Page 34 of Femme Fatale
Only Tempest moved more slowly than I, surveying the carnage with something like respect. She found a girl collapsed behind the bar, a Beavers regular, tall, thin, and never fully clothed, and pulled her up into a gentle headlock. “You breathing?” she asked, not unkind. The girl wheezed, then coughed out the word, “Destiny,” like it was a confession and not her working name. Tempest nodded and brought her a half-bottle of water from the service station, rubbing her back with massive, careful hands.
I knelt beside the first of the covered bodies and pulled back the towel. Underneath, a prospect. Young, no older than twenty, shaved head and acne scars like she’d never outgrown middle school. Her eyes were still open, staring at the ceiling, and her lips were curled up in a rictus that could have been a smile if you squinted. She’d been shot in the chest, through the cut, and blood had filled up the inside of the leather like a balloon before it burst. I pressed my fingers to her neck, knowing I wouldn’t feel a pulse, and felt the cool slackness of dead skin. Someone had closed her jacket for her, hiding the wound.
The second body was a similar story. This one was a woman as well, a newer prospect I didn’t recognize, but the bullet had gone in behind her ear, execution style. Hands still cuffed in front of her, the plastic tie stained with whatever she’d tried to claw out of the air in her last seconds. I covered her back up. The third was a maybe a worker, probably snatched from the floor during the first round of gunfire. The face was so torn up by the shot that there wasn’t much left, just the side of the skull and a single eyelid that fluttered in the air currents from the busted AC vent.
I stood, feeling the rage start in my calves and spread up like an electrical fire. My hands shook. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood, forced myself to stay present. Despite allthe shit the man had done to me in life, this was the first time I wanted him dead. He’d crossed an unimaginable line.
Selene arrived and walked the steps slow and deliberate. She surveyed the room, taking it in like a general on a battlefield, then moved to the girls first. She knelt, whispered something to the purple-haired girl, then made her way to me.
She stopped beside the bodies, hands on her hips, and said, “How many dead?”
“Three. All prospects. Maybe a worker.” I nodded at the girl cradling her arm. “She’s next if we don’t get her to a hospital.”
Selene didn’t flinch. She just walked over, took out her phone, and started dialing. Her voice was calm, maybe too calm, as she told Glitz to coordinate medical for the survivors and to get a disposal team for the bodies. No police, not yet. Vegas Metro was corrupt, but the Harlots had developed their own way of cleaning up, though this was the first time Selene had actually lost anyone.
Aces looked up from splinting. “Most of these girls are in shock. One or two might be bleeding inside, but I can’t tell without a scan.”
Selene nodded. “Priority is getting the witnesses out and patched.”
Joker circled back, eyes wet, face twisted. “We know who did it. Jack Smalls. Who else has the balls to hit us on our own turf?”
Spade said, “Jack doesn’t do his own dirty work. He pays for hands.”
Joker spat. “Then we kill the hands, and then we take the fucking head.”
Selene didn’t look at me, but I saw her jaw tighten. She was making the calculation: attack or retreat, clean up or escalate. I wanted to reach out, say something, but I didn’t trust my voice.
Nines popped out of the server room. “Camera feeds were wiped at 4:22. But I pulled a backup from the cloud. You want to see?”
Selene shook her head. “Not yet. Get the girls out of here first.” She fixed me with a stare, the kind that had sent men running in other towns. “Zeke. You know your father’s moves better than anyone. Where does he go after this?”
I thought of the old man in his desert fortress, surrounded by yes-men and memories of when he ran this city with a meat cleaver and a smile. I pictured him hearing about the massacre, laughing at the news, waiting for us to hit back so he could finish the job.
“He waits,” I said. “He lets us mourn, then comes to the funeral.”
Joker snapped her blade open, not at anyone, just at the world. “Then we don’t mourn.”
Selene closed her eyes for a second, just long enough to let the pain show, then opened them and set her jaw. “Get the survivors to the clubhouse. Bring the bodies, too. Nobody gets left behind.”
I turned to the prospect under the towel, the one with the rictus smile, and felt something I hadn’t in years—a guilt so raw I almost puked. I’d trained for violence, learned to dish it out, but I never figured I’d be the reason three kids ended up dead on a Monday morning.
As we carried the bodies out to the waiting van, Destiny grabbed my wrist. Her nails dug into the meat, desperate. “Don’t let him do this again,” she said, voice shredded.
I nodded, even though I knew it was a promise I probably couldn’t keep. “I won’t.”
The ride back to the clubhouse was silent except for the sound of Tempest humming, low and steady, as she held Destiny in theback seat. I watched the sunrise tear open the city, the promise of a new day feeling like an insult. The van was hauling our bikes.
When we pulled in, Selene got out first and waited by the door, eyes on the horizon. She didn’t speak as we brought in the wounded and the dead, just stood there, arms crossed, until the last body was inside.
Only then did she say, “Jack Smalls did this. And he’s going to pay.” She looked at each of us, daring anyone to say otherwise. No one did. I wanted to say I’d take care of it, but even I knew that when a woman had her mind set, you didn’t get in the way. My turn would come.
I watched her, knowing that the next move would be all-out war, and that whatever happened, it would be bloody, loud, and final.
Nines set her tablet down. “There’s a delivery every morning at six. Trucks come in from the east. It’s a different company every week, but always the same two drivers. If we can intercept, we could ride the trucks straight through the gate.”
Spade looked up, eyes cold. “I can handle that. It’ll be fun to break something that belongs to Jack for a change.”
Aces nodded, then grinned. “I’ll take care of the bikes. We’ll need extra horsepower to haul the loot.”
