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 business 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.”
It doesn’t come as a shock, that after all these years at the FBI, that its not the gun that startles her when she opens the door, but the person holding it. Her eyes immediately flicker to Veronica’s handgun, except this isn’t like any other armed gunman situation. Sawyer shows Veronica her weapon and steps through the door, lowering her voice as gently as she possibly can. ❛ Hey, its okay. Its just me. Look, I’m putting my gun away –– ❜ She holsters her handgun. ❛ –– and you’re going to put yours down too, and I’m going to close this door, and we’re both going to take a deep breath and talk about what happened before I call my unit chief, okay?❜
The reality is, she knows how scary it is for someone who doesn’t see this on a day-to-day basis, and it only reminds her of how numb she is to it all. Especially for someone who is in real danger. Who, by proxy, is associated to a dangerous underground connection of criminals that have taken years for the police and the FBI to decipher. She’s learned to disassociate herself from her near-death experiences, such as this one –– that man could’ve shot her in the hallway and she could’ve been as good as dead without a bulletproof vest, but she’s learned to force herself not to think about it. Veronica might not be so lucky yet.
So instead, she reaches out, one hand for the gun, the other one to hold Veronica, even if she should be on the line with her boss and she should be on the line with the police reporting an incident in the building. ❛ He’s gone, I swear.❜
