Instead, what he heard next was the cheery sound of a Bluetooth speaker turning on.
Tate, Scarlet, and Roman all looked at the ceiling. An innocuous white fixture, totally unnoticed, located as it was next to the smoke detector, was dinging as it connected.
The room had a speaker system.
Okay, that was fine.
They were probably going to use that to talk to them rather than yelling through the door, which meant Tate’s plan for escape was foiled.
“Roman, what do you know?” Selene called out, but her voice wasn’t coming through the speaker.
“Selene, you need to obey the Grand Master and just do what the letter—”
“Wrong answer,” Oscar called out.
A second later music started, quietly at first, and then louder, and louder still, as they ratcheted up the volume.
Baby shark, do do do do dodo, baby shark do do do do dodo...
“No,” Scarlet breathed in horror. “Dear God.”
Mommy shark, do do do do dodo, mommy shark do do do do dodo...
Roman leapt for the door, pounded on it. “Turn it off!”
Tate stared at the speaker in the ceiling, more stunned than he’d been when Oscar tased him.
Daddy shark, do do do do dodo, daddy shark do do do do dodo…
Tate put his back against the wall and slid to the floor. He thought he knew what horrors the world had to offer, thought he knew what it meant to truly suffer. But he didn’t really know what torture, what suffering was, until that moment.
This. This...
Baby shark, do do do do dodo, baby shark do do do do dodo.
This was his worst nightmare.
Chapter Four
“Here’s your crash course on SERE.” Tate looked grim as he perched on the closed lid of the toilet. They’d retreated to the bathroom since it was as far from the speaker as they could get.
Scarlet was sitting in the tub, while Roman perched on the edge.
Roman reached down and back and grabbed her foot. She hadn’t even realized she was tapping her foot against the porcelain in time with that godforsaken song.
“Sear?” Scarlet asked. “Like...sear a steak?”
“Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape,” Tate and Roman said together.
Scarlet and Tate looked at Roman.
“I am considered a medium value target,” he said almost apologetically.
“Ha! You’re secretly CIA.”
“Nope.” Roman shook his head. “I turned them down.”
“How long has it been?” Scarlet asked almost desperately. “Two hours, three?”
“Forty-five minutes.” Roman glanced at his watch.
Only forty-five minutes? Sweet Jesus…
Tate had tried to break down the door, but the damn thing was, apparently, steel core, which only a security-conscious paranoid lunatic would bother to have in a residence.
With escape impossible, they’d turned their attention to muffling the god-awful song. They disassembled the bed, standing the box spring on its end and then stacking bedding and pillows on top of it until they were able to wedge the folded duvet against the speaker.
It muffled the sound but didn’t eliminate it. It was still there.
Baby shark, do do do do dodo, baby shark do do do do dodo.
“Step one, remind yourself that you are worth more alive than dead,” Tate began.
“I don’t think Selene is going to kill us,” Roman said.
“Just make us wish we were dead,” Scarlet countered grimly.
“Step two, reaffirm your mission.”
“I’m pretty sure our mission is dead,” Scarlet said. “There is no way we’re getting all of these people, and us, back to Boston in time for the wedding. All my planning…” She let her head thunk back against the tile in time with the song.
It was faint but still audible. Mommy shark, do do do do dodo, mommy shark do do do do dodo.
“It would have been beautiful,” Roman said in a conciliatory tone.
Tate continued with his list. “Step three, occupy your mind with something secondary to the mission.”
“I thought you just said ‘reaffirm your mission’.” Scarlet frowned, confused.
“Reaffirm your mission means remind yourself that you’re a loyal patriot—” Roman grimaced slightly at the phrase. “—and cannot, will not, betray your country by revealing information, even under torture.”
“And then after that, you try to distract yourself from either being tortured or worrying about impending torture?” she asked.
“Yes,” Tate said, though she didn’t think he sounded as confident as his words indicated.
Scarlet tilted her head. “Great, I can do that. I’ve been trying to figure out how long it will take them to decide to call the Grand Master, and if, when they do, she will just tell them that they are going to be in a trinity?”
“No.” Tate was decisive. “Because if you fix a timeline in your head, and then that time marker comes and goes without a change, you’ll get discouraged.”
“And Selene is stubborn and smart.” Roman put his elbows on his knees. “She won’t risk contacting the Grand Master unless she thinks it’s the only way. I mean, I tried to encourage her to do exactly that, but she doesn’t take direction well. Never has.”
Scarlet uncrossed her legs, switching which one was on top. She was fighting to keep her toe from tapping in time with that damn song.
“The Grand Master isn’t going to tell her anything,” Tate said. “She issued the command to come to Boston, and until that order is obeyed…”
The Trinity Masters was, decidedly, not a democracy.
“What should we talk about then, to distract ourselves?” Scarlet asked, because the truth was, despite Tate’s coaching, she was fairly close to cracking under the stress. She’d put a lot of time and effort into planning the most perfect, most elegant New Year’s Eve wedding for these three psychopaths and despite this current abuse, she couldn’t let go of the idea of a dramatic, elegant ceremony, the expensive six-course candlelit dinner with menu items created by a guest chef. At midnight, a mixture of matte gold confetti and white rose petals would fall from the ceiling while everyone kissed… She glanced at Tate and Roman. Either one or—preferably—both of them had been the star of her New Year’s Kiss fantasies.
“Truth or Dare?”
Scarlet and Tate both looked at Roman, who regarded them levelly, as if it were totally normal for an NSA budget analyst to propose that they play a sleepover game.
Scarlet realized she was tapping her foot again in time with the song. Part of her feared the earworm would become permanent, something she’d hear in her head forever. She sat up in the tub. “You know what? I’m in. Why not? This whole thing is already ridiculous.”
“Dares might be a little hard, given our limited space,” Roman said.
But Scarlet had an idea. A very, very dangerous idea.
Maybe it was because her most vivid memory of Truth or Dare had been the time she played it at her friend Veronica’s house, on a night when Veronica’s twin brother, Viktor, was also having a sleepover, making it a coed sleepover.
“Tate, I dare you to take off your shirt,” Scarlet said.