Joyful Engagement (A Trinity Masters novella) Read online

  Tate lay on the floor of the hall, unable to move. He could vaguely hear shouting from outside.

  FUBAR. Short for Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.

  This mission was royally FUBAR.

  Chapter Two

  Scarlet had just closed the back door of the rental car after stowing the antique cake cutter and framed wedding photos of Oscar’s parents and grandparents—they were going to display them at the reception—when she heard shouting.

  Shouting wasn’t good.

  Roman and Tate were just supposed to hand over the letters, make sure that Oscar knew when the other two were supposed to be in Boston—the plan hinged on him following his lovers—and then get out of there.

  That plan was Plan A. The Grand Master might not have had a Plan B, but Scarlet did. She always had Plans A through J at the ready. It was her first time planning a surprise wedding, but plans were her thing.

  She’d been shocked and a little horrified when she realized that everyone didn’t constantly run through scenarios, create plans and backup plans, as a way to deal with life. In college, she’d been a decent student—planning how to get good grades was fairly straightforward—but she’d excelled at extracurriculars.

  Nowadays, she planned events, symposiums, and music festivals. She didn’t panic if the power supply failed or a computer went down or a band cancelled because she had at least one plan that accounted for that.

  She crept to the corner of the pretty white farmhouse and peeked around the corner. She’d need more information about what was causing the yelling before she could decide which of the backup plans she needed to activate.

  Roman, who normally looked calm, cool, and reserved in a way that she was sure meant he probably had some seriously weird sex kinks—okay, that might have been wishful thinking—was racing toward her. Oscar Hayden—easy to identify since she knew Langston and the men really were identical—was right behind him, holding a bulky-looking gun in his hand.

  Scarlet froze, and her brain short-circuited, because this...this she didn’t have a plan for.

  No one had said it explicitly, but it was clear that Tate had been selected as the third person for this mission because Oscar might react badly to not receiving a letter. Tate was here to make sure Roman didn’t have a black eye in the wedding pictures.

  She, of course, had accounted for the possibility that Tate might not be able to block a punch in time. She had a box with stage makeup tinted for Roman’s skin tone in her event boxes back in Boston.

  But she didn’t have a plan for how to handle it if Oscar literally shot the messenger...messengers?

  Where was Tate?

  Roman spotted her and waved one hand, his legs pumping as he ran. “Start the car!”

  Selene Tanaka—Scarlet knew almost everything about the woman, including her measurements and shoe size—was racing after Oscar.

  “Do not tase my favorite cousin!” Selene shouted.

  Tase, not shoot. Better.

  Still, there wasn’t a plan for Tasers, either.

  Scarlet backpedaled for the car and yanked the driver’s door open. A second later, Roman rounded the corner and was sprinting for the passenger side.

  “Tate?” she yelled.

  “They got him. Oscar is nuts,” Roman panted.

  “Hey! Don’t talk about him like that.” Selene was fast, and she had gained on Oscar, so the two of them came around the corner of the house at the same time.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Oscar demanded, looking at Scarlet. “Wait, I don’t give a fuck.” He raised the Taser, pointing it at Roman, who yelped and leapt through the air toward the passenger door.

  “Wait,” Selene snapped. “Hold on, Oscar. A third person…”

  His hand lowered. “Oh.”

  Selene looked at her, and Scarlet resisted the urge to yelp in fear.

  “Do you have a letter for Oscar?” Selene demanded.

  “No,” she stammered, and then Plan D, which accounted for her being seen but not getting caught breaking into the parents’ house snapped into place. “I was just supposed to pick them up at the airport and bring them here since I know Charleston.” The lie came easy because she had planned for this. The phrase was at the ready, filed mentally under What to say if they see me.

  “Damn it,” Selene breathed. She turned to Oscar. “I can’t believe the Grand Master would do this to us.”

  “I can. She’s a stone-cold bitch.”

  Scarlet was pretty sure that the Grand Master herself would agree with that. She probably had that nickname embroidered on her underwear.

