Desperado #5

A self-proclaimed outlaw king with a taste for gallantry, Daniel Carter Hunter builds an ruthless empire by freeing criminals from jail and enforcing his will across the West with a deadly calling card—the ace of spades. When Hunter sets his sights on marrying Queenie Leroy, a gypsy performer, to cement his reign, his superstitious logic and brutal ambition collide with those determined to stop him. This tale of frontier villainy captures a murderer who fancies himself nobility, draped in courtesy while commanding chaos.

In 1870 Texas, the vicious killer Clay Cottrell—driven mad by a perpetual toothache—leads a gang of outlaws on a brutal rampage of stagecoach robberies and murders across the frontier, betraying allies and leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. When a posse finally corners him and his men at a ranch house, Cottrell must decide whether to face the noose or risk everything in a desperate escape. A ruthless portrait of a man whose cruelty matches only his capacity for self-preservation.

In 1882 Utah Territory, the infamous outlaw Bat Slater—a brutal killer with 24 notches on his gun and a reputation for ambushing lawmen—escapes his mountain stronghold and must evade the forces closing in on him from all sides. On the run and wounded, Slater disguises himself and boards a riverboat heading toward Great Salt Lake, unaware that one of his fellow passengers carries a deeply personal reason to see him caught. As the law and vengeance converge, the killer finally faces a reckoning he never saw coming.