A Chip and a Chair (Seven of Spades, #5)(76)
Natasha stowed the stun gun inside her jacket. “I hate guns anyway. They’re a coward’s weapon.”
“As opposed to drugging someone’s drink and slitting their throat from behind?” Dominic couldn’t help saying.
While Natasha bristled, Levi rested a hand on Dominic’s chest. “Dominic, stop. Please.”
Seeing the profound hurt in Levi’s eyes, Dominic shut his mouth. However betrayed he felt, it couldn’t compare to the devastation that must be crushing Levi, and he wouldn’t do anything to make this ordeal harder on Levi than it already was. He remained silent as he slipped an arm around Levi’s waist to hold him close.
“It would be counterproductive to kill Hatfield, anyway,” Martine said. “He’d have to know where the bomb is, right? If we could isolate him, interrogate him-”
“We might be able to stop it,” Levi finished.
Natasha frowned. “Maybe. But that would mean infiltrating a neo-Nazi stronghold full of armed whackjobs.”
Shaking off the bizarreness of hearing sweet, socially conscious Natasha use such a contemptuous insult, Dominic said, “We’re not equipped for that kind of operation.”
“I could take care of that,” she said. “But I’d need access to my storage unit, and the key is at my house. I can’t go back there.” She gestured to Dominic. “You could, though. Ezra asked you to look for me, right? He knows I have the unit; if you tell him you need to get in there, he’ll give you the key, no problem.”
Dominic scoffed at the mere idea. “I’m not leaving you alone with Levi and Martine.”
“I wouldn’t do anything to hurt them,” she said impatiently.
Levi barked out a harsh laugh that sounded like glass going through a garbage disposal. It was a terrible noise, and Dominic tightened his arm around Levi in response, wishing he could draw out Levi’s pain and take it on himself.
For the first time, remorse flickered across Natasha’s face. She cleared her throat and bit her lip, briefly averting her eyes.
Rohan had been right. Natasha wasn’t a true psychopath, at least not in a classic sense. If she could feel bad about what she’d done to Levi, that meant she could empathize with him to some extent-which meant she wasn’t totally soulless. She was just super fucking messed-up.
She recovered herself and said, “Fine. But Levi can’t go, for obvious reasons. Martine?”
“It would risk someone picking up my trail and following me. Especially if Ezra told anyone why I stopped by, which I wouldn’t be able to warn him not to do.”
“Then we need somebody else,” said Dominic.
“There isn’t anybody else. Even the people we could almost definitely trust not to betray Levi, like Denise or Wen, would never be okay with an extra-legal operation, let alone this.” Martine flapped a hand in Natasha’s direction. “Or they could be followed right to us. What we need is a person Levi’s enemies wouldn’t think to track, who’d keep Levi’s confidence, would be willing to operate outside the bounds of the law, wouldn’t be fazed by working with a serial killer, and could handle themselves if things go sideways. We don’t know anyone like that.”
Dominic and Levi both blinked, looking at each other as they came to the same conclusion.
Levi’s lips quirked. “Yes, we do.”
Despite the tight fit, all five of them squeezed into Natasha’s car. Martine sat in the front passenger seat, her gun aimed unambiguously at Natasha while the latter drove. Dominic sat in the middle of the back-not ideal, given his dimensions, but he needed to be close to both Levi and Rebel.
Although Natasha’s storage unit wasn’t far from the warehouse, the drive was interminable. Martine was seething with a quiet fury that poured off her in waves, her expression so forbidding that Dominic worried she might just shoot Natasha and be done with it. Levi, on the other hand, was slumped against the door, gazing dully out the window like all the life had been sucked out of him.
Dominic could only tolerate that miserable silence for so long before he had to break it. “The Seven of Spades texted me while you and I were having a conversation,” he said to Natasha. “How’d you pull that off?”
“Carmen was the one who texted you.”
Fuck. Of course.
Natasha’s eyes met his in the rearview mirror. “I’d just found out that Stanton had been kidnapped, and it was only a matter of time before the mercenaries would contact Levi. I knew he’d go charging off after Stanton, and if he didn’t have you to rely on, he’d go alone. So I needed you two to reconcile quickly. I didn’t think either of you suspected me, but I figured I might as well use the opportunity for misdirection anyway.”
“You sought me out at the casino and gave me that whole pep talk just so I’d go to Levi before he found out about Stanton?”
“Yes.”
Dominic rocked back, his hand stilling in the act of stroking Rebel’s head. She whined in protest and pushed her face against his fingers.
It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that conversation with Natasha had changed the course of his life. It was what had broken him out of the denial of his relapse, what had driven him in search of Levi so they could hash things out once and for all. To know that entire situation had been engineered with an ulterior motive . . .