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“And what if we answer with a lie?” Lucy asked.
Stephen smiled. “You lose two points. And lose an article of clothing. But two back-to-back lies and, well, you strip down to nothing but, well . . . you’ll see.”
I supposed losing clothes was better than our covers being blown. Beating a lie detector test wouldn’t be a problem for me. Nor for Carter. The CIA trained us to handle that shit. But I wasn’t so sure about Mason and the others. I shared a worried look with Carter, on the same page of concern with me. Some of us might be out the door before the game even really began.
“Let’s do this, shall we? This time, we’ll have the men start on each team.” Stephen gestured toward the table beneath the pergola by the pool.
“This is going to end with some of us butt-ass naked,” Oliver said under his breath as Mya neared us.
“Do your best to be honest,” Mya whispered. “I don’t want to see your ass, thank you very much.”
“Sure you don’t, Butter—” Oliver cut himself off, as if remembering he shouldn’t already have a nickname for his teammate. He cleared his throat as Carter was called over first.
Good. Carter would be fine. I wasn’t worried about him. No one could crack that man, I was sure of it.
I set my back to one of the columns of the pergola and buried my hands in my pockets, nearly forgetting we were on camera. Gray and Jesse weren’t arriving until tomorrow, though, so we’d have to do our best not to get ourselves in trouble, at the very least, before then.
A woman in a light blue wrap dress sat on the other side of Carter with a laptop in front of her to check his honesty. “I’m Shannon,” she introduced herself. “And are you ready?”
Carter looked my way for a moment, gave me a subtle nod, then faced her.
“Is your name really Carter?” she asked him, her accent noticeably American.
“Yes,” he replied.
“Have you ever killed a man?”
Well, that was a quick pivot of what-the-fuck. I pushed away from the column, unsure what he’d say. He could lie, sure. But I was trying to remember the cover story Gwen had cooked up for him.
“Yes.”
“When? Why?” Shannon probed.
“Traveling in Europe, and I was jumped. The guy had really bad table manners. And it was a him-or-me thing,” Carter casually shared, and I spied Oliver trying to hide his smirk at Carter’s semi-truthful and slightly comical answer from when he’d forked a guy to death last year in Zurich.
Polygraph tests were usually yes or no questions, or short answers. But I had a feeling a lot of what was going on here was theatrics for higher ratings. Not that we’ll let this footage ever air.
“Interesting,” Shannon said after a moment. “And who was the best kiss of the four?”
I about stumbled at the rapid change yet again.
Carter peered at our group. I knew he didn’t want to answer. He didn’t even want to fake an answer. “No comment,” he went with.
Shannon pushed her glasses to the bridge of her nose. “Not a choice.”
“Charlotte,” Carter relented with the lie even I could detect.
Did a CIA-trained operative just let a question about a kiss be what broke him? But yeah, the machine buzzed.
Carter wordlessly loosened the knot of his tie, slid it free from his neck, then flung it to the pavement.
Shannon drummed her fingers at the column of her throat. Was she sweating? I supposed sitting across from the broody dude could make anyone’s pulse uptick. “And, um, ahem, if you could screw anyone on your team, who would it be?”
Carter grumbled, “No one.”
The damn polygraph was either overly sensitive and misreading Carter, or my team leader was off his game. Would the man seriously rather get naked than divulge a name? Who in the hell on our team did he want to sleep with?
“Your time is up. If you can’t be honest, how will your team depend on you during the game?” Stephen asked him. “Clothes off.” He twirled a finger, motioning for Carter to stand.
