Page 40 of Spade

I almost laughed at that. “He knows everything,” I said. “All the names. He’s got the story, but he’s sitting on it.”

“Why?” Jenna leaned forward, too.

“I think he wants to see what I’ll do next,” I said, and I felt the truth of it settle in my bones. “Like maybe he wants me to keep going.”

“That’s fucked,” she said, admiration and worry fighting in her voice.

I nodded.

We sat in the long pause that followed, neither of us sure who would break it. Outside, a motorcycle started up, the engine echoing against the low ceiling of the parking structure. Jenna’s gaze flicked toward the window, then back to me.

“You want a ride?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

She stood, stretching out every vertebra one at a time. She zipped her vest up over her chest, made a big show of tucking her phone away. “You still have my number?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll call?”

I didn’t answer. We both knew I wouldn’t.

She crossed to the door, walked past without touching me. At the threshold, she paused, hand on the knob. “If he comes for you, don’t let him do it quiet,” she said. “Go loud. Go with style.”

“I’ll try,” I said.

She flashed a lopsided grin, then put her hand on the door frame. “You told your therapist I wasn’t around anymore, didn’t you. Said I had some comfy tech job in Seattle or some shit.”

“There’s a storm coming, Jenna, and there’s not one fucking thing I can do about it. It’s not me who needs to decide which team to be on. You’re gonna have to make that call sooner rather than later.”

“I’m a Queen for life, big sister. I don’t know any other way.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I really am.”

“Love you, Spade.” She made a heart sign with her hands, and I made one back. She left without another word. Roux had been talking about Jenna.

I sighed and thought about my next victim, a man in his forties, a massage therapist who was a bit too handsy with clients. So far, he’d managed to lie his way out of jail.

That was the part they never understood: the doing was easy. It was the stopping that took work.

16

Shaw/Spade

When I knocked, my handprint stayed on the wood, damp from the air outside or maybe from the Lake, hard to say. The corridor was cheap hotel beige, the kind of rental that didn’t care if you passed out in the stairwell as long as you didn’t bleed on the fire doors. My cuffs were still wet, my left shoe tracked with a diagonal stripe of dried mud that I’d noticed in the truck and decided to let ride. I knocked once more—one of those knocks that pretends to be casual and is anything but—and heard the chain unfasten from the other side.

Spade opened the door in a tank top and the same jeans she’d had on at the clubhouse, no sign she’d bothered to change for the day or for me. Her hair was down and still damp, and it caught the light in a way that made her look both younger and more dangerous, though I doubted either was intentional. She didn’t scan me so much as take inventory, eyes pausing on my shoes, then the cuffs, then my face. There was a slice of fresh tape on her knuckle; the blood underneath had already turned the bandage dark.

“You going to let me in or stand there staring?” I asked.

“Well, you came all this way.”

“We need to talk, Spade.” I leaned against the door jamb. “The more you share, the less trouble you’re in.”

“That really makes me want to invite you inside.” She crossed her arms. “I think you owe a resounding thank you.”

“What the fuck for? I could have sent you away for life.”