lie to me → s.d.

.17 | yeppers

It was, if anybody else had both the pleasure and misfortune of seeing it, a rather comical-looking scene. There wasn't much of a lick of cover between their truck and the gigantic hole Shoreline had blown in the side of volcano, so they were forced to creep between the bits of rubble that had been blasted back across the desert slope. And as of this moment, all four of them were ducked behind one rather large boulder just a ways from the opening.

It looked like they were in a cartoon when they poked their heads around the sides, where the characters could only have been standing on top of one another to be able to all see around the corner.

The Shoreline crew, from the looks of it, had planted charges all along the sides and arch an ancient door hidden by a curtain of flush veins. It was reduced to an unstable-looking hole in the side of the mountain, the ground leading up the path littered with sizzling pieces of century-old greenery and bits of the intricately-carved stone that had once made up the curved doorway. It seemed they didn't care just how old or precious or well-preserved any piece of history was, as long as there was something valuable and shiny on the other side of it.

Theodora, the right side of her face barely poking around the boulder, counted the Shoreline workers and noted there were only three. She heard no voices or shouts of riches-induced elation. With a sinking heart, as she relayed to the men, of the treasure and fountain were in there, they would have been carting it out in trucks big enough to put circus tents to shame.

"I suppose you three had some idea your pirate liked his little treasure hunts?" murmured Sully from the other side of the rock. Here on the side of the volcano, with no wind in their faces or shitty air conditioning from the Jeep's busted vents, it seemed that the temperatures had decided to promptly double and paint the backs of all their shirts with sweat.

"Well, yeah," said Nathan. "But nothing like this."

"Even if it ain't in there, we've got to see just what Avery wanted us to." Sam patted himself and his pockets down, like he was trying to find some large, important tool he might have forgotten, and came up empty-handed. "But even with just three of those bastards, we don't have a chance of winnin' a gunfight."

Theodora thought aloud, "We need a distraction, then," and by the way they all looked at her like light bulbs had appeared over their heads, she wished she had learned a long time ago to keep her thoughts to herself. "No," she hissed when Sam opened his lips, "no, absolutely not, I am not going to go out there and be their plaything for them to throw around, stop it-"

Sam's hands maneuvered deftly around hers when she tried to smack him away and gripped her shoulders tight enough so that she didn't have a choice but to face him. "Hey, hey," he stage-whispered over her muted protests, "we won't let anythin' happen to you, understand? I swear it, not anythin'. Have I ever lied to you?"

His voice worked its way deep into her chest and through her heart, because even after all this time he still knew the way, and her fighting stopped. No, she thought - silently, this time. He hadn't ever lied to her, not once in all the time they had one another wrapped around the other's fingers. When he made a promise, a swear, even a claim that sounded so ridiculously out there she would have bet money it wasn't true, he kept to his word. If he said nothing would happen to her, she believed him.

But if something did, by god, would she kick his ass.

Theodora exhaled and glanced back to the guards, three men of varying sizes all armed with automatics, and licked her lips before shaking her head. "Fine. Fine. Okay." She nearly stumbled back out of their hiding spot when he scooped up a small handful of dirt and smeared it across her face, using his fingers to wipe it over her chin, nose, forehead - even her ears and neck.