Page 50 of Spade

“She’s not a monster.”

“She is, but she’s a Royal Harlot monster.”

I nodded. She was a parent protecting a child. “We’re on the same team, Selene. I get Spade, and your club gets to both stay out of the news and get fed some important intel.”

Selene nodded. “I knew we could come to an understanding, Shaw.”

She started the engine with a single kick. The headlight cut a white arc across my shins. She didn’t look back as she rolled out, and the sound of the pipes faded fast, chewed up by the city noise rising beyond the block.

I stood there for a minute, maybe more. The wind off the interstate carried the faint reek of diesel and last night’s rain, mixing with the tang of oil and something else—brackish and faintly metallic, like blood wiped off steel hours ago but not quite gone.

I was fucking in love with a Harley-riding serial killer who belonged to a club of killers. I’d put that on my resume right before murderer.

Above the precinct doors, the fluorescent flickered a stuttered Morse code, illuminating nothing except the stains on the cement. I looked at my hand. The keys were still there, teeth biting my palm, half-mooned and white. My face felt blank, but my jaw was wired tight.

I turned and walked in, leaving the lot just as empty as I’d found it.

The inside of the precinct smelled like cheap coffee and old cleaning chemicals, the kind that never quite covered the rot in the pipes. I made it ten feet past the entrance before the morning desk caught me in his crosshairs.

“Shaw,” he said, and just that.

I kept my face set to neutral, like a mirror with nothing behind it. “Yeah.”

He angled his head toward the duty office, where the sergeant was already looming in the doorway. “You’re wanted.”

I walked. Each step felt like it echoed—rubber soles squeaking against scuffed tile, the sound of too many years in a place that sanded you down to bone.

Sergeant Carter was a silhouette in the doorway, not much taller than the jamb itself but built like a sack of cement. She didn’t step aside until I was nearly on top of her.

“In,” she said. I went.

She closed the door behind us, cutting off the hum of the squad room.

“Got a call from NLVPD at 0500,” she said. “Lake Mead, east shore. A woman’s body. No ID, no priors, no missing persons match yet.”

She watched me. I didn’t blink.

“Strangulation, at first look. Ligature marks on the neck. Dumped out past Hemenway,” Carter continued. “Forensics says it’s recent. Less than forty-eight hours. I’m giving it to you.”

The words thudded in my chest like an arrhythmic drumbeat. “I’ll take it,” I said.

Carter arched an eyebrow. “You already have?”

It was a joke, technically. I let the corners of my mouth move a millimeter. “Not my usual fishing spot.”

She didn’t laugh. “Let’s keep it that way.” She handed me a manila folder. I already knew it would be thin, nothing in it that would make the blood slow down in my ears.

“Drive safe,” she said, turning back to her laptop. I took the file, shut the door behind me, and went straight for my desk. My coffee mug had dust on the rim. I didn’t touch it.

The only thing I needed was the car keys, hanging from the hook beside the whiteboard. I took them and walked. No one called after me.

***

The highway out past Henderson was glass-smooth and nearly empty. The sun hadn’t broken over the peaks, but there was enough light to see the contours of the land, all hard angles and scrub brush and sudden, violent drops. I drove with both hands on the wheel, grip so tight my knuckles gleamed.

Every tenth of a mile, the panic would try to surface, and every time I pushed it down: the tarp, the weight of the body, the sick logic of what I’d done. I’d made it look random. I’d put her in a place that devoured secrets. I’d been careful. But then there was Selene, watching from the margins, and the certainty that nothing stayed buried in this town for long.

My phone vibrated—dispatch, ETA request. I thumbed back a single word: enroute.