Stitts took a deep breath and collected himself. He couldn’t imagine the horror, the helplessness this man and the others at the concert must have felt.
“But why… why won’t anyone talk to you? What you did… that was heroic.”
Greg averted his gaze.
“One of the other officers saw me, in with the panic, he thought I was just running from the scene. He thought that I pushed my partner out of the way to save myself, and it cost him his life.”
Stitts finally understood why everyone at the LVMPD hated Greg so much and why he was confined to the station. Not only did they consider him a coward and untrustworthy, but they thought him a liability as well.
“And why haven’t you told anyone this?” Stitts asked.
Greg shrugged.
“I didn’t want to dishonor my partner’s memory. Despite what he did, he was a good man and a good cop. He just had a baby… and as a father myself, I couldn’t imagine growing up with people saying things about him, calling him a coward.”
“But even after… after they shunned you?” Stitts asked. He didn’t care for the word ‘shunned’, but couldn’t come up with anything more appropriate in the moment.
“My family understands… they know me, and even though they don’t know the whole story, they know that I wouldn’t run. But my partner’s daughter… she’s just a baby. If I told people what really happened, she would grow up thinking that her dad was something he wasn’t. It’s bad enough that she lost her dad, but to lose her dad and everyone call him a coward? That would be worse. Much worse.”
Silence fell over the vehicle for several minutes before Greg spoke up again.
“If you want to let Sgt. Theodore know what’s going… tell him that you think there’s a bomb at the arena… I think that it would be better coming from you,” he said.
Stitts thought back to his last encounter with the sergeant, the man’s smug expression and his mock wave.
“Yeah, I’m not so sure about that.”
Chapter 54
There was no way that Chase could find Mike Hartman in the procession of thousands of rowdy fans as they walked from the strip toward the arena.
And yet she did.
She spotted the Timex watch first and then recognized the man’s shape next. At some point since the first massacre, he had died his hair blond and was now wearing an over-sized Golden Knights jersey, but she knew it was him.
Chase weaved her way through the crowd, trying to make it to Mike who was roughly fifty or so people ahead of her. Progress was difficult, as everyone was shouting some sort of annoying chant or banging on drums, and wagging foam fingers kept obscuring her vision.
“Get out of my way!” she shouted. “Get the hell out of my way!”
Chase elbowed several people in the ribs, and when they bent protectively, she slipped by them. Her movements became less subtle as the pace of the crowd picked up until she was simply resorting to pushing or shoving her way through.
“Hey lady, wait your turn!” A man shouted as she passed.
Her aggressive nature paid off; in less than ten minutes, she made it to Mike. Trying not to draw any additional attention to herself, Chase slipped her hand onto the butt of her revolver tucked beneath her jacket. With her other hand, she grabbed the man’s shoulder and pulled, only this time she wasn’t trying to make it through, but spin him around.
As he turned, Chase began to pull the revolver out and then stopped suddenly.
“Go Knights go!” the man shouted in her face.
Chase stumbled backward. The man had eyes that were close-set, a narrow nose, and a large space between his two front teeth.
It wasn’t Mike Hartman. It wasn’t even close to Mike Hartman.
Chase swore and shoved by the man, trying to make her way to the front of the procession.
As she hurried, her eyes were focused on hands and wrists, trying to pick out the Timex.
Chase knew that Mike was here somewhere; she just knew it.
He had to be.
And if he was here, and if she touched him… well, it wouldn’t be like the bartender back on the seventh floor of The Emerald. She hadn’t seen anything then because that man wasn’t involved in the shooting. He’d been a corpse that Mike and his crew had stolen from the morgue; he had nothing to tell her. But if she grabbed Mike, she’d see the way she’d seen when Frank Carruthers had grasped her arm in Chicago.
Chase hadn’t lost her touch, she just hadn’t touched the right man.
“Get out of the way!” she shouted, all elbows and knees now.
Her goal had changed; it wasn’t to find Mike Hartman, something that was close to impossible, she realized, but to get to the arena. Chase imagined that Stitts was trying to convince Sgt. Theodore to postpone the game, to cordon off the arena, but was skeptical of his success.
She was nearly running now, elbowing people as she passed, desperate to get by. In the distance, the arena loomed large, a swooping, sand-colored structure.
One-hundred yards, eighty, sixty.
When Chase was less than forty yards from the entrance, the line simply stopped moving. She tried to shove her way through as she had done for most of the procession, but here the crowd was too thick.