  Selene licked her lips. “We run?”

  Oscar nodded. “We run.”

  Selene sighed. “Okay. Tase her.”

  “Whoa, whoa!” Scarlet shook her head. “Don’t tase me.”

  “Roman’s the bigger threat,” Oscar grumped. “I only grabbed two cartridges for this thing, and I already used one on Tate.”

  “First of all,” Selene said. “Assuming that my cousin, who is an accountant, is a bigger threat is misogynistic of you. I expected better, Oscar.”

  Oscar softened, turning to her. “Baby, I didn’t mean it like that—”

  “Second of all, he’s my favorite cousin. No. Tasing.”

  “Get in,” Roman hissed from inside the car.

  Scarlet looked down to see that Roman had opened the passenger door and climbed in. He reached across the console for her, hooking his hand in the pocket of her jeans and tugging. “Get in, get in.”

  In the split second she looked away, Oscar raised the stun gun.

  She felt a small pinch in her arm and then pain zapped her.

  Scarlet dropped, landing hard on her butt, lights popping in her vision.

  “Ow, ow, ow,” she breathed, her nerve endings shrieking. She lost a little bit of time as she focused on trying not to feel like her entire body was taken over by a case of pins and needles.

  Then she was thrown over a man’s shoulders in a fireman carry. He hauled her away from the car, away from their only means of escape, and Scarlet vowed that from now on, all plans would always include a variation titled:

  What to do if someone goes postal and tases you?

  Roman faced off with Oscar, aware that there probably wasn’t a whole lot he could do to protect his companions. Luca kept glancing over at the bed, where Scarlet and Tate were laying. Roman knew they were both awake—neither had passed out—but from the occasional groans, he knew they also weren’t feeling all that great, which meant an escape attempt was out of the question.

  He might have tried it since Oscar had used both cartridges. But his—as he now knew her to be—insane cousin, Selene, had brought Oscar a few more.

  So Roman put his body between that of his partners and their attackers, and stayed silent as Selene and Luca quickly yanked anything that might be considered a weapon out of the master bedroom suite that was about to be a jail and tossed it into the hall.

  From Langston’s information, Roman knew that this rather dusty-smelling house was Walt’s, the third triplet who was currently out of the country working for Doctors Without Borders.

  Walt’s house had the feeling of a place that wasn’t lived in, and the sparse furnishings made it easy for Oscar to turn it into their temporary prison.

  Selene was looking at Roman, and instead of worry or horror at what her lover had done, she looked calm. Almost calculating. “Tell my parents, my sister, that I’ll find a way to contact them once we’re safe.”

  These were the same parents and sister who would be at her surprise New Year’s Eve wedding. What a huge clusterfuck of a misunderstanding. All he had to do was tell her everything: Oscar is going to be your third, but he doesn’t get a letter. The Grand Master is expecting him to follow you two, and the days of thinking he won’t be with you are punishment for him acting like a dipshit. I have spent the past two weeks meeting with a team of people dedicated to making your surprise wedding beautiful.

  All he had
to do was open his mouth and talk.

  But he couldn’t.

  The Grand Master had specifically forbidden them from telling Selene, Luca, or Oscar what was really going on. Tate, who’d only been a member a couple of years, was stuck on the “punishment” aspect of this setup. But Roman was a legacy, and he could read between the lines, hear what was unsaid in both the Grand Master’s words and in the way her counselor Franco smiled at her during those meetings.

  The Grand Master’s position was one Roman wouldn’t have wished on an enemy, but this...planning a surprise wedding for people she already knew were in love?

  This was a happy thing.

  A fun thing.

  He was pretty sure that the Grand Master’s job rarely ever involved happy, fun things, and Franco’s idea for a surprise wedding on New Year’s Eve provided just that. When Roman looked at it in that light, Oscar’s punishment became more of a prank.

  The problem was they hadn’t accounted for the soon-to-be newlyweds going straight for the nuclear option.

