Chapter 12
Spade
Ineeded to do this one alone, while everyone else was thinking about men being jacked off and women swimming in semen.
I’d been tracking this asshole for months.
The blood was already thickening on the ground by the time I finished killing the man. Just another criminal set free by a system that secretly blamed the victims. Now the system was going to have to find the dick I cut off and tossed down the street drain.
The knife slid back into its sheath with a sound only I seemed to notice—something between a click and a sigh.
I crouched over his body, wiping the blade clean on his shirt, not rushing the job.
Under the nervous tremor of neon, every movement felt staged for an invisible audience: me, the dead, and whatever watched from the far side of midnight.
I didn’t hear Jason at first. The sound of him was lost in the compressor’s thump and the distant, sleepless drag of the Strip.
But I knew he was there—the way prey knows the shadow’s changed.
When I turned, he was already in the open, service weapon leveled on me from twenty feet.
Elbows locked, stance squared. He was a pro, but he had the look of a man just barely holding himself together.
I kept the knife in my left hand, edge out, fingers loose. I didn’t stand up all the way. No sudden moves. The gun was new—a compact model, matte finish, trigger set for a short pull.
“Don’t,” he said. The word was as steady as the muzzle. “I don’t mind shooting an armed woman.”
I stayed down. “You’re a little late.”
He ignored it. “Put the knife on the ground, Spade. We need to do this the smart way.”
I weighed it, then slid the blade out in front of me. “It’s just a tool.”
“I know what you do with your tools.” He edged closer, keeping the barrel high.
“Congratulations.” I looked past him, toward the alley’s open mouth. “You going to make the arrest, or just watch me finish?”
His jaw worked. For a second, I thought he’d do it—go by the book, cuffs and all. But we both knew the minute he tried, I’d bolt. Or worse.
“Stay where you are,” he said.
I nodded, then rested back on my haunches. I could see his hands now, the little tremor in the knuckle of his trigger finger. He didn’t want to shoot me, but he was more afraid of letting me go.
He looked down at the body, then back at me. “Another one for your collection?”
“Call it pest control,” I said.
His eyes narrowed. “You think you’re making the city better?”
I shrugged. “Cleaner, at least.”
He shook his head like he was trying to wake himself up. “How long?” he asked. “How many since the last time?”
I did the math. “Two this week. Four, if you count the ones that didn’t make the news.”
He said, “You keep track?”
I met his gaze. “Wouldn’t you?”
He took another step, shoes splashing through a thin wash of blood. He flinched, just a tic, then doubled down on his grip. “Why the pattern? Why them?”
I almost laughed. “You know why. Same reason you’re not calling this in right now.”
His cheek twitched. I’d landed something.
“Who was it for you?” I asked. “Sister? Mom? First girlfriend who thought your badge would save her?”
He didn’t answer. The silence grew teeth. The city’s noise faded until all I heard was our breathing, and the thump of my pulse echoing in the bones of my face.
I said, “You want the truth? I do it because nobody else does. Because every time I read about another girl in a dumpster, I want to take a blowtorch to the whole fucking planet.”
His jaw set, hard enough I thought he’d chip enamel.
“And what?” he said. “That makes you a hero?”
“Not a hero.” I gestured at the mess with a flick of my wrist. “Just not a coward.”
He jerked his head toward the body. “You don’t know this guy. You don’t know anything.”
“I know enough,” I said. “I know what he did to the girls in that club. I know the ones he sold to the creeps at the motels off Boulder Highway. I know he liked to leave marks where no one would see until it was too late. You want more?”
He said nothing.
I could see his hands now, both of them. The knuckles on the gun hand were white. The other was clamped tightly to the flashlight, as if he were afraid of dropping it and losing all control.
I said, “You want me to stop, you’re going to have to shoot me.”
He didn’t blink. “Maybe I will.”
I believed him. But not enough to move. “Do it,” I said.
He stepped in, closing the distance to ten feet. The gun never wavered. “Give me a reason.”
“You have plenty.”
“Give me a good one.”
I looked at the body, then back at him. “Because if you shoot, the only person who gives a shit about these girls dies right here with me.”
He exhaled, ragged. The air steamed in the gap between us, mixing with the heat from the exhaust fan overhead.
“Twenty-four,” he said. “That number real?”
“Give or take.”
He weighed it. The badge on his belt was tilted, catching the neon like a target.
“Could’ve been a cop,” he said. “You ever think of that?”
“They don’t recruit my kind. And you have rules to follow, but then so do the judges who let these assholes go.”
He almost smiled. “No, they don’t.”
I stood, slow and careful. My hands stayed empty, knife now on the ground. His aim tracked up to my face, then hesitated.
“What now?” I said. “You going to take me in, parade me through media so you can get your fifteen minutes?
He thought about it. “You go. I clean this up.”
“You’re not going to turn me in?”
He shook his head. “Not tonight.”
I bent, retrieved the knife, and holstered it. I brushed the dirt from my jeans and zipped up the jacket. He lowered the gun—just a little. The threat was still there, but the edge was gone. The city exhaled with us, a shared relief.
I started past him, but he caught my arm. Not rough, but enough to remind me he could snap the wrist if he wanted. I looked at his hand, then at him.
He said, “If I see you again, it goes different.”
I nodded. “I hope so.”
