A Chip and a Chair (Seven of Spades, #5)(32)

He hustled back to the truck, though never moving fast enough to arouse the suspicions of anyone who might be watching. A few soft words settled Rebel down while he rummaged through his supplies until he came up with a screwdriver and a ring of bump keys. He left her in the truck when he returned to the house; if his assumptions were correct, he didn’t want her anywhere near it.

There was no evidence of a home security system that he could see. It stood to reason that if the house was hosting illegal activities, Carson wouldn’t want the police or neighbors alerted to an intruder. Still, Dominic would need to be efficient. Infiltrate, confirm, retreat. If he got caught breaking and entering, Levi would have an aneurysm.

He matched the lock to the correct bump key, slipped the key in one notch short of full insertion, and smacked it with the handle of the screwdriver a couple of times while applying lateral pressure. The lock popped open in seconds.

Lock bumping was fast, but it was also loud-so if there was anyone inside, they’d know he was here. He stashed his tools in the pockets of his windbreaker and drew his gun before easing the door open.

As soon as he stepped inside, he was overpowered by an acrid chemical smell that triggered a cascade of unexpected sense memories. Coughing, he staggered against the wall and fell to one knee.

The last time he’d smelled this odor had been in the moments before he’d been shot.

He’d never had flashbacks to his service with the Rangers before, but there was no other explanation for the fugue he dropped into. The pain that ripped through his right shoulder was like being shot all over again. He could practically hear the shouts of his ambushed squad ringing off the walls.

Gritting his teeth, he shook his head and pushed himself upright. He didn’t have time for this.

Luckily, he was right about the house being empty, because otherwise he would have been a sitting duck. In the interests of thoroughness, he cleared the house anyway before following the smell to a room in the back.

“Goddammit,” he muttered as he stood on the threshold. He knew a home explosives lab when he saw one, but even if he hadn’t, the stacked bottles of acetone and hydrogen peroxide would have tipped him off. Carson and his buddies were using this house to manufacture triacetone triperoxide, a dangerously unstable homemade explosive used in IEDs.

The blinds were drawn over the one window, casting the corners of the room into shadow. A free-standing exhaust fan against the wall wasn’t doing much to dissipate the smell-basically just blowing it out of the room into the rest of the house. Dominic flicked the light switch and took a few cautious steps inside, getting a better look.

All of the right supplies and equipment were here, but he didn’t see the finished product. Maybe Utopia had already moved it, or they might be hiding it elsewhere in the house.

The closet seemed a logical place to start. He crossed the room and gingerly opened the door, every movement as smooth and slow as he could manage. TATP was prone to detonating itself at the slightest vibration or temperature increase.

There were no explosives in the closet, but it wasn’t empty, either.

“What the fucking fuck,” he said, staring at the massive bulletin board on the wall. A map of the Las Vegas Valley covered the entire board, and the map itself was plastered with photographs, sticky notes, foil stars, colored pushpins, floor plans, and a web of handwritten circles and arrows he couldn’t make sense of.

Targets. These are potential targets and a plan of attack.

Jesus Christ. He shoved his gun into his holster and fumbled his camera out his pocket, eyes still roaming over the board. The Stratosphere Tower, the Regional Justice Center, Masjid As-Sabur . . .

As he was lifting the camera, preparing to snap the first photo, his gaze reached the far right edge of the board. His train of thought sputtered and died.

There was a blown-up photograph of Levi pinned there, taken at a distance, the background blurry and indistinct. A targeting reticule was painted over his face, and a dart had been jabbed viciously through his neck. Beside the photograph, someone had scrawled a few stomach-turning homophobic and anti-Semitic epithets, along with the words HIGH PRIORITY.

Every other concern was knocked clean out of Dominic’s head. He gaped at the photograph, his body unmoving except for the shallow jerking of his chest as he struggled to breathe.

No. No. No.

It was the only thought in his mind, bouncing around his skull in shrieking, mindless patterns. Before this very moment, he could never have imagined that this level of pure terror existed.

The sound of a dog barking broke him out of his stupor. He flinched, his throat aching as he sucked in badly needed air, and awareness of his surroundings rushed back.

That wasn’t just any dog. It was Rebel, barking continuously in a way she never did, the sound escalating in volume and anxiety with each passing second.

He traded his camera for his gun, quietly shut the closet, and pressed himself into the corner behind the room’s open door just in time to hear several sets of footsteps enter the house.

“I’m telling you, there’s nobody here,” said a man.

A female voice said, “The motion sensors wouldn’t have gone off for no reason.”

Dominic winced. So no legitimate security system, but they had their own private defensive measures in place. This was what he got for being impulsive.

“We’ve gotten false alarms before. Besides, who’d want to break in here? This house isn’t exactly a prime target for burglary, and Daley’s positive the cops don’t know anything about the mission.”