  He looked at Selene again, and really, really wished he could just tell her what was going on.

  “You’re running,” Roman said slowly. “That’s a mistake.”

  “I fell in love,” she replied softly. “And I’ll do anything to be with the people I love.”

  Behind him, Scarlet sat up. Even disheveled after receiving one hell of a jolt, she was lovely. The first time Roman had seen her, he’d been taken aback by her elegance, her classic beauty. She’d pinned her shoulder-length dark auburn hair up in a high ponytail this morning before they set out on this adventure, but now, more than half of it had escaped on one side, giving her an eighties, Cyndi Lauper look. Her mascara was smudged under her eyes, but that only served to accentuate her expressive bright green eyes. She had a smudge of dirt along her right cheek from where she’d rolled on the ground, crying out in pain.

  Roman didn’t consider himself a vengeful man, but there was a day of reckoning coming for him and Oscar, despite the fact they were about to become cousins-in-law.

  A quick glance told him Tate was still down, his eyes closed, but there was a faint line between his brows that indicated he wasn’t asleep, that he was listening to everything being said. Roman half expected Tate to spring up at any moment and attack. He suspected that—like him—the former Marine would be anxious for a little payback for that damn stun gun.

  “Come with us to Boston,” Scarlet said. “Make your case to the Grand Master.”

  She was very careful with her words, not to disobey the gag order.

  “Fuck that!” Oscar called from the en suite bathroom.

  “It’s too late,” Selene said softly. “If we have letters, that means a third person, a stranger, has a letter too.”

  Oscar emerged carrying the towel bar, which he’d apparently removed from its brackets. He nudged Luca toward the door. “Okay, let’s go.”

  “What are you going to do with us?” Scarlet asked.

  “You’ll figure it out,” Oscar said.

  “We’ll make sure you can get out but not before we have a good head start,” Selene countered.

  “Don’t do this, cousin,” Roman urged.

  Selene looked at him, and the calm expression cracked, a little bit of sadness making her features tight. But that didn’t stop her from stepping out of the way as Oscar pushed Luca into the hall.

  Just before the door closed, Roman called out, “Think about what Scarlet said. Think very hard.”

  Chapter Three

  Tate sat up the moment the door closed. He put his finger to his lips, listening for the sound of voices. Instead, he heard footsteps and a door closing. They were alone in the house.

  He glanced at Scarlet and Roman. Both looked stunned, and Scarlet still seemed a little green around the gills. Being tased was no fun.

  “You okay?” he asked her.

  “I think so. You?”

  “Not my first time,” he assured her.

  Scarlet looked to Roman. “There’s a dirty joke in there, but I’m a little freaked out so I can’t figure out exactly where it is.”

  Roman tipped his head, seeming to consider it. “That’s what she said?”

  Tate snorted out a laugh and got up off the bed. Scarlet giggled—it had a slightly hysterical edge to it—and stayed where she was.

  Roman held out his hands, like a parent with their hands on either side of a wobbly toddler, when Tate stumbled a bit. “You should lie back down.”

  “I’m fine,” Tate assured him, gripping the other man’s shoulder. “I stayed down so Oscar wouldn’t decide he needed to tie us up.”

  “Did anyone see the Taser thing coming?” Scarlet asked. “Because I usually see problems coming, and this one…”

  “No, my cousin and her lovers’ losing their minds was not one of the outcomes we discussed, though perhaps we should have considered it, given Langston’s concerns at our last meeting.”

  Roman’s words were precise and polite, like everything the man did. In the past two weeks, the three of them had spent a great deal of time together, planning this wedding. As such, Tate had gotten to know both Roman and Scarlet fairly well. Roman was calm, collected, and scary smart.

  Tate had spent an evening with his Warrior Scholar roommates trying to decide if Roman really was a budget analyst for the NSA or if that was a cover for him being a secret agent of some kind. He wasn’t obviously dangerous, and those were the types of people who made great CIA agents.

