Page 35 of Spade

“Say the whole thing. Make me believe it.”

She met my eyes, furious and wrecked. “My ass, my cunt, my mouth—they’re all yours to use and ruin. I’m nothing but your hole to fill.”

The words lit something savage. I untied one wrist, flipped her again, and hauled her onto my lap so she faced away. She sank down on my cock, taking it to the root in her ass, and I reached around to shove three fingers into her cunt while my other hand wrapped her throat. She rode me hard, slamming down, the wet sounds obscene. I met every drop with an upward thrust, bruising her hips all over again, until her thighs shook and she started to come.

I didn’t let her finish. I pulled her off, bent her over the pillows, and hammered back into her ass until my vision whited out. Cum flooded her in thick pulses. I stayed buried, grinding deep, marking her inside while she trembled and gasped.

When I finally pulled out, she collapsed forward, wrists still half-tied, ass leaking, skin marked everywhere my hands and teeth had landed. I wiped my cock on her thigh, untied the belt, and dropped it on the floor. She didn’t move. The room smelled like sweat, sex, and the copper tang of the bite on my shoulder. Outside, rain started against the window.

Then, my world turned into a clusterfuck.

I reached up and found her throat. Not rough, not at first—just pressure, the way you’d test a blood vessel for a pulse. I held her there, thumb to the pulse point, and she stared at me, eyes wide, understanding nothing and everything all at once. I squeezed. She brought her hands up, first to my arms, then to my face, and then her nails found my wrists. She dug in, harder, and I kept the pressure steady. Her breath hitched. Then there was no sound at all, just the hush of sheets shifting, the mattress creaking under our combined weight. She went still beneath me, a quiet so total it rang in my ears.

I didn’t let go. Not right away. There was something about the silence, the absence of her, that felt like a clean break. When I finally released her, her head lolled sideways, mouth open, eyes still open, staring at a patch of ceiling that was more shadow than anything else.

I sat on the edge of the bed, sweat cooling on my arms, and looked at my hands. They didn’t tremble. My breath was regular, heartbeat steady. The apartment was silent, the kind of silence that settles after a power outage, and I wondered if anyone in the building had heard. It should have frightened me that I felt nothing, but it didn’t. It felt like proof that I was finally, perfectly empty.

I moved through the apartment with the lights off. The city’s spill bled through the blinds, striping the walls in watery pink and gray. I found the storage closet by memory, not bothering with the hall light, and took down the blue tarp folded neatly on the top shelf. I’d bought it at a hardware store two years ago—heavy gauge, industrial grade, something the guy at the register said could handle roof repairs or hauling debris. I spread it out on the bedroom carpet, smoothing the corners, careful to line it up square. The crinkle of plastic was loud in the hush.

Cara was heavier than I remembered. Not by much, but enough that my back protested when I pulled her from the bed and onto the tarp. Her hair caught on the rough sheet and fanned out, dark against the blue, mouth still open, skin already cooling. I closed her mouth with my thumb and forefinger, the way you’d close a drawer. She made a noise—just air moving, but it startled me. I wrapped her tight, double-folding the edges, and taped it off at the seams, just like I’d seen in the coroner’s training videos.

There was a minute—maybe less—when I sat back on my heels and just looked at her, wondering if I’d missed a step, if I was forgetting some crucial detail that would come back to bite me in the ass in a week or a month. Nothing came. I lifted her, fireman’s carry, and took the service stairs down to the garage. No one saw me. No one ever did.

I popped the trunk and settled her in, making sure the tarp wouldn’t catch in the latch, then closed it with a whisper of metal on metal. I walked back to the apartment, rinsed the blood off my wrists, and changed my shirt. I took the stairs two at a time, out to the car, and started the engine. I left the radio off. I didn’t need anything between me and the drive.

The city peeled away in layers—strip malls, chain-link, little motels that all looked the same under the floodlights. The highway out of Vegas was always empty this time of night, a four-lane deadfall lined with black desert and the glow of distant casinos, each one a failed lighthouse. I drove north, keeping it just under ten over the limit, and let the miles slide under me.

