I reached for the handgun under my pillow as I heard them stalking softly through my house. Moving slowly to not raise awareness, I grasped the cold handle. My eyes opened enough for small slits to appear. Through them, I made eye contact with my little sister, Evelyn. She twitched her nose three times. This was code for three people were in the house. Footsteps came closer, causing me to close my eyes and use my other senses.
One of them walked between Evie and me; the scent of manly soap following in his wake. Another set of steps could be felt walking behind me, in between our friend, Lace.
"Are you sure it's here, Cas?" An angry voice whispered. The second voice did not even both to whisper.
"Positive. We just have to search for it." His deep voice, and name, nagged something in the back of my head. I know I have heard that voice somewhere, but I could not put a face to the name or voice.
A small hiss came from one of them while another, different voice, whispered a response. "Do you have any idea where it is at?"
"Are you kidding me?" the first voice whispered back. "Something that valuable, they are probably sleeping with it."
"So? Wake them up." Cas said.
"Hey!" Someone nudged my foot with theirs. "Wake up!"
Pushing off the floor with one hand, spinning me to my left, I had my gun trained on the man at the foot of my bed as I finished sitting up. On both sides of me, Lace and Eve had done the same. The guy at the foot of my sleeping bag raised both hands in the air, momentarily blinding me as his flashlight was raised with his hand. I could make out a gun in the other hand. Glancing to my left, I could see Lace was locked on a taller dude with longer hair than my target. However, unlike mine, Tall Guy had his gun pointed back. Making sure Evie was ok, I looked her way for an instant. I had to follow her line because she was not pointing that thing at the foot of her bed like the rest of us. Instead, it was looking like it was pointed at my guy until I saw the short man, shorter than the other two, behind the other guy.
"Whoa!" my target exclaimed.
Lace's was more of a challenge. "Drop the weapon!" He demanded. I could hear her snort and cock her gun. I wanted to roll my eyes. Drama queen, I thought. Evie's man walked toward her, causing her to cock it as a warning. Yet, he kept walking toward her. Narrowing her eyes, she raised her gun to the roof of the abandoned house, and fire one shot before locking back on the man.
"Cas, stop!" the guy at the end of my sleeping back hissed. This caused him, Cas, to halt in his tracks.
Cas looked over at the man. "I wasn't going to hurt her, Dean. I was just going to grab the gun from her hands."
"Yeah, well in my experience? People with weapons do not want them removed from their hands, Cas!" Dean turned to look at me. "Look, can we drop the weapons and talk?"
"Nope," was my immediate reply.
"Ok, look-". I have no idea what he was about to say because he started to put his hands down, which my brain took as him getting ready to point his gun at me. Self-preservation had me pulling the trigger.