  Levi had been there that night and he’d offered up an argument that felt pretty solid. Because Levi was still working on his degree in Classics from Harvard, the first year of his marriage was a long-distance deal since his husband and wife were movie stars who lived in Hollywood.

  “He probably is an accountant,” Levi had said. “And that’s scarier. It was a team of accountants who brought down Al Capone.”

  Getting to know Roman meant that Tate wasn’t surprised when, the instant his hand landed on the other man’s shoulder, a shock of awareness went through him. Tate had to check the urge to squeeze Roman’s shoulder just because he wanted to feel the other man’s body give under his fingers.

  Now was not the time to think about the growing attraction between the three of them, despite the very convenient bed Scarlet sat on.

  Tate forced himself to focus on the mission, ignoring his libido. “First step, we get out of here and get our phones.”

  Luca had taken his while Tate was still on the ground. The apologetic look he gave did not make Tate feel any kinder toward Luca.

  “Hold on, there’s something I can try.” Roman raised his arm and tapped on his watch—one of those cool watches that could make calls. Tate held his breath, but Roman shook his head. “They must have turned my phone off.”

  “Worth a try,” Tate commiserated.

  “You could have tried to run for it,” Scarlet said to Roman.

  Roman’s brows rose. “And leave you two?”

  “And get help. Or at least get the okay from the Grand Master to tell them what’s going on.” Scarlet didn’t sound angry, more like she was just talking through the possibilities.

  “I wouldn’t leave you,” Roman said quietly. “Selene is...uh, I was going to say harmless but…”

  “Your cousin is nuts.” Tate had no interest in mincing words. “So is Oscar. The sanest one is a dude who makes bombs, who I almost killed back on Long Wharf in Boston.”

  Scarlet grinned.

  “What?” Tate asked.

  Her grin widened, showing teeth.

  “What?” Roman asked.

  “Oscar and Luca are going to be Roman’s in-laws.”

  Roman groaned quietly and sank down to sit on the side of the bed.

  Tate snorted in amusement and then set about searching the room. Oscar had done a pretty good job of stripping it, but Tate had gotten out of much worse situations than this.

  There were two windows, one in the bedroom and a tiny one in the
bathroom. The bathroom one was useless, but the bedroom window looked out onto a copse of trees, and beyond that a field. They were at the back of the house, and although, according to Langston, every inch of the property was covered in cameras—a result of Luca’s actions a couple of months earlier when he broke into Langston’s lab—Tate was making the calculated choice to take them out the window rather than the door. He was hoping that Oscar and crew would be too caught up in making preparations to go on the run to be watching the cameras. However, they might see them from Oscar’s windows if Tate took them out the front door of the house.

  Tate checked the window, and as expected, he couldn’t just open it. Screws had been drilled into the frame in the track three inches above the top of the lower pane—a low tech, very effective, if semi-permanent method of stopping a window from opening.

  That meant it was time to break the glass.

  Tate took a step back, raised his right leg, and kicked, aiming his heel at the corner of the lower pane of glass. He still had his shoes on, and the thick soles were a hindrance rather than a help, but he didn’t want to risk taking off the shoe and cutting his foot.

  He was a big, heavily-muscled guy, and his regular squat load was three hundred pounds. The glass should have at least cracked.

  Instead, the glass held, and it felt like he was kicking a steel plate. His leg vibrated with pain and he lost his balance, falling backwards. Roman and Scarlet both grabbed for him, and Roman managed to put a shoulder against him and redirect Tate’s fall so he landed half on the bed before sliding to the floor.

  “What...the hell?” Tate wheezed.

  “I don’t think you can just kick out windows like that,” Scarlet said. “I think that only works on TV.”

  “I have literally done this before. Multiple times.” Tate sprang up from his sprawl on the floor. “I must have had a bad angle.”

  Tate got up and tried again.

  And again.

  Twenty minutes later, sweaty, Tate threw his hands in the air. “What paranoid asshole puts bulletproof glass windows in a random farmhouse in rural South Carolina?”