A Chip and a Chair (Seven of Spades, #5)(40)

Levi and Dominic broke apart to face a uniformed officer. Recognition flickered through her eyes when she saw Levi’s face, but all she did was gesture to a man on the ground whose legs were trapped by the trunk of a fallen palm tree.

“Think you guys can help me shift this?” she asked.

They nodded and took up places around the tree. As they crouched, the officer’s radio squawked. Levi had left his own unit in his car, but he heard Dispatch coming through loud and clear.

“Shots fired, 577 Rivendell Ave . . .”

That was going to have to wait. Levi gripped the tree and helped heave it off the man, who shrieked and then passed out as the weight of the trunk came off his legs. The bark scored deep cuts into Levi’s palms, but that was a drop in the bucket at this point.

The officer’s radio went off again. “Shots fired, 21 Weatherstone Drive . . .”

Levi frowned, as did Dominic. The officer knelt to check the man’s pulse.

“Shots fired, 2021 Revere Street . . .”

Levi snatched the radio off the officer’s belt, ignoring her startled cry, and held it to his ear. The reports came in one after the other.

Shots fired. Shots fired. Shots fired.

All of them from different addresses, coming from every direction in the Valley, and horror turned Levi’s muscles to water as he understood.

Dominic’s arms closed around Levi before he could collapse. Levi clung to him, gasping, his vision graying out.

“Oh my God,” he moaned. “The explosion was just a distraction.”





“Can’t you give him something to calm him down?” Dominic asked the paramedic.

“Not without his consent, unless he’s a danger to himself or others.”

Dominic gave her an incredulous look as he fought to keep a struggling, ranting Levi on a flimsy cot without grabbing Levi’s burned arms. Levi was always a danger to himself. Case in point: Rushing headlong into a situation he knew had a good chance of blowing him to smithereens.

After they’d heard those reports on the officer’s radio, Dominic had needed to forcibly carry Levi away from the scene, all the way to the triage areas being established by the additional EMS units arriving every minute. One glance of recognition had earned Levi immediate medical attention despite his relatively non-critical injuries, but he’d been fighting tooth and nail every second.

“I have to go back!” Levi squirmed beneath Dominic’s hands. “I have to help, I need to find out what’s going on-”

“You need to have your injuries looked at.”

“No!” With one quick serpentine movement, Levi freed himself and leapt to his feet.

“Sit your ass down,” Dominic barked.

Levi’s eyes went wide, his mouth clicked shut, and he sat back on the cot like a docile child. The paramedic raised her eyebrows at Dominic before she moved in to examine Levi.

Dominic rubbed a hand over his face. He was still dizzy with his relief at having found Levi alive; the moment he’d witnessed the explosion from two blocks away would be seared into his memory for the rest of his life.

The full horror of the blast and its implications hadn’t sunk in yet. It was like he was watching events unfold in a movie instead of real life, the scope of the disaster so shocking that his brain couldn’t comprehend it. He wanted to check in with his family and Carlos and Jasmine, but the cellular networks were probably overloaded, and he didn’t have any pressing fears for their safety. They all lived miles away from the Strip, and none of them would have had any reason to be here today.

For now, he had to focus on how he could help in the immediate present. And under no fucking circumstances would he acknowledge the gambling cravings gnawing at his brain like trapped, frantic rats.

He cleaned and disinfected his own cut-up hands while the paramedic gave Levi a quick triage assessment. When she was finished, she put a strip of green tape on Levi’s shirt and pulled Dominic aside. “You’re Detective Abrams’s partner, right? Dominic Russo?”

“Yeah.” He was never going to get used to being recognized like this. If it got any worse, it was going to seriously cramp his style as a PI.

“He needs to see a doctor, but his injuries aren’t life-threatening. I’d keep an eye on the acute stress reaction he’s having, though.”

She inclined her head toward Levi, who was sitting motionless on the cot, obviously dissociating-a complete one-eighty from his frenzied state of only minutes before.

“Got it,” said Dominic. “Thanks.”

After she’d wished him luck and moved on to the next injured victim, he returned to the cot. “Levi.”

It took Levi a few seconds to look up. “We need to go back. I have to find out what’s happening.”

“I can’t let you do that, baby,” Dominic said as gently as he could. “I’m sorry.”

“But it’s my fault,” Levi whispered.

Dominic wished he’d misheard, but he knew he hadn’t. “What?”

Tear tracks streaked though the mess of wet grime on Levi’s cheeks. “I was too late. I could have stopped this, and I didn’t. I didn’t figure it out in time.”

“You couldn’t have-”

“I could have forced the men who attacked me to tell me what Utopia was planning. I’ve done it before.”