By staying low, her small frame finally an asset, Chase managed to weave to the outside of the line and glanced toward the arena. The front of the line seemed to be logged jammed at the security checkpoint.
Chase had no idea how Mike was planning on getting the bomb into the arena, but based on her experience with Sgt. Theodore, she was putting no faith in the arena rent-a-cops.
“Let me through! FBI!”
Her words were soaked up by the ubiquitous Go Knights Go chant.
Frustrated, Chase leaned out once more and something caught her eye.
Everyone seemed to be either stopped or in the process of making their way through the security gates except for one person. And while he was too far away to see if he was wearing a watch, the man was sporting a Knights jersey that was bulky — awkwardly so. His middle was much thicker than the spindly legs coming out of his khaki shorts.
Chase couldn’t be certain that it was him, but she was at her wit’s end. In one day, she’d seen people she played cards with over the course of several hours mowed down in a hail of bullets. She had once again treated Stitts like a piece of shit, and she’d cried with a woman who’d lost her husband, which had led her son to murder. The last thing she wanted was for anybody else to die today.
An image of the pills that she had swallowed back it Grassroots flashed in her mind then, as did the face of the woman who had saved her. Louisa, who claimed that they had something in common, and the same woman that Chase had punched in the face and broken her nose, had saved her life. The woman owed her nothing, and yet she hadn’t hesitated when it came to saving Chase.
And Chase was beginning to think that it was for a reason. She wasn’t big on faith, karma, grace, a calling or anything like that, but the fact was, she was alive because of Luisa. If she failed now, if anybody else died, that would be on her. Because if she had taken her own life back at Grassroots, then maybe Stitts would have teamed up with a different agent, a better one, one who wasn’t as fucked up as she, one who could have stopped this craziness before it got really bad.
Without realizing it, Chase’s hand found its way back into her coat again. This time when she felt the butt of her gun, she didn’t hesitate.
She pulled it out and pointed it to the sky.
“Everybody down!” Chase shouted at the top of her lungs. “Everybody, get down!”
Then she squeezed off a round.
Chapter 55
When at long last there was a break in the procession of people, it transitioned into a procession of cars. Even though Stitts had bullied his way to the front, there was still a glut of vehicles trying to make it into the parking lot. Unsure of what to do next, he looked to Greg in the backseat.
“This is nuts,”
he said. “Someone’s about to blow up the arena, and we’re stuck in traffic. Do you think you can—”
Stitts stopped midsentence. His gaze had drifted back to the crowd of people and he found himself staring at a petite woman off to one side who was facing the arena.
“Chase? What the hell? What—no! No!”
As he watched, Chase pulled out her service pistol and aimed upward.
“What are you—”
The drumroll was punctuated by the sound of a gun report. Even though it was only marginally louder than the sound of the crowd — the drums, the chants, the shrill shrieks of expectant joy — people seem to be attuned to it, what with the Village shooting a not too distant memory.
And pandemonium ensued.
Roughly a third of the people closest to Chase immediately dropped to the ground and covered their heads with their hands, while the rest scattered. Most of them ran back toward the strip, correctly assuming that it would be safer there.
In the distance, the police officers and security near the arena entrance started barking orders, but with people running in every direction, it was impossible for them to determine exactly where the shot had come from.
But Stitts knew. He knew because his eyes were locked on Chase as she ran toward the arena.
She was on a collision course with men who were amped up and had weapons drawn, something that he knew from experience wouldn’t end well.
Stitts has no choice but to get out of the car, draw his own weapon and run after her.
Chapter 56
Chase tucked her gun out of sight — not back in the holster, but pressed it against her thigh — just in case some testosterone-ridden officer tried to take her out.
Despite the chaos around her, she somehow managed to keep her eyes locked on the man who was getting through—no, not through, but around the metal detectors and without being searched.
Her plan had backfired; in the confusion, it only made it easier for the man who she was now convinced was Mike Hartman to slip inside the arena.
“Shit,” she swore as she sprinted toward the arena.
As one of the few people moving toward, and not away, from the arena, it wasn’t long before Chase drew the ire of police and security alike.
Several men stepped forward, their pistols drawn.
“Drop the gun!” someone shouted.
Shit.
She hadn’t thought this through. Not at all.
Chase had no choice but to comply and was in the process of raising her arms and shouting that she was FBI when something struck her side and she went down.
Hard.
Chase cried out, but didn’t struggle; she knew that if she struggled, it would only make things worse. Hot breath was suddenly on her ear, and a man was whispering something about how she was going to jail for a long time or something equally as annoying and clichéd.
