Page 48 of Spade

Tempest turned from the wall and faced me, arms at her sides. “You should have called it in,” she said. “To us.”

She was right.

Selene stood. The room’s sound died all the way. She came around the table, boots soft on the bare floor, and stopped two feet from me. Up close, her cheekbone had a vein that pulsed when she was about to go loud. It was moving now.

“You sat across from a detective who could bury you,” she said, “and instead of calling it in, you made a deal.”

Her voice was the blade at my jaw.

“You chose him.”

I said nothing.

Selene’s face didn’t change, but her fists opened, then closed, then opened again. She looked me up and down, as if trying to find a place to hit that would make it all stop hurting. Then she said, “Was he worth it?”

I let my breath out slow. “He had me dead to rights. He could have ended it, but didn’t. That means something.”

Tempest sighed. “It means he wants something. Nobody walks away for free.”

Joker’s voice went flat, razor-edged. “Congratulations, Spade. You got played.”

I turned and met Joker’s eyes. “He could have ended it. He didn’t. He never mentioned the club, not once.”

Aces was shaking her head. “Not yet.”

Glitz’s smile was back, but it was all gums and no teeth. “Spade. Honey. I like you. That’s why I’m telling you—whatever you think you felt out there, it is not worth what it costs the rest of us.”

Nines said, “The exposure is asymmetrical. One man’s conscience is not a guarantee. It’s a variable.”

For a second, it felt like the table would flip, and they’d tear me apart on the floor. But nobody moved.

Selene’s words landed last, and they landed hard.

“Here’s what happens,” she said. “You bring us everything he has on you—every report, every file, every note he’s ever made—or we do it the old way and bury him, you, or both. Those are the options.”

I braced both hands on the back of a chair, knuckles white. I felt the seams of my life tearing in half-inch increments.

“There’s a third option,” I said.

Selene’s mouth quirked. “I’m listening.”

I reached up, unclipped the Sergeant at Arms patch from my jacket, and set it on the table. The Royal Harlots’ colors followed—heavy leather, club crest, my whole adult life stitched on the back, and now face-up on the wood. The overhead bulb made the thread shimmer.

Nobody breathed. Even the slot machines seemed to freeze.

“I’m not asking you to trust him,” I said. “I’m not asking you to like it. But I won’t risk this club. I’m out.”

I took my plain jacket from the chair and slid it over my tattooed arms. I watched the way Selene’s face went from flint to fracture, then to nothing at all.

I walked for the door.

Selene’s voice followed, stripped of all the silk and sugar.

“If you walk out that door, we can’t protect you.”

I stopped, hand on the cold metal of the frame. “I know,” I said.

Then I stepped into the night, and the clubhouse closed behind me like the end of a story.