Web of Lies (Page 13)

I glanced at the name on the card. Violet Fox. I swiped the card through the machine and passed the girl the paper slip to sign. Her cursive was a loopy, feminine swirl.

I tucked the slip under the corner of the battered cash register and gave her my standard, y’all-please-come-back smile. "Have a nice day."

Then I went back to the newspaper.

But the girl didn’t move. She just stood there in front of the register, like she wanted something else but didn’t know how to ask for it. I decided to let her squirm for ignoring my grilled cheese sandwich. Ten… twenty…

I ticked off the seconds in my head. Thirty… forty –

"Um, this might sound strange, but is there an old man who works here?" she asked. "Maybe in the back or something?"

Fletcher. She was asking about Fletcher. Not unusual.

The old man and the Pork Pit had been a downtown Ashland institution for more than fifty years. Fletcher Lane had been gone two months now, and people still came in and asked about him. Where he was. How he was doing.

When he was coming back. I stared at the copy of Where the Red Fern Grows that adorned the wall beside the cash register. Fletcher had been reading the book when he’d died, and the old man’s blood had turned the paperback pages a rusty brown.

"No," I said in a quiet voice. "The old man isn’t here anymore."

"Are you sure?" she persisted. "He might… he might call himself something. Tin Man, I think."

Tin Man. That got my attention. Enough to make me palm one of the silverstone knives tucked up my sleeve.

Every assassin has a moniker, a discreet name they go by to ply their services and perhaps give potential customers a clue as to how they operate or off their victims. Tin Man had been Fletcher’s name because he’d never let his heart, his emotions, get in the way of a job. But once he’d taken me under his wing and started training me to be an assassin, the old man had cut back on his own jobs and eventually retired from the business altogether. Nobody had asked for the Tin Man in a long, long time.

Except this girl.

For the first time, I really looked at her. Girl probably wasn’t the right term for her. With her ample br**sts, wide hips, and curved booty, she was a full-grown woman. Still young, though. Eighteen, maybe nineteen. She probably thought she was twenty pounds too heavy, but the extra weight rounded her face and filled out her chest.

Square black glasses gave her a slightly brainy air. Her sandy blond hair was cropped short, and the rain outside had turned it into a mound of frizz. Her dark brown eyes and pecan-colored skin whispered of some Hispanic or maybe even Native American heritage. The Cherokee still inhabited the mountains around Ashland, and more Hispanic folks came to the city every summer to pick strawberries, tomatoes, and other crops. Once the picking season was over, lots of the migrants stayed and put down roots.

I continued my examination. She wore jeans faded from wear, not design, and a heavy black turtleneck sweater that made her eyes seem darker than they were.

Scuffed sneakers, a heavy jacket, some silver hoops in her ears. Nothing on her cost more than fifty bucks. Which didn’t inspire confidence about her even being able to afford an assassin like the Tin Man.

The words Tin Man had also gotten the others’ attention.

Finn peered at the girl over the top of the financial section. Sophia looked up from the celery she’d been chopping for her macaroni salad.

"Tin Man?" I asked. "That’s a funny name."

The girl, Violet, forced out a smile that wilted under my cold gray gaze. "Yeah, that’s what I thought too."

"There’s nobody here by that name. No old man, either."

Not anymore.

Out of sight below the counter, my thumb traced over the hilt of the silverstone knife that I’d palmed. Violet Fox might look about as dangerous as a wet kitten, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t working for someone else. Maybe someone who wanted to hire the mysterious Tin Man.

Someone looking for revenge. Or maybe even the cops.

Didn’t much matter who. If the girl breathed wrong, she was going to die where she stood.

Violet chewed her lower lip. For a moment, I thought she might ask me about Fletcher again. But after a moment, her shoulders drooped in defeat.

"Doesn’t matter," she said in a tired voice. "He couldn’t have helped me anyway. Sorry to bother you."

She turned to go. I glanced at Finn, who shrugged. He didn’t know what to make of it either. Sophia grunted and turned back to her celery.

"He couldn’t have helped you with what?" I called out.

Curiosity. Something the old man had instilled in me over the years. Fletcher Lane had always wanted to know everything about everyone, and he’d taught me to be the same way. Now it was the one emotion that always seemed to get the best of me, no matter how hard I tried to squash it.

The girl, Violet, turned to look at me. "Oh, um, well, it’s sort of personal – "

That’s all she got out before someone started shooting at us.

Chapter Five

A bullet smacked into one of the storefront windows.

The sharp, sudden burst of sound caught the girl’s attention.

Her head snapped toward the front of the restaurant.

"What was that – "

That was all the Violet got out before I darted around the counter and threw myself on top of her, forcing her to the floor.

"Oof!"

We hit the ground hard. I knocked the wind out of the girl, but I didn’t care. Until I figured out what she wanted with the Tin Man, Violet Fox needed to keep breathing.

I didn’t have to worry about Finn. Like me, he knew exactly what that particular sound was and had heard it too many times before to ignore it now. Somehow, he’d already wormed under one of the tables, with several chairs further shielding him. Finnegan Lane had an excellent sense of self-preservation.

Sophia stood by the back counter and kept chopping celery. She didn’t even look up at the crack of the gunshot.

Bullets didn’t worry her. Dwarves were even tougher than giants, and Sophia could take a couple bullets in the back. They’d catch her in hard muscles long before they hit anything vital. Elemental magic was just about the only thing that could quickly penetrate a dwarf ‘s thick skin. And even the majority of that would only make her angry, instead of doing any real damage.

Smack!

Smack! Smack!

Three more bullets slammed into the front of the restaurant.

I looked up, trying to judge where the shots were coming from, but the angle from the floor was all wrong.

I could see the storefront windows, but not who or what lay beyond them.

My eyes flicked to the projectiles. A large caliber, probably a fifty, from the looks of them. And whoever was shooting knew what he was doing. Despite their size, the bullets formed a small, circular cluster about the size of my fist. Kill shots, all of them.