At the Lake Mead turnoff, the sky was still black, no hint of dawn. The access road was gravel, washboarded and rough, the kind of thing no one but a park ranger or a drunk fisherman would bother with. I knew the gate would be open—the padlock never closed, just looped for show—so I swung in and followed the road to the end. The shoreline was low, rocks exposed, water down from the drought. The air was cold and dry, and I could smell the salt from the receded edge.

I’d been here before. Different circumstances, different time of day, but the same spot. Now it was just me, and the only thing on my mind was how light Cara felt on my shoulder compared to the weight in my chest.

I took her to the water’s edge, boots sinking in gravel. The tarp was slick, and she slid down the rocks without a sound. The surface of the lake was glass, not even a ripple. I rolled her in, slow, and watched her sink. The tarp ballooned, took on water, and pulled her under in a single, seamless motion. When the surface closed up, it was as if nothing had ever been there at all.

On the way back up the bank, I saw headlights—two at first, then four. I ducked, flattening myself behind a boulder, one hand pressed to the cold rock to steady my breath. The lights swept the access road but didn’t pause, didn’t search. Just a car, maybe a patrol, maybe nothing at all. I waited until the darkness rolled back in, then climbed the rest of the way, brushing the sand from my hands.

That’s when I heard it: the low whine of a motorcycle, far off but coming closer. The sound was familiar, and it brought the hair up on my arms before my brain caught up. The engine wasn’t a threat, just a presence, a reminder that nothing in this world is ever really unobserved. I kept to the shadows, watching as the bike rolled past the gate and down the main road, engine low and steady, the rider leaning into the curve, dark hair blown back in the wind. A woman’s silhouette, unmistakable. She didn’t look my way, and I didn’t move. I waited until the taillight faded to nothing, then stood up, dusted off my jeans, and made my way to the car.

I slid behind the wheel, hands on the stick, and for a second I just sat there. The file on the passenger seat caught the light—a corner of Spade’s face, pixelated and unreadable. I touched it, just once, then pulled out onto the road and headed for home.

In the rearview, my reflection was there waiting. I watched it the whole way back, face unmoving, eyes unblinking, and for the first time in weeks, I saw myself not as I was but as I’d always been. The city lights came up on the horizon, and the only thing I felt was the gentle pull of inevitability, drawing me forward.

14

Spade

There was a time, not that long ago, when I’d have called the north side of Vegas empty after ten. But the city had metastasized, even out here in the half-abandoned strip malls that lined the old industrial spines. The storefront had no curb appeal. The sign above the door just said “Madame Roux” in gold, flaking off the glass like old skin. The window was a crescent moon, a beveled arc of darkness with no interior lights. The only thing shining was a porch bulb overhead, flickering with the last dregs of a halogen life.

I killed the engine. The street went still, quiet except for the cooling tick of the bike and the sound of plastic wrappers tumbling along the curb. The only other car in the lot was an ancient Taurus, nose-deep in an oil puddle. I counted that as company, or at least a witness.

I ran a finger over the scar on my jaw, got out, and didn’t bother checking the sightlines.

I opened the door and stepped into Madame Roux’s parlor.

The inside was smaller than I remembered. Shelves ran floor to ceiling, sagging under the weight of old glass jars, bundled sage, stacks of tarot decks, and the dry, papery stink of untended plants. Some time in the last year, Roux had replaced the beaded curtain with a velvet one, the color of dried blood. There was no light except for a desk lamp over a banged-up folding table, and the lamp was pointed straight down onto a glass sphere the size of a grapefruit. It looked like a prop from a flea market séance.

She was already there, waiting, seated on a little wooden chair and wearing a bathrobe that might’ve been white once. In the low light, Roux was all angles and long bones, her hands spread on either side of the crystal ball. Every finger had a different ring—turquoise, coin silver, an old wedding band soldered into something obscene.

“Spade,” she said. “Sit.”