Of course. Trey was probably looking for anything he could find detailing Violet’s illness or the contract that Mr. Simmons had drawn up to pressure him into donating a kidney. I had to trust that he knew what he was doing; his plight was just as dire as mine. But I feared Trey might have forgotten what a delicate situation we were in.

“He shouldn’t be in there,” Violet said, looking terrified. “My dad will know if anybody’s been going through his stuff.”

“Um, Trey? What are you doing?” I asked, entirely for Violet’s benefit.

His voice was muffled as it reached us through the door. “I’m just looking for something.”

Violet bit her lower lip and told me in a quiet voice, “That’s the one room of the house I’m not supposed to go in. He keeps confidential client files in there.”

Sensing that Violet might break at any second, I knocked on the door again. “Trey? Whatever you’re doing, you’re freaking Violet out, and that’s not the wisest thing to be doing right now.”

Finally, the door opened, and Trey stood before us, holding a laptop cracked open as he smiled from ear to ear. “Found it,” he announced.

“Found what?” I asked.

“Proof!” he exclaimed.

Violet pushed past him and stepped into the office, surveying the messy piles of paper on top of the desk and the file cabinet drawer abandoned on the floor. The office looked kind of like the private chambers of a comic book villain, with heavy drapery flanking windows that overlooked the gardens below, and a thick rug under the desk. An antique lamp with a green shade stood next to an oversize monitor on the desktop.

And there, next to the base of the lamp, was a handgun. My eye was drawn to it, even before Violet marched across the room toward it. As if she’d known all along that this was the real thing that Trey had been searching for in the office, she picked it up with a familiarity that suggested she’d handled it before, squinted at Trey, and asked, “Where did you find this?” Answering her own question, she placed the gun back in the ajar top drawer and locked it with a key that had also been left out on the top of the desk.

“Um, is that a real gun?” I asked. A lot of people in Wisconsin were into hunting, so certainly rifles were prevalent around town. It wasn’t uncommon at all for people my age to get their hunting licenses for their twelfth birthday. In fact, I would have bet that Henry had one. But I’d never seen a handgun in person before in my entire life.

“Of course. My dad just has it for protection, and it’s supposed to be locked up at all times,” Violet snapped, her eyes fixed on Trey. “Do you think you’re investigating crimes or something in here?”

Trey thrust the laptop toward us for emphasis. “Your father paid someone to assault me.”