Momentarily distracted by the sound of Veronica shuffling behind her, she makes note of the vase in her hands with a quizzical look on her face, before she looks at the peephole again. That’s when she sees him, it, the man behind the door with a heavy winded jacket quietly screwing a silencer on a handgun. It makes every nerve in Sawyer’s body stand up and she shakes her head in Veronica’s direction again, points to the room behind her and takes a few steps back and away from the door. ❛ Get inside. Lock the door. Don’t come out until I say so. ❜
And that’s when the knock comes, three slow and tentative taps against the wood, and Sawyer is the one moving towards it. When she looks again, he has his side to the door, and the gun tucked in his jacket, Sawyer swings the door open with the gun aiming at his head. ❛ Drop… Your weapon.❜
The look of surprise in his face does not elude her; he swings at her and Sawyer ducks, giving him enough time to take off on a sprint down the hallway. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t order him to stop, doesn’t tell him she’s with the FBI (she knows what’s at stake here, what could happen if he has that information and this is someone associated to Veronica’s father), but she takes off after him anyway. He shoots when she stops at a corner, but she ducks just in time to see the hole it leaves on the wall behind her, and he’s pushing a window open as Sawyer chases him again. He slides out with a surprising amount of ease, so much so, that when Sawyer stops at the window and looks out –– he’s gone.
When she returns to Veronica’s apartment not fifteen minutes later (after doing a thorough sweep of every nook and cranny of her floor), she’s holstering her gun and locking the door behind her. All three bolts, with her phone in hand; she’ll have to report this to her superiors, but there is something more important that needs tending first. The girl behind the door. Sawyer knocks on Veronica’s bedroom door, leans against it. ❛ Ms. Lodge… Would you like to come out or would you like me to come in instead?❜
At first, Veronica considers being brave. She considers staying put with that vase in her hand and helping to defend her apartment from whatever is going on. But she sees the look in Agent Cross’s eyes and thinks better of it. They’d talked about this before, about what happens when it’s time for Sawyer to do her job. Veronica has to trust her and listen to the other or they’ll b e in even greater danger than they already were. So Veronica does as she’s told, she goes into her bedroom and locks the door. But instead of keeping the vase in her hands, she puts it down in the middle of the room and moves to the safe. It’s in the second drawer of her vanity, in a lock box with a pin pad safe that only she can open. Her father may not be a good man but he’d taught Veronica some very important things about protecting herself. One of those things was to always be armed.
She’d never had to take that gun out before but she takes it out now, with shaky hands, surprised once again by how cold and heavy it is. And then she waits. She hears a scuffle but it’s far away. Silence. And then the door. Veronica waits, standing by her bed, out of eyeline of the door, with the gun pointed straight in front of her, finger on the trigger. As she hears footsteps approach, she tightens her grip, squares her jaw, prepares herself. She’ll think about what happened to Agent Cross and whether or not she’s alive after. First -- this.
Ms Lodge. She hears Sawyer’s voice and exhales with relief. She isn’t dead. But it could still be a trap. She could be held at gun point, being forced to knock on the door. She doesn’t know Sawyer quite well enough to know what she’d do if her life was being threatened, and Veronica’s too smart a bussines woman to not think of every possible outcome. “Come in,” she urges her. But she’s still holding the gun, still not moving, still standing on the other side of the door. “You can come in.”
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