The Desert Standoff

as possible. He doesn’t like admitting that he has ever failed at anything. Never mind that case was one of the more violent of the ones he has been on. He was assigned to a fairly large town, known for its involvement with a drug and human trafficking ring. Known for the way that they kidnap young women and get them addicted to opioids or heroin and then pass them into sex trafficking to the point where they don’t even know the world around them. Nathan was happy to involve himself in bringing down anybody involved with such a horrible profession. Even here in Las Vegas, where he is now, they are known for raking in over a billion dollars in revenue from kidnapped and stolen young women who are forced to sell their bodies against their will. The case that he was assigned to in the past, whenever one of the women was no longer useful or she overdosed, or perhaps one of the men was a little too rough with them and it resulted in their deaths, they were outcast. Not in a normal way of course, but they were dragged out into the desert and left to be found by the authorities at a later time and date. The person that Nathan was contracted to catch at that time in the past was the man in charge of murdering the so-called “useless” women. He was known as “Spade” because of the playing cards that he always left with his victims. For so long, the police would speculate as to whether the numbers on the cards ever meant anything, if the face cards were useful; Nathan figured that the asshole was just burning through a deck of cards at random, and they were always normal cards so that it was impossible to trace their origins. The only significance the police had ever found was that they were all spades in one way or another.
Nathan is watching his mark on this blistering day, sitting in his black car without air conditioning and thinking how miserable it is having to wait for one man to exit a courthouse. He just wants to be able to turn on the car once more and put himself out of his misery. He picks up the newspaper that is resting on the passenger seat of the car and positions himself sideways in the seat so that he can still look over the top of the paper while he is reading. He just cannot sit still any longer.
The headline takes him by surprise. He can scarcely believe it. He’s used to the front page of any newspaper being graphic. Bad news sells, the more horrible the thing is the more likely that people are going to be interested in it. That is just a truth about humanity. So Nathan is prepared to read about whatever looting or kidnapping is the latest, but what he wasn’t ready for was the headline “Ace of Spades” to stick out at him so early in the morning. His present tasks forgotten, Nathan pours over the article like he can’t control himself.
The girl was found out in the pastures behind the old Harmon Dairy
plant’s filtration tanks. While the police are reluctant to release
too many details about the crimes this reporter has learned that
the girl was raped post-mortem with an Ace of Spades playing card
stuffed into her mouth. The station refused to comment on whether
they believe this to be another act of the Spades killer from years
past, though if patterns are to be repeated, we are likely to
find another body within the next fortnight in a similar fashion.
As most will remember about the Spades killer, he is infamous
for his trademark cards left on all of his victims. These young women
have usually been reported as missing or kidnapped,
they can be from all around the States and are imported here through
the rumored sex trafficking underbelly of Vegas. This reporter wants to
know what the police are doing to help these young women.
What efforts are being taken to ensure that our youth are safe and these
types of markets are shut down?
Nathan crumples the paper angrily in his hands, knowing that the reporter is at least correct about one thing, and that’s that there will be another body found soon. No doubt, the girl that is the next intended victim has already been kidnapped and is either already being tortured or will be soon. While the police never had any leads on the Spade killer, Nathan has looked him square in his face. They have faced off; they have dueled, and this time Nathan will win. That much he is sure of. He might have been too new to defeat him before, but now he is an experienced assassin and he is going to make that bastard pay for the evil that he does. Nathan can’t venture to guess as to why he has been in hiding for as long as he has, or perhaps he’s just been worlds more careful. Arrogantly, Nathan had fooled himself into thinking that the wounds he left on the other man resulted in his death. Apparently that wasn’t the case. The man’s reputation was so large that it is highly unlikely that anybody would dare attempt to imitate him. The likelihood of this being a copycat killer is slim to none. Larange isn’t going to get away from him so easily this time.
Nathan knows what he must do. He cannot afford to think about the risks. This is a situation in which he must act first and ask questions second. He is going to have to use the connections he has made over the last handful of years in order to gain access into the seedy underbelly of Las Vegas. The sort of place that he absolutely never wants to be again, but he knows that he is going to