the finance people Saturday."
"What finance people?"
"The ninety. Their HR lady booked in August." I heard paper shuffle. She read the company name off her booking sheet.
I looked at the approval letter on my phone. Same name. Same logo. Same little sailboat in the corner.
Sully's own office was coming to her rooms on Saturday. All ninety of them.
I called him back. He picked up chewing something.
"Saturday morning," I said, "your whole company is booked into my merchant's escape rooms. It's on your HR calendar. If her wire doesn't land by five today, the fifth room doesn't exist, and eighteen of your coworkers spend the morning in her lobby while she explains to them, one at a time, exactly why."
Nothing. Just chewing, and then not even that.
"Who's in the queue ahead of her?" I asked.
"Nobody," Sully said. "Nobody now."
The wire hit at 1:12 p.m. Teodoro had his money at 1:20 and a nail gun going at 1:21. By the next night the sub had a working periscope and a hatch that hissed when it opened.
Saturday at 11:58, Imani texted me a photo. Eighteen people in matching blue shirts, packed into the submarine, holding the little whiteboard sign that groups hold when they lose. Sully was in the back. I knew him from his email headshot. He was not smiling.
Under the photo she'd typed: "Only team that didn't get out. Final lock was six digits."
I looked at my palm. The pen was mostly gone, but you could still read it.
4-4-1-9-0-7.