I walked out into the light, letting the street swallow me. Behind me, I heard him kick the trash aside and start the cleanup, his movements angry and exact. I didn’t look back.
Somewhere above, the neon kept buzzing. The city forgot, and reset, and readied itself for the next round.
I made it two blocks before I realized I’d left the tip of my knife blade streaked with someone else’s DNA.
Rookie mistake, or maybe I wanted to get caught after all.
The city was a stitched wound of neon and cheap glass, but there was nowhere to hide the way I stank of copper and adrenaline.
I ducked into another alley—wider, deeper, with a view of an empty parking lot.
The world spun on, high and untouched, above the garbage and blood at ground level.
I lit a cigarette, hands steady enough to piss off anyone waiting for a breakdown. My pulse was regular. My mind a blank slate. But the scrape of shoes on asphalt found me even before the heat of his stare.
Jason Shaw, detective with the badge he wore like a curse, appeared at the mouth of the alley, his coat open, gun gone but not forgotten. He didn’t speak, didn’t posture. Just walked up until the cloud of my smoke and the smell of what I’d done wrapped around him, too.
He watched me finish the drag. He waited until my hands dropped to my sides, then closed the last few feet.
He reached out and touched the scar on my jaw. Gentle, like he was trying to memorize it for an ID lineup. His thumb traced the ridge. His face was a machine: eyes taking in every twitch, every possible tell. I thought maybe he’d snap my neck. Instead, he kissed me.
Not sweet. Not slow. Not a reward or a surrender, just heat and teeth and the taste of nicotine and rage.
I kissed back, lips parted, tongue forcing its way in as if oxygen had become optional.
We hit the brick together. My jacket snagged on rough mortar, my hands finding his belt and yanking it open in one movement.
Jason’s mouth moved to my throat, open and wet, biting down just enough to bruise.
I let him. I liked the way it felt: not possession, not a claim, just the transactional violence of need.
I pulled his shirt out from his waistband, felt the wiry muscle under it, the scar on his ribs that said he’d been shot once and lived to hate the memory.
He pressed into me, harder, the rough denim of his jeans grinding through my own.
My thighs bracketed his, boots on either side of his shoes.
The brick was cold, but the friction was all heat.
He got my fly undone with one hand, the other planted on the wall by my ear.
I had the knife still on my hip, and the hilt dug in as he pressed me harder.
I unzipped him and found him ready, his cock as rigid as his morals used to be.
The air was full of sweat, old piss, and the faint ghost of citrus from the brothel dumpster.
He dragged my jeans down just enough and fucked me there, right against the wall, the first thrust so hard my skull thudded brick.
I smiled into his mouth, let him know I was awake for every moment.
He was rough, silent. We didn’t say each other’s names.
It wasn’t a love story. His palm locked my jaw in place, and the other wrapped my thigh up around his waist. Every time he drove in, the knife sheath jabbed my hip, sharp enough to remind me who I was.
The friction was ugly and good. I let him use me, used him right back.
The neon painted us pink and blue, and the whole thing felt like a crime.
He came quick, a grunt into my hair, fingers gripping the root of my skull like a man holding a live wire. I followed with a hard shudder, a single vowel punched out between my teeth. For a second, the city stopped. The only thing that existed was us—bone, skin, bruises.
He held me there, breathing like he’d sprinted a mile, face buried in my shoulder. I felt him calm, then watched the old cop self reassert. He zipped up, tucked the shirt back, and stood up straight.
I stayed on the wall, pants down, cigarette barely burning in my fingers. I waited.
He said, “This is fucked up.”
I shrugged. “You’re not the first to notice.”
He looked at me, really looked, and I saw the war behind his eyes. Part of him wanted to handcuff me. The other part wanted to take me home and figure out why.
“Tell me you’ll stop,” he said. “Tell me you’ll quit, and I’ll bury every file I have. I’ll make sure nobody ever ties you to any of this. You’ll be clean. Just stop.”
His voice was flat, but the edges were all desperation.
I considered it. I looked past him, down the length of the alley. I looked at my hands—clean, but never for long.
He said, “Spade.”
I said, “Okay.”
He flinched at that, like he wanted to believe it and couldn’t.
He stepped away, hands deep in his pockets, eyes flicking up and down the alley. He’d already decided how the report would read: a cold trail, some evidence lost, witnesses unreliable. A story stitched up tight.
I stood and pulled my pants back into place. The zipper stuck, so I forced it. My hair was a mess. My mouth tasted like blood, but it wasn’t mine.
Jason leaned against the opposite wall and watched me light another cigarette.
“You’re a fucking sociopath,” he said.
“Takes one to know one.”
He smiled, cracked, and felt real for the first time. “You’re not even sorry, are you?”
I shook my head.
He looked at the sky, then at me. “If you do it again—”
“You’ll shoot me,” I finished.
He nodded.
I flicked ash at the ground. “You missed your shot tonight.”
He didn’t argue.
I started walking, headed for the end of the alley, boots splashing through last week’s rain. He didn’t follow, but I knew he was watching. I felt it, all the way to the sidewalk.
I turned once, halfway down the block. He was still there, shadow in the mouth of the alley, a man who’d just made the biggest mistake of his life and couldn’t bring himself to regret it.
I kept walking.
Vegas waited, ugly and perfect and brand new. Of course, I couldn’t stop killing.