Kathryn Darcy shrugs on her anger like an old winter coat you only get out of your dusty closet when the weather gets drastic. It's singed in places and doesn't fit quite right at her shoulders, but she needs it to brave the cold.

They may be willing to kill, but she's got something they want. The trick is making them think she'll give it to them. Even if she doesn't know what it is. Even if she has no idea how they even traced anything back to her and her friends.

The place they're taking her is protected, awfully so. Dogs ready to be freed when someone steps onto the grass, that is if they get over the ten foot walls first. She wouldn't bet on her friends managing to get in, which means she needs to find a way to get out, by herself. There's only so far she can go with the good girl act. Maybe a little farther if she acts all meek, but she's not sure the kind of person that kidnapped her is sensitive to that kind of thing...

The man that forces her to walk along the path straight to the huge mansion isn't particularly delicate, but she gives as bad as he shoves, shoving back each time she can. When the door opens on a woman in a French maid outfit, Kathryn can't help but wonder where the hell she ended up.

The place in itself feels smaller than its exterior, maybe because of the huge clutter and patterned walls giving it a sort of claustrophobic eerie feeling. To be fair, the military casually standing in the living room doesn't help. Kathryn still eyes every little piece of furniture and the decoration on them, frowning to herself.

She can't really tell from a distance or in passing, but she's half sure some of those are actual antiques? A conquistador's helmet, what she can gather is some South-American indigenous necklaces and jewellery... An actual idol protected by glass. She figures most of those are from the same time period, give or take a few centuries. Someone is seriously obsessed. Kathryn herself doesn't have that much about the eighteenth century at home, and she hyper fixated on piracy big time as a kid.

"Take her upstairs," the housekeeper says. "The Orinoco Room."

Kathryn bites her lip as a lightbulb goes off in her head. Okay, so everything in this room must be from that region; Venezuela. The helmet, she can't say for sure, but the rest of the antiques in the room share some symbols, and she only has that lead.

Except, as far as she's concerned, it's a bit outside of her and her friends' field of study.

When she doesn't seem to move, the man holding a very big machine gun takes her by the arm and forces her up the stairs, punctuating every action with a word to explain them.

He shoves her inside the room, adding an "Inside" as if it helped make sense of it.

Kathryn sees it as an invitation to ask questions, seeing as he's more communicative than everyone she's met up until she got here.

"Who are you working for?" she asks with what she hopes is a stable voice. "What does he want from me?"

"Dinner at eight," the man tells her. "I'd clean up."

Gathering that she isn't going to get much more from the man, she steps back, biting her tongue and crossing her arms on her chest when he slams the door, and locks it behind him.

The next trick is keeping herself busy. If she keeps busy, she won't have a panic attack. She won't think about the Pogues panicking, or about JJ fomenting the most foolish plan known to man.

The room is big, with a bed that takes most of the space. Decorated as badly as the rest of the house, safe from antiques this time, so she can't even use that to distract herself. She can hear dogs barking outside, some chatter, and when she looks through the window, way too many armed military men. She has no idea how she's getting out of here. Only thing she can do is hope JJ doesn't think of one first.

From the corner of her eye, she spots the opened closet, with four of the same red dresses hanging with a note. 'Pick your size.'

Kathryn would love to be a brat and stay in her sea-soaked clothes with sand all the way up her buttcrack, but the door on the left of the bed leads to a shower, and the dress feels like satin under her touch. She figures she can be a pain in the ass no matter what she's wearing. And seeing the level of comfort they've given her... They aren't just about to kill her.

At least, she can hope.

🍓

The red dress suits her too well, she decides. She doesn't want to wear it in that kind of setting at all. She wonders what kind of psycho decided that putting a teenager in a dress with a slit that high on her thigh and a low-necked damn near her chest was a good idea. Well, whoever he was, he's lucky that Kathryn barely considers her body as her own.

There's a banging on the door that shocks her out of her rant, and she jumps from the chair to her feet in a blink.

The housekeeper walks in. "He's ready," he tells her.

Kathryn grounds her teeth so as to not ask who he is, and follows the woman downstairs. She takes a deep breath before entering the living room, preparing herself to lash out at the man who abducted her. The red dress feels like that old winter coat.

"So who exactly do you think you..." Her voice dies out in her throat. "Oh, you're fucking with me."