“I’m FBI,” she grumbled. The officer’s response was to put further pressure on her back and arms. She could feel the man struggling to get the handcuffs on her, but he was so hopped up on testosterone that he was having a hard go of it.
“I’m FBI, for Christ’s sake,” Chase shouted. “Check my coat! My badge is in my coat!”
Once again, her words went unheeded.
Just as the first cuff was slapped on her wrist, she heard someone else shout similar words to the ones she struggled to get out.
“FBI! Let her go!”
In response to the shout, the officer on Chase’s back leaned away from her a little, which gave her just enough room to turn her head. To her surprise, Chase saw Stitts coming toward her with something in his hand. But unlike her, it wasn’t a gun; it was his badge.
“FBI, let her go.”
A different officer took the reins now.
“Stay back. Just stay back.”
“All I have is a badge,” Stitts continued, holding it higher for all to see. “I’m an FBI agent and so is she. Please, just let her up.”
As when Chase had made the claim, no one seemed to give a shit.
“Just stay back,” several officers said in unison.
Chase felt the man on her back apply additional pressure and hook her other wrist in the cuffs. Before she realized what was happening, Chase was hoisted to her feet.
“I told you I was FBI, let me go — I need to get inside. A bomb is going to go off.”
Although the officer didn’t reply, his grip on her arms, raised up the small of her back, relaxed a little.
“All I have is a badge — my gun is tucked in the holster. My name is Jeremy Stitts and the woman you just slapped cuffs on is FBI Special Agent Chase Adams. Call your boss — call Sgt. Theodore, he’ll tell you.”
The officer said something that Chase didn’t pick up, and Stitts reiterated his statement.
She was beginning to regret her decision to draw her gun in a crowd. What in god’s name made her think that that was a good idea?
“Thomas, it’s me,” a new voice shouted, one that Chase also recognized. “It’s Greg Ivory. They’re serious; they’re FBI Agents, and there’s a bomb inside the arena.”
Chapter 57
“I’m not fucking around, Thomas. You know me.”
There was an uncomfortable pause, one that Stitts feared would end with him eating a bullet or having his wrists cuffed. But cooler heads prevailed and before he really knew what was happening, someone grabbed his badge from his hand and inspected it as if it were the original copy of the Declaration of Independence.
The man shrugged.
“Looks good to me,” he said over his shoulder. And with those two words, the temperature of the situation suddenly changed.
The suspicion was off Stitts, and he was able to move freely without fear of being shot. He went directly to the man with the most severe expression on his face, assuming that he was in charge.
“You need to let her go,” Stitts said sternly.
The man, who Stitts had correctly pegged as the one in charge, shook his head.
“I’m keeping her until Sgt. Theodore says so — she fired her pistol into a goddamn crowd.”
Stitts scowled.
“It was a warning shot. There’s a—”
A hand came down on his shoulder, and Stitts whipped around. He relaxed when he saw it was Greg, who gave him a nod.
“Tom, you know me,” he said. “You know that—”
“I know that you got your partner killed,” the man whom Greg had called Tom spat. “That’s what I know.”
Greg hobbled forward on his cane.
“You also know that I don’t play games, Tom. This is no joke. People are in danger.”
There was a short impasse, which was eventually broken by Tom who lowered his gaze and walked over to the man who held Chase by the wrists.
“Let her go,” he instructed.
When the man started to protest, Tom clenched his jaw.
“Let her go,” he repeated, and this time the man obliged and uncuffed Chase.
Stitts expected Chase to come to him, or at the very least to glare at the man who had knocked her roughly to the ground, but she did neither.
Chase’s singular focus was on the arena entrance.
As Tom got on his phone to check with Sgt. Theodore, Stitts saw Chase bend, pick up her pistol, and then slowly sidle toward the arena. Stitts reflexively started after her, but Tom held up a hand, halting his forward progress.
Several seconds later, Tom turned back to Stitts.
“I’m sorry for the misunderstanding, Agent Stitts, and you too, Chase. But Sgt. Theodore said there’s no way that we’re going to shut down the very first playoff game in Las Vegas Golden Knight history. If you need to go inside and check the place out, go right ahead. We’ve got canines on the way, and the bomb squad on call, but without solid intel, the puck will drop at two PM.”
“Solid intel?” Stitts spat back. “I’ve just told you—”
Greg squeezed his shoulder, effectively silencing him, and S
titts took a deep breath. Even though Sgt. Theodore was wavering on his claim that he would offer them no assistance, that they were off the case, Stitts was worried that it wasn’t enough.
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