Chapter 10
Spade
“You sure about this, Boss?” I asked Selene. We’d been sitting in the van silent since we arrived.
“As long as you got your shit and facts straight, then, yeah.” She chambered a round in her Glock. “Who knows, this shit could be our next side hustle.”
I shook my head, not thinking she understood the darkness a person had to have inside to murder the way I did. “This is it,” I said. “After this, I go back to being alone.”
“I’ll consider it,” Selene said.
We were parked half a block down from Starlight, Industrial Road, sweating under the sodium vapor glare.
The brothel squatted like a bunker: windowless, walls caked in desert grime, neon sign bleeding pink cancer into the night.
Above the “Gentlemen’s” in its name, the rusted AC unit dripped steady as an IV onto the scarred blacktop.
Every time I looked at it, I thought of blood thinners.
The clock on the dash said 11:38. The air inside the van tasted stale, like someone had sealed us up for a week and left nothing but the ghosts of bad nights to breathe.
Selene was as calm as ever. That’s why she was president.
She never feared anything. Never let anything rattle her cage. It was always club business with her.
Her cut was zipped, collar up. She had her hands folded in her lap over the Glock, fingers laced, knuckles pale.
I checked my knives again, not because I needed to, but because I liked the ritual. Fixed blade on the hip, lockback in my boot. The way the sheaths rested on denim, the pressure of metal against bone. My hands had stopped shaking years ago, but the habit stayed.
“You ever considered stopping?” Selene asked.
I shook my head. “I wouldn’t know how. People were born to be certain things.” I shrugged and looked into her eyes. “I was born to be a killer.”
Selene smiled.
Across the street, the side door to Starlight glowed faintly green, a bug-zapper halo.
That was the only entrance that mattered.
I’d been watching it for three weeks, logging the rotations: who came out, how long they were gone, what changed when they came back.
Dario and Colt did the runs—money, coke, the rare VIP with a taste for something messier than lap dances.
Inside, the girls they moved weren’t from Vegas.
They were from nowhere, and they never looked up. It all pissed me off to no end.
I put the hand-drawn map on the center console. No details, just lines and X’s. A finger tapped the alley route. “We go in here. Dario always takes his first smoke at twelve. Colt follows at twenty after. The window’s tight.”
Selene’s gaze tracked the green door, then me. “What if they come out together?”
“They don’t. Dario’s a narcissist, and Colt’s scared of him. They don’t even piss in the same hour.”
She nodded, but it was a nervous tic. “You sure there’s no back entrance?”
“There is, but it’s bolted inside. Once they’re out, they’re out for good.”
She tilted her head, studied the map as if it had a code. “We could go through the front.”
“We’re not going through the front.” I watched her for a reaction. “Cameras, witnesses, doormen with memories.”
Selene’s fingers drummed the console, slow and even. She said, “You want me on the door?”
I shrugged. “You’re the president. If you want to do the wet work, I won’t stop you.”
She looked at me sideways, eyes unreadable. “Don’t be a dick, Spade.”
I almost smiled. “Then you hold the door. I’ll take them out clean, and we’ll ghost. Less than seven minutes, start to finish.”
Selene considered that, her thumb working the edge of the map. “You ever kill two at once?”
“Never been necessary. But I’m willing to try.” I smiled, and Selene shook her head.
She didn’t laugh. The silence was thick as tar, but I didn’t mind. That’s the thing about waiting to kill: it never gets easier, but it gets simpler.
“We leave them in the alley?”
“Yeah, this time. The bottom of Lake Mead is getting crowded.
“You think about this a lot,” Selene said.
I said, “I like to finish what I start.”
“How long have you been doing this, Spade? I guess I need to add a serial killer question to the club application.”
I chuckled and strummed my fingers along the steering wheel.
“The first time I killed someone was when I was sixteen. I was walking home from work, and I cut through an alley just like this one. A man stepped from the shadows and grabbed me.” I felt the knife on my hip. “Even back then, I carried a blade.”
“You killed him for grabbing you?” she asked, eyebrows raised.
I shook my head. “I didn’t kill him until he grabbed my tits.”
Across the street, two girls in matching shorts and fake-fur vests took turns smoking under the pink neon light. One looked about sixteen, but the heels made her seem older. I wondered how many times she’d tried to run before she got tired enough to stay.
Selene didn’t look away from them. She said, “You ever worry you’re just making it worse?”
