That's kind of how I feel, every time you are doing any remotely dangerous escape. You know, trying to help would probably worse than standing back and hoping."
"I guess that's what Franklin meant when he said something about me feeling what you feel while I escape. And if you believe in magic that swimmy feeling in my head when it happen must have been it. I guess we were kind of warned, but very obliquely. He'd better have a good explanation or I'll not be answerable for my actions. Make that a very, verrrry good explanation."
We sat and wondered if we could get a cup of tea, while the adrenalin subsided.
About ten minutes later. John Franklin knock on the door and entered.
Before he could open his mouth, I said, "This had better be good, because we are not happy and if we don't leave happy, we'll be suing you for breach of contract for as much as we can get."
His smile faltered for maybe half a second, while considered what line would best keep him and his reputation from being dragging through the mud. "What a performance! You certainly earned your ten grand."
For a moment, I wondered what he was talking about, so I asked aggressively.
"You were marvellous," he said. "I auditioned some professionals, but they had nothing on you. They were too smooth to make the illusion look credible. But you with the couple of fumbles made it look truly death-defying and you were incredibly fast; if we hadn't tweaked the timer to run fifty percent faster, you'd have been out long before the time limit and the magic couldn't have happened."
For a moment part of my brain did the maths. I had got to the point I had got to in a few seconds over four minutes even with all the extra obstacles and recovering the pick and undoing the last of Angie's shackles would not have taken the whole of the final minute of the original challenge. I was mentally patting myself on the back, when another part of my mind reminded me that my failure to finish in the allotted time was not my beef with Mr Franklin, but the fact he had tried to drown Angie.
"Now I understand why you say I earned the money, but what about what happened next? Angie was completely unprepared for her dunking, possibly near drowning."
I looked at Angie for confirmation and support; she looked sheepish instead. "I wasn't totally unprepared, but I had been warned I would end up in the water."
"When?" I challenged.