A Chip and a Chair (Seven of Spades, #5)(92)

She stopped in front of Hatfield’s chair. He gazed up at her, his pulse pounding so madly that Levi could see his throat fluttering from five feet away.

“You may be just about the worst person I’ve ever met,” said Natasha.

Hatfield groaned. “I-”

“Shh. I’ll tell you when it’s your turn to talk.” Natasha crouched in front of him, the way she did when speaking with children. “Before you, that honor belonged to five human traffickers from the Slavic Collective. They bought and sold children for sex, and they weren’t above sampling the product themselves. After I killed them, I lost control a little. Mutilated them. Cut out their tongues, gouged out their eyes, chopped off their hands-well, I’m sure you read about it at the time.”

She said that with a self-deprecating smile. Hatfield was breathing harshly through his open mouth, his skin corpse-gray and his entire body trembling. Levi was half concerned that the guy might just drop dead of a heart attack before they got what they needed.

Natasha shifted onto her knees. “There was one thing I didn’t do to those men, though. Something I should have done, maybe, since it would have been more thematic. But it wasn’t something that appealed to me.”

When she rested the edge of her knife against Hatfield’s knee, he all but levitated off the seat in his desperation to escape. The adrenaline of unadulterated fear lent him so much strength that Dominic had to expend visible effort to wrestle him back down and hold him still.

Unfazed, Natasha traced her knife along the inseam of Hatfield’s trousers, then rested the point on his zipper. “After all,” she said, “castration is such an intimate form of mutilation.”

Hatfield’s strangled sob caught in his throat. There was a flutter of movement in Levi’s peripheral vision, and he glanced over to see that Martine had turned her back to them, her posture hunched and tense. He wasn’t sure if she was more upset by Hatfield’s terror, or by watching her erstwhile friend torment a person so gleefully.

“But I’m a social worker.” Natasha’s knife toyed with the placket of Hatfield’s trousers. “I’m always counseling people to broaden their comfort zones and try new things. And who knows? Maybe mutilating you will be more fun if you’re alive to feel it.”

“Jesus Christ,” Hatfield gasped. He shot Levi a frantic, pleading look. “This is insane. Call her off, for God’s sake!”

Levi spread his hands. “What about the past year makes you think I have any control over what the Seven of Spades does?”

With one flick of her knife, Natasha popped the button off Hatfield’s trousers.

Hatfield screamed-a piercing, high-pitched note. Everyone flinched except Natasha.

“The college!” Sweat poured down Hatfield’s face as he tried to curl in on himself. “The control device for the explosives is at UNLV. The Facilities Management building. Please don’t. Please.”

“Are you telling me the truth?” Natasha asked sweetly.

“Yes! I swear. Please stop.”

“If you’re lying, I’m going to come back for you. Let me tell you what I’ll do then.”

Rising to her feet, Natasha leaned over to whisper in Hatfield’s ear. As she spoke, Hatfield began shaking even harder, then gagged and cringed away.

Natasha took a few steps back. “Do you understand me?”

Hatfield nodded speechlessly.

“There’s no way we can get from here to UNLV before the bombs are scheduled to detonate,” Dominic said. He released Hatfield’s sweat-drenched shoulders, grimaced, and wiped his hands on his pants. “We don’t even have a car anymore.”

“I could make it on my bike,” said Leila.

“You’d only be able to take one person with you.”

“Uh, guys?” Carmen said over their earpieces. “I hate to interrupt, but you’ve got Utopia reinforcements arriving in the parking garage. And the cops are closing in as well. You need to get out of there.”

Natasha turned to face Levi. “We could-”

With an animal shriek, Hatfield hurled himself at Natasha and wrested the knife from her loose grip. Holding the knife to her throat, he grabbed her jacket and dragged her backward as Dominic and Martine aimed their guns at him.

“I’ll kill her,” Hatfield snarled. “I’ll kill this psycho bitch.”

Levi’s vision blurred. Instead of a knife in Hatfield’s hand, it was a gun. Hatfield’s face shifted rapidly to Dale Slater’s, to Keith Chapman’s, to Raul Acosta’s. And it was no longer Natasha he held-it was a six-year-old boy. A rookie cop. Stanton.

Rage seized Levi’s body and exploded. Springing forward, he charged Hatfield with no regard for risk, for strategy, for morality. There was only the blinding fury.

And it wanted blood.

He crashed into Hatfield at full speed, bringing them both to the ground. Natasha rolled away, and Levi knocked the knife out of Hatfield’s hand with crazed aggression instead of finesse. Then he punched Hatfield in the face. Punched him again. And again. And when that wasn’t enough, he grabbed Hatfield’s throat and slammed his head against the floor.

He drew back his fist for another blow. A hand caught his wrist.

“Levi,” Dominic said-quietly, not shouting. “If you keep going, you’ll kill him.”