Rafe, sporting a new buzzcut, turns around with a glass of whiskey in his hand. He looks just as surprised to see her, and Kathryn wants to claw herself out of this damn dress. She's cursed. Someone has got to have cursed her.

She raises a finger at him, taking a step forward in fury. "Why's it always you and your fucking dad?"

He blinks. "What are you talking about?" he cries out in the same tone. "You trying to weasel in on my deal, right now?" He takes angry steps towards her, but she doesn't budge. "Is that what's going on?"

"Are you coked out of your mind–"

"I wondered if your little reunion would cause sparks, you know."

A man, on the other side of the room, turns towards them. He's wearing a three-piece suit, with skin darker than Kathryn's but only just, tugging at the buttons of his shirt, chuckling to himself like he's some villain. Only thing he's missing is a cat to pet. Kathryn decides she hates him from the get go.

"Who are you?" Rafe asks before she can.

The man points to himself. "Me?"

Something ticks in Kathryn's face. "No, the idol in the living room."

It has the benefit of making him laugh again. If it weren't for the fact that Kathryn hates it. "My name is Carlos Singh." He excitedly points at Rafe before putting his hands back in his pockets. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mister Cameron."

Kathryn can't picture a world where that's true. Pleased? To see Rafe? Yeah, okay. Maybe she's deflecting the situation because she feels like she can't breathe in this stupid dress. But that's between her and God, so.

"And Miss Darcy," Kathryn's face snaps back to the man, frowning deeply, "I do apologize for the rough tactics in bringing you here. But please, come. Sit down."

She narrows her eyes at him. "Is that a demand or do I still get free will?"

"Come on, now. I don't bite."

"I do."

She ignores Rafe's eyes, boring holes into her as she reluctantly follows Singh to the sitting area, richly decorated in the same horrid way as the rest of the house.

He shakes his head as he joins her. "Rough tactics," he echoes, like he cares. "What about me?"

"Yes, Mister Cameron, false pretenses," he admits, pouring himself a whiskey. "But the ends justify the means, I'm afraid. Sit down. We have a lot to talk about."

Rafe sits on the sofa next to Kathryn's chair. She crosses her arms on her chest, leaning back, feet kicking idly, feigning a coolness she doesn't have. "And what are these ends, exactly?"

"Well, Miss Darcy, Mister Cameron, we share certain interests, you know." Not house decorations. "Objectives."

"Is this not about the Cross?" Rafe asks, clearly frustrated that his deal fell through, which makes Kathryn smirk.

"It is. Tangentially, it is about the Cross, but it's also about something much, much bigger than the Cross."

He stops in front of a painting that Kathryn can't date, but can hazard is about El Dorado. The conquistador and the city of gold in the middle of the jungle kind of sells it for her. Not a lot of myths fit both standards.

"By orders of magnitude..." Singh goes on, staring at it. "...the completion of a grand quest. You see, the story goes that four hundred and fifty years ago, a Spanish soldier came out of the Orinoco Basin with a few gold beads. And when they asked the Spanish soldier where the bead came from, the Spanish soldier replied he got them from a peaceful Indigenous tribe who lived in a city of gold."

Oh. Oh, so they went from crazy christian lady to crazy full on legend dude. Well that's good to hear.

"Yeah, I think we know what El Dorado is," Kathryn shortens. "You're aware that it doesn't exist? People tried to find it and didn't for a reason."

"It falls to me, you know," he tells her, picking up an old knife and she has to pinch herself not to roll her eyes. "It falls to me to complete the task. To bring full circle a quest that has gone on for almost five hundred years. Perhaps... perhaps the greatest quest in the history of the western hemisphere, you know."

She thinks the fact that she's convinced he's insane is written all over her face. "Okay... As far as I know, neither I or fucker over there have anything to do with that."

Singh shakes his head. "You're wrong. You two are going to play a part in that." Rafe himself looks like he's considering ramming the guy's head onto his weird coffee table.

"Right," she clicks her tongue.

"I know you're interested in history, Miss Darcy, like your dad," he goes on, sitting down next to her.

Her nose wrinkles up. "I'm not actually a living vessel for my dad."

She's getting pretty tired of getting roped up in things she didn't sign up for, all because Edward Darcy made himself a name in shady historical nerds groups. She's sure he didn't even participate in them, so if they could stop treating her like the Second-Coming of Edward Darcy, she'd appreciate it.

