“My sister is closer,” I barked into the receiver, cutting off the dispatcher’s bureaucratic script. “She’s maybe eight minutes away.”
“Ma’am, officers are being dispatched. Please advise your sister not to confront the aggressor if it can be avoided.”
“I understand,” I lied.
I hung up the desk phone and dialed my sister, Dana , on a merged line. She answered on the first ring, her greeting casual. But the moment she heard my breathing, her tone dropped an octave. “Lena. What happened?”
“Ava says Marissa hit her with a hockey stick. She’s barricaded in the downstairs half-bath. Police are en route, but I am trapped in traffic twenty-seven minutes out.”
I heard the distinct jingle of car keys. “I’m closer,” Dana said, her voice turning into cold iron. “I’m going in.”
“Dana, please. Don’t engage in a brawl. Just get Ava out of that house.”
“That’s the only mission.”
Dana was a former professional MMA fighter. People often assumed that made her a powder keg, but they were entirely wrong. Fighting in a cage had taught my sister the devastating realities of physical trauma; it had instilled in her a lethal restraint that was far more dangerous than unchecked aggression.
I abandoned my desk and sprinted toward the parking garage, the phone practically fused to my ear. “Baby,” I whispered to Ava. “Aunt Dana is coming right now.”
