A Chip and a Chair (Seven of Spades, #5)(51)
Dominic glanced beyond the group. The nearest cop was hurrying over, his face tense, his hand hovering over his gun holster. Though Dominic doubted the guy would shoot into a crowd of college students, cops could do stupid things when they were nervous. He might decide to fire a warning shot into the air.
With fuses short and fear running high, a single shot could turn this entire area into a lethal stampede.
As Dominic cast around for another solution, his gaze snagged on one of the coolers behind Natasha. It only had a few water bottles left in it; the rest was half-melted ice.
Moving quickly, he tossed out the remaining bottles and hefted the cooler into his arms. Then he shoved his way through the circle, tipped the cooler sideways, and flung the ice water onto the tussling boys.
They broke apart, yelping and spluttering like hosed-down cats. The other kids fell silent for a couple of seconds before bursting into laughter.
The boys turned on Dominic, scowling, but he was having none of that. “You think you’re the only people here who are scared?” he asked as he lowered the cooler. “Keep your shit together. Or do you want to be the guys known for making this worse for everyone else?”
After a bit of shuffling and mumbling, both boys sheepishly shook their heads. The cop beyond the circle relaxed; a few volunteers came over to separate the boys and disperse the crowd. Dominic returned to Natasha and set the cooler down.
“Sorry,” he said. “That’s probably not a social worker-approved technique.”
She grinned. “Stopping violence without adding to it? I think any social worker could get on board.”
She directed him to the campus security officer who was organizing the dormitory sweeps, and he spent the next couple of hours going from room to room to make sure they were empty. A fair number of reluctant, frightened, or flat-out hostile lingerers had to be escorted out of the buildings and to the parking lot, along with a memorable couple who’d decided today was a great day to trip balls on shrooms.
Dominic kept his ears open while he worked, eavesdropping on every conversation and drawing out every student who was in a chatty mood-because although his desire to help was genuine, it was no accident that he’d ended up on this campus today.
Utopia had been recruiting here. If he could figure out how, and through whom, it might provide a fresh source of intel on the militia’s plans.
College students weren’t a population renowned for their discretion, so it was far from the most challenging task of his career. One name that cropped up over and over again was “Americans United,” a so-called alt-right student organization which most of the kids spoke of with disgust.
When he stole a private moment to look up the group’s official listing on his phone, he learned that it was a young organization. It hadn’t been formed until the prior academic year-which, interestingly, was long before Utopia had made a name for itself. The organization’s mission statement was brief and carefully worded, but reading between the lines, it was clear that “Americans United” meant “White People United.”
The only other information in the listing was a phone number. No names, no website, no meeting places or times.
Try as he might, he couldn’t get any further relevant information out of the evacuees. Either nobody here belonged to Americans United, or they had enough sense to keep their lips zipped.
The sun was beginning to set when Dominic stumbled across a young woman so frightened that she was curled up in bed, sobbing. It took him a while, but he managed to coax her out of the dorm and toward the parking lot. She kept crying inconsolably, however, so instead of having her join the now-dwindling line, he brought her straight to Natasha.
Natasha pulled the young woman aside, handed her tissues and a bottle of water, and spoke to her softly. Within ten seconds, the woman’s tears were reduced to sniffles; ten more, and she was nodding with a tentative smile.
Dominic shook his head in admiration and started back toward the dorms. Each floor had been locked down after being cleared, and there was only one left.
He’d been giving every room a cursory search as he worked, but had yet to find anything incriminating-unless he wanted to rat out Sally Student in 5E for her illicit hot plate. A few rooms into the final hall, however, a piece of paper half-buried on a messy desk caught his eye.
He tugged it out of the pile. It was a flier, nothing fancy, but the aggressive typeface was what had grabbed his attention-a belligerent combination of bolded, underlined, and all-capitalized words, along with way more question marks and exclamations points than were necessary.
Worried about the FUTURE of our COUNTRY??? the flier read. Want to make AMERICA GREAT AGAIN?? Ready to FIGHT for your RIGHTS but don’t know how?!? Join AMERICANS UNITED and BE HEARD!!!
At the bottom of the page, the reader was instructed to call a Bianca Olsen, at a phone number different from the one in the organization’s official listing.
“Jesus Christ,” Dominic muttered. His skin crawled just touching this trash, but he folded it up and slipped it into his pocket.
As he was doing so, his phone vibrated. Seeing the number of Levi’s temporary cell on the screen, he said, “Hey, everything okay?”
“Can you pick me up in North Las Vegas?” Levi’s voice was toneless.
Dominic’s heart made a valiant attempt at leaping up his throat. “What are you doing in North Las Vegas?” God, if there’d been an attack there, after he’d told his family they’d be safe-