A Chip and a Chair (Seven of Spades, #5)(41)
“Yeah, and it was illegal as fuck.” Dominic crouched in front of Levi and held his hands, which were bandaged now along with his arms. “There is no universe in which you would have been able to stop what happened here today. You just didn’t have enough time. But what you were able to do saved lives.”
Levi made a face.
“Look.” Dominic gestured to the disaster scene, where the chaos was becoming more controlled with each passing minute. “Because you discovered the threat in advance, first responders had already been deployed when the bomb went off. The fire department put out the fires before they could spread to any of the buildings. The paramedics got to people who would have died if they’d been a few minutes later. There were cops here to establish a perimeter right away. None of that would have been possible if you hadn’t warned them in time to pre-position those resources.”
“I . . .” Levi’s brow furrowed as he fell quiet. When he spoke again, he sounded less defeated. “You heard the same reports I did. Shootings all over the Valley, right after the explosion? That wasn’t a coincidence. The bomb was planted to divert emergency resources away from whoever Utopia’s real targets were.” He shifted on the cot, a hint of panic returning to his body language. “I have to know the truth, Dominic. I have to.”
“Okay.” Standing, Dominic scanned their surroundings for anyone he recognized from the LMVPD. He’d decided to just grab any passing cop when he spied Gibbs half-carrying an injured woman to safety. “Hey, Gibbs!” he called after the woman had been handed over to the triage team.
Gibbs turned around, frowning, and did a double-take before hurrying over. “Russo, what are you doing-” His jaw dropped as he caught sight of Levi. “Holy shit, Detective, are you okay?”
“He’s fine,” said Dominic. “Do you know if the city’s Emergency Operations Center has been activated yet?” After a disaster like this, every agency in Las Vegas would be coordinating via the standardized National Incident Management System, so he was confident of the protocol being followed.
“I’ll find out. Give me a minute.” Gibbs pulled his radio off his belt and stepped away.
Levi’s eyes had glazed over again, and Dominic winced at the sight he made. When Dominic had found Levi, he’d been soaking wet, which Dominic assumed from the scene meant he’d jumped in the lagoon around the volcano at some point. The water hadn’t done much to rinse off the dust and dirt caking Levi’s skin, though, just kind of turned it into mud. His curls were bedraggled, and his burned, tattered clothing was stiffening in the hot air.
“Hey.” When Dominic received no response, he brushed Levi’s shoulder, and Levi jerked like he’d been shot. Dominic waited for him to recover before continuing. “We’re going to find out what’s going on, I promise. But we gotta get you cleaned up first, okay?”
Levi stared at him vacantly, which Dominic chose to interpret as agreement.
Once Gibbs had confirmed the EOC’s activation, Dominic walked Levi to where he’d left his truck, and he did what he could with a combination of wet wipes and towels. He left Levi’s clothing alone, however, knowing that Levi would rather his colleagues see him in his own messed-up clothes than borrow Dominic’s hugely oversized ones.
Levi became more alert and oriented as he was put to rights. But now Dominic was having trouble, his brain skipping from memory to memory like a scratched record-crushed and burned and mangled corpses, wailing survivors, the pounding feet of panicked bystanders running for their lives. Even from two blocks away, he could see the smoke distorting the sunset over the Strip, smell the burned flesh of the victims. Or maybe that last one was just his imagination.
Concentrate on your goddamn mission.
Concrete goals and clarity of purpose had always been Dominic’s bulwarks against anxiety. His job was to protect Levi and get him to the EOC. Any thoughts beyond those responsibilities were irrelevant.
The city’s EOC was a fair distance from the Strip, and the snarled traffic created by confused, frightened drivers made the trip even more frustrating. Dominic used his native knowledge of Vegas’s roads to get them there as efficiently as he could. He deliberately didn’t turn on the radio or connect his phone to his mobile hotspot; he couldn’t risk Levi freaking out while they were in a moving vehicle.
At Dominic’s request, Gibbs had radioed Martine to meet them at the EOC, and she was waiting outside the nondescript building when they walked up.
“Oh my God, Levi.” She rushed forward and threw her arms around him, then loosened her hold when he grunted in pain. “You look like shit. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said, returning her hug.
She glanced at Dominic, who was standing behind Levi. Dominic shook his head minutely.
“I’d say I can’t believe you’d go rushing into the Strip when you knew a bomb was about to go off, but that’s exactly the kind of thing you’d do. Thank God you came out alive.” Martine handed them both temporary credentials. “I told everyone you were on your way.”
A terrorist act meant a complex unified command between the various branches of emergency services, with the FBI taking lead. The EOC was bustling with the staff who’d been called into service, but every person they passed took the time to personally thank Levi for his advance warning. Fortunately, Special Agent in Charge Tisdale took them into a private briefing room before Levi got overwhelmed, along with Martine, Denise, and Arthur Bowen, the deputy chief of the LVMPD’s Homeland Security division.