lie to me → s.d.

.07 | bullies with money

Now, Theodora had never been the best shot, even years after she had first picked up a gun at the age of fifteen and started aiming at handmade targets in the countryside of Boston. Maybe she never practiced enough between taking care of her mother after her diagnosis, or perhaps she had just preferred to use her fists over a machine she hardly knew inside and out like her best friends did. They did call her their muscle for a reason.

          But she sure as hell was better than the best at climbing. From the rickety drainpipe outside her window as a kid to the sky-scraping walls of lost cities, she could work the vertical terrain to practically bend to her own will. She worked with nothing but net, and most of the time, she didn't even have one of those. One of those times happened to be right now.

          Theodora scurried up the steep cliffside, making for the Rossi Estate up top, like a mountain goat that seemed to defy gravity with every kick and hop. Somewhere beneath her, the Drake brothers themselves were struggling to find footholds in the pale yellow stone threatening to drop them into the ocean below. The trio wore identical jumpsuits, ugly things with a clash of bright blue on their shoulders and a sickly-looking grey down the rest of the bodies. They knew precisely what they were doing with those eyesores; their fronts and gloved hands were covered in loose gravel and dust.

          As she jumped upwards, skipping the rock wall entirely and snatching a grasp of the mansion's first window sill, Nathan emitted a rumbling chuckle that seemed to echo in the chasm below. "All these years and you're still a spider monkey, T."

          Sam said something about enjoying the view down there, and both his companions knew he probably wasn't talking about the purple and red-painted sunset to their left. Theodora kicked a small chunk of earth and weeds loose and it went tumbling down the cliff side toward him; his resounding yelp and choke of disgust brought a small smile to her face as she continued her journey upwards.

          The Rossi Estate was a spiraling, twisting mansion set on the edge of a cliff-bound peninsula, a haven for those who thought they deserved it all and then some. Framed by the rippling sun suspended above the ocean, its doors were thrown open and welcomed with a warm embrace every kind of criminal and high-up power relished in. Drug lords, crook business tycoons and their paid-by-the-hour dates - any greedy soul you could imagine was there for the auction selling off stolen items; and those souls included the thieves who didn't intend on paying for what they wanted.

          "Hey," said Sam. He pulled the grappling hook on his hip, lowered it a bit, and grunted as he tossed it up to the ledge Theodora was attempting to scale. She secured it into the pale rock, kicking its spindly hooks into the earth, and gave him a thumbs-up before continuing her climb. "Do you think Sullivan's really going to come through?"

"Of course he'll come through," said Nathan, as if he had asked him if the sun would come up again in the morning. "The guy's my old mentor, Sam, you've just got to trust me on this."

"Oh, I trust you," he said as he shimmied up his rope. "I just don't trust him quite yet."

Theodora had to come to the conclusion that she agreed with Sam. Anyone Nathan called a mentor she was sure was at least a bit trustworthy, but she decided she didn't want to place her life into the hands of someone she hadn't ever met just yet. Since none of their little trio, being as sketchy as they looked with their limited connections, could get their mitts on an invitation, they had to turn to an outsider - Sullivan - to find them a way inside. And that way inside happened to be the top floor overlooking a five hundred foot drop. They could only pool their hopes and prayers that he would unlock the window in time for the auction.