Rafe groans. "I didn't listen to a word you said, okay? How much you gonna keep philosophizing?"

Singh chuckles. "You are direct, aren't you, Mister Cameron?"

Kathryn blows out a breath. "A direct cunt," she whispers under her breath. Nobody moves for a few seconds. "Any time you're done measuring your dicks, I'd love to know what you need me for."

He's still sizing up Rafe when he answers her. "I've come to believe that you and your friends are in possession of something that can help me get what I want."

"Elaborate."

"An old manuscript. A diary, actually."

Kathryn is lucky she's had years to teach herself to school her features. She barely swallows as Singh explains it to her. Only diary old enough to fit his weird little fixation is Tanny's diary. Which they have copies of in the Twinkie. At home.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Rafe says for her.

She heaves out a sigh. "If you want my secret diary, it's a no."

"I doubt the fact that the Cross was on the Royal Merchant was in that diary."

"Yeah, because I didn't know that," she retorts. There's no way he can prove that she did. She can just say that they happened to walk past Freedman's Church when the rotten wood finally gave and the Cross fell out. "Look, if I could help, I would, but I can't."

"I was hoping you wouldn't say that, you know."

She smacks her lips. "Well, sorry to disappoint."

He nods. "Yeah, I am disappointed. Because unfortunately, I don't believe you. You and your friend here couldn't have found the Cross without it."

Anger burns all the way up her cheeks. "He's not my friend. And he found the Cross, so ask him."

Singh looks back at Rafe, who pinches the bridge of his nose. "We can't all be friends, you know."

He sighs. "Look, this is ridiculous. Okay? I'm out." He starts to walk away. "I don't know anything about a diary, okay? So–"

He doesn't make it very far before two men with machine guns stop him. He stops, shoves his hands in his pockets, and smiles congenially.

"Do I look like a fool to you, Mister Cameron? Do I look like a fool to you?" Singh gets closer to him as he speaks, Kathryn not budging from her seat. "You have the Cross. She and she friends had the Cross at one point. So one of you has the diary." Rafe looks over at Kathryn, who holds his gaze, hateful. "And if you really don't know, then I suggest you convince your friend to tell me." Stupidly, that doesn't tame the spite in Kathryn's eyes as she stares Rafe off. "Once I have the diary... you'll be free to leave."

Singh smiles at Kathryn who grounds her teeth, trying not to look too hopeful. She isn't just about to sell Pope's inheritance off. In exchange for her freedom? Yeah, Pope can sleep with it underneath his pillow for all she cares, Kathryn isn't moving from this house if that's what it takes. All of these thoughts do their best to push away the picture of a blonde with blue eyes smirking at her.

Realising that Singh won't get what he wants tonight, he escorts them back to the room they forced Kathryn in before.

"Enjoy the grounds during your stay," he tells them. "I must warn you, though. I'm not a man of infinite patience. You have one day. Go to the window for a little demonstration." He moves past Rafe and pats his arm. "I think you'll enjoy it, you know."

Rafe is dumb enough to think they won't lock them both in this room as the door closes and he screams and jiggles the handle.

Kathryn shakes her head at him. "It's locked, you fucking moron."

She goes to the window, ignoring the guy behind her entirely, pushing the curtains aside. Her breath hitches in her throat when she recognises Portis being dragged in.

"Who the hell is that guy?" Rafe asks, standing beside her.

She shuffles to the side, doing her best not to act as terrified as she feels. "Someone I really should've let drown."

Singh, now standing outside, looks up at the window. He gets a gun out. Kathryn's breath comes in short and hurried, staring as he disappears from view, following after Portis.

There's a gunshot. Singh walks back in.

Next to her, Rafe swallows thickly. "This diary," he pants, and if she wasn't scared of dying, she'd revel that he was. "Hey, no bullshit." He abruptly turns to her, but she keeps her eyes fixed outside. "Don't bullshit me, okay? Do you have it? Kat?"

She sees fear in his eyes, at what she knows, at what she could do with it. She could end his life if she never spoke. It'd end hers, too, but she thinks they both know it wouldn't matter to her.

Kathryn shakes her head. "No." It's the easiest lie ever.

Author's Note: Nobody move this is a double-update