A Chip and a Chair (Seven of Spades, #5)(34)
Before he’d decided whether or not to shoot, Rebel leapt out of the truck and bounded toward Spencer, loosing a ferocious snarl that would have done her lupine ancestors proud.
Dominic had yet to encounter a human being who could stand their ground in the face of that threat. Spencer shrieked and sprinted back to the house, tripping over her own feet in her haste to escape.
He whistled, yanked the truck door open, and dove into the cab. Rebel followed him, and he burned rubber as they hightailed it out of there.
“What do you mean, Utopia is making TATP?” Denise asked. Her skeptical expression implied that she wasn’t asking Dominic to repeat himself so much as wondering how he’d obtained that information in the first place.
Levi was sitting next to Dominic in stony silence, his arms folded across his chest. He’d dragged Dominic and Rebel into this tiny conference room the moment they’d arrived at the substation, shoved Dominic into a chair and snapped at him to wait, then returned a few minutes later with Denise and Martine in tow. But he’d also brought an ice pack for Dominic’s face, so he couldn’t be too furious.
Dominic lowered the ice pack from his throbbing mouth. “There’s a Utopia safe house in Enterprise, owned by a man named Roger Carson. They’re using it to manufacture TATP.”
“And you know this how?”
“Oh, Dominic,” said Martine, who knew him a lot better than Denise. “Tell me you didn’t.”
“Oh yes, he did,” Levi said. He’d already heard the full story during the frantic phone call Dominic had made to him on the drive over.
Denise frowned. “You’re not saying that you . . . broke into the house?” Her tone was one of polite disbelief, like there must be some misunderstanding and she was sorry she even had to ask. God, she was almost too nice to be a cop.
“Let’s say that, hypothetically, a concerned citizen found a ton of empty hydrogen peroxide bottles in the house’s trash.” Dominic reached down to pet Rebel, who was sitting quietly beside his chair. “And that concerned citizen hypothetically entered the house to check it out, and hypothetically found unmistakable evidence of a TATP lab, plus what looked like a plan for a series of attacks. Then the owner of the house came back with some friends, and the concerned citizen had to fight their way out. Hypothetically.”
Martine palmed her face. Levi was glaring at Dominic in a way that promised serious consequences-and not the fun kind.
Denise, though, seemed more concerned by the news itself than Dominic’s method of acquiring it. She got up to pace the small room, more grave than he’d ever seen her. “You’re sure it was a TATP lab?”
“Positive. I’ve seen a few of them, in Afghanistan. My squad was ambushed while locking one down; it’s how I got shot.”
He rolled his shoulder as he spoke, grimacing. Damn thing still ached, which was ridiculous. There was no lingering damage there.
Some of the ice surrounding Levi melted, and concern flickered through his eyes.
“What is TATP, exactly?” Martine asked. “Levi and I never deal with explosives beyond the occasional department-wide briefing.”
“It’s a homemade explosive, easy to make but very unstable. Dangerous to store and transport, because it’s highly sensitive to temperature and friction.”
Levi cocked his head. “Then why risk it? We know Utopia has the resources to afford more stable explosives-C4, or TNT.”
“You can make TATP with common household materials without raising any red flags,” Dominic said. “Plus, it’s a non-nitrogenous compound, so a lot of detection devices don’t pick up on it, including dogs.”
“It can also be used as a detonator as well as a primary explosive,” Denise added. “So they could be planning to use it with a more stable compound.”
Dominic nodded agreement.
“The question is where.” Martine turned to Dominic. “You said you got a look at their potential targets?”
“Yeah, but they came back before I could take any pictures.”
“Still, you’re one of the most observant people I’ve ever met. You must remember what you saw.”
“Some of it. But . . .” Though Dominic wasn’t usually a blusher, heat crept up the back of his neck. “There was a picture of Levi on the board, with a target painted on his face and the words ‘high priority.’ It distracted me, threw me off my game. Most of the rest is a blur.”
Levi rested a hand on his arm, and when Dominic dared to glance at him, he saw no reproach on Levi’s face. No fear, either-but after everything the Seven of Spades had put Levi through, his tolerance for being stalked by homicidal maniacs was pretty high.
Denise put her hands on her hips, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. “This situation needs to be contained immediately. But without legally obtained evidence, we have no grounds on which to enter that house.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Dominic. “They would have burned that place the second I left-not literally, but you know what I mean. By the time you get there, they’ll be long gone.”
Levi squeezed his arm. “We still have to try.”
“You can, if you’re willing to fudge the truth a little.” Dominic sighed as all three of them pinned him with narrowed eyes. Cops. “If you report that you’ve received complaints from neighbors about an acrid chemical smell coming from Carson’s house, and that raccoons got into his garbage and spilled hydrogen peroxide bottles all over his yard, that’ll scream TATP lab with enough certainty to get a search warrant. And I have a legal surveillance camera that’s been documenting everyone who’s gone in and out the front door for almost a week. At the very least, you can round up all of those people for questioning.”