A text ping comes up on the screen from Wes.
Wesley Traynor, ZJI: Going in. 2 mins.
“Fuck,” I growl at the same time as Carlson does, reading over my shoulder.
I’ve already told him there are two other guys in there now, too.
Wes will have a mind to where she is, I know this, but I don’t know this Abe guy and I don’t fuckin’ like any of it.
Where’s Violet? I don’t see her there, so I switch the app, Carlson and Jagger looking over my shoulder in time to see Violet and Heidi are in the bedroom by the bed.
“They have to be here somewhere,” Violet mutters, flipping through her overnight bag on the end of the bed. Heidi stands there, pointing a gun at her. “Oh. Maybe the housekeeper put them in the desk. She has a spot she puts odds and ends when she tidies.” She moves around the corner to the home office, and I have no camera over there to see what the fuck is happening. My heart stammers in my chest because fuck… is she going for the gun?
My brave, strong, beautiful girl.
Heidi moves closer to the office, at Violet’s back. I lose sight of her too, but hear her ask, “Okay, forget it. Wait. What are you doing in that drawer?”
“Fuck,” I repeat, my heart in my goddamn throat as I stare at the screen, not able to see Violet.
I turn the volume to max in time to barely hear Violet talking.
“Can you just help me with this drawer, it’s kinda… um… stuck.”
I hear the pop that I know is the gun with the silencer she’s pulled from under the drawer.
There is a collective gasp from everyone looking over my shoulder at this happening on my phone in real time.
“Fuck, baby,” I whisper.
Violet moves back into view, heading toward the nightstand while sticking the barrel of Heidi’s gun into the back of her pants, covering it with her sweater beside the other gun she just used. Like some sort of badass.
“Thank fuck I put a silencer on that thing. Where are Wes and Abe?” It’s gotta be less than a minute now. Violet has three fucking guns on her and obviously Heidi is down. She wouldn’t even take one from me last week.
I hear a whimper that must be Heidi. She’s not dead. Fuck, I hope she doesn’t have the strength to follow Violet out or scream.
“Fuck. We need to alert Wes,” Jag says. “I’ll message him.”
But there’s probably no time and I’m holding my breath as I watch Violet heading for the door holding the gun from my nightstand in her hand. I quickly switch views to the living room where things happen quickly.
I see Trey Ricci’s back and he stumbles as red spreads out at the back of his white hoodie, near his shoulder. Then I see the back of Violet, holding two weapons, one in each hand.
One of my living room windows shatters and then the space fills with smoke and the sound of shots firing.
Everything feels like it crumbles around me as the view goes hazy from the smoke bomb I know Wes has used. Visibility is evaporating on my screen so I can’t see much but do spot Violet drifting toward the floor. Is she hurt? Did Wes or Abe’s bullet hit her? Trey and the other two guys are also down and Wes and Abe are moving toward them, but now I’m no longer staring at my hazy screen because I’m bolting for the elevator, hearing feet behind me as the others also rush into action.
Both doors are open with cops holding the elevators for us. I jump into one with Jag and Carlson and other cops head into the other one.
My key in the slot in the elevator means an express ride up, but it still feels like it takes a year before we hit my floor and I see nothing on the phone screen but smoke, so I’m running toward the door, phone in my left hand, a gun in my right, and Wes’s voice coming from Jag’s phone on speaker directly at my back, saying, “All three are down. Smoke bomb launched but’ll clear quick.”
“Where’s Violet?” Jag asks just as I shout, “Coming in,” over my shoulder so Wes hears through Jag’s phone. I unlock the door and push my way in, not waiting for a reply.
In the kitchen, near the stove, Violet’s huddled on the floor. I drop my phone, rushing to her and find that she’s there, sitting up, conscious. She’s not bleeding. She still has both guns. Wes is squatting in front of her. He rises when he sees me.
“She’s not hit,” he says. “She’s just in shock.”
One of the gangbangers in my living room is definitely dead. Gunshot to the head. The other is writhing on the floor crying, bleeding from the chest. Trey Ricci is facedown about four feet away, the majority of the back of his white hoodie stained bright red.