I thought about lying. “No.”
“You could’ve told us before.”
“Would it have changed anything?”
Her mouth pressed flat. “I’d have understood. We’re a sisterhood, and when one of us is going through it, we all are.”
I looked at her hands—steady, strong, the nails manicured but unpainted. Selene could snap a neck if she wanted to, but she didn’t like getting messy. That was why she needed people like me.
She said, “What if they’re armed?”
“They’re always armed. Doesn’t mean they know how to use it.”
Another silence. I glanced at the clock: 11:52. The girls had disappeared, replaced by a stocky bouncer in a windbreaker. I watched his pattern. He never glanced at the alley.
Selene twisted in her seat, cracked her neck, then settled back. “You ever fuck someone you were going to kill?” she asked, not even trying to sound curious.
I thought about a kill last week, the taste of fear and iron, the way that man had begged before I cut him. “No. But sometimes it’s close.”
She smiled, thin as a razor. “You’re honest. That’s why I like you.”
I almost believed her.
The van’s heater ticked and clanged, fighting the desert chill. The windshield was fogging at the corners. I reached into the glove box, pulled out a strip of nicotine gum, and popped it between my teeth. Selene’s eyes followed the motion.
“That detective isn’t going to go away." She turned in her seat. “The club has your back, Spade, but we need to keep our shit clean. We don’t get caught. We don’t draw attention. As long as we do those two things, you’ve got the freedom to keep doing you.”
“Nothing changes? You get your club. I keep my hands busy.”
She reached across the console, tapped her nail against the alley on the map. “We do it your way.”
“It’s the only way.”
She pulled her hand back, flexed it once, and said, “Promise me you won’t fuck up.”
I didn’t promise, but I nodded.
We waited. The minutes stretched, elastic and mean.
Outside, the world stayed indifferent: streetlights buzzed, semis rattled down the block, somebody screamed in a way that sounded like laughter and then wasn’t.
I watched the alley mouth, the spill of sodium light over cracked concrete, the sliver of shadow behind the dumpster.
11:59. I reached under the seat for the balaclava, stretched it out, then let it snap back into my palm. Selene shifted her hips, ready for movement. I could see her breath now, pale in the van’s old light.
“Time,” I said.
She reached for her own mask—black, sleek, probably cost five times what mine did.
I loaded the mag into the compact nine and set the safety. It was a backup. I didn’t plan on needing it.
Selene’s phone vibrated in her pocket. She checked it, a quick glance, then tucked it away. “Joker wants to know if we need a cleanup crew.”
I shook my head. “Only if it goes bad.”
“Don’t let it go bad,” she said, and it was almost tender.
I smiled. “You’re the boss.”
She held my gaze. “Don’t ever fucking forget it.”
We sat in the stillness, hands in our laps, faces lit by the dying neon. On the street, the world kept turning, oblivious to the fact that in four minutes, two men were already dead.
I could feel my pulse, slow and regular, like the tick of a metronome.
Selene exhaled, long and silent. “Ready?”
“Always.”
The clock struck midnight.
The world outside the van was cold enough to numb the edges of your fingers.
I zipped my jacket, checked the alley, and kept low, my boots landing soundless in old puddles.
The moon was just a rumor behind the city clouds, and the only light came from that radioactive Starlight sign, pink and nervous as a prom queen.
At the mouth of the alley, I stopped and waited.
Selene hung back, hands in pockets, head tilted like she was already building the story she’d tell the club if this went sideways. I could hear her breathing, slow and tight, like she was trying to shrink herself down to the size of a bullet.
12:04, right on schedule. The side door opened with a hiss, and Dario stepped out.
I’d seen him a dozen times, always the same: hunched in that club-logo bomber, jaw working on a toothpick, never looking where he was going.
The canvas bag hung off his left shoulder.
Phone in his right hand, thumb dancing on the screen.
He didn’t see me. He didn’t see anything.
He cleared the door, turned to his left, and walked straight past the dumpster.
I let him get three steps into the choke point, then I moved.
The alley walls did most of the work—funneled him into my arm.
I looped the wire around his windpipe, hooked my wrist, and felt the bones shift as he tried to yell.
The knife was already in my hand. I buried it under his ribs, angling up, sharp and quick.
The way he jerked told me I’d hit the mark.
The phone hit asphalt, screen cracking on impact.
The canvas bag swung and bounced against my hip.