Web of Lies (Page 16)

Either way, nobody would think it had been a planned hit. The best assassinations were always the ones that looked like something else. A nice, neat, easy plan all the way around.

Maybe the assassin had been following the girl, looking for just such an opportunity. Maybe he’d known she was coming to the Pork Pit today to eat lunch and ask about somebody named the Tin Man. Either way, when she’d gone into the restaurant, he’d decided to make sure that she never came out again. It would have been easy for him to slip into the building unseen, find the empty apartment, and jimmy the lock. All he would have ahd to do after that was wait for the right moment, the right angle, and then pull the trigger.

I stared at the cracked storefront of the Pork Pit. He would have hit her too – four kill shots clustered in her chest.

If the restaurant didn’t have bulletproof windows.

No, this didn’t have anything to do with Jake McAllister and me. The girl – it was all about the girl. Somebody wanted her dead.

As I stood there brooding, the front door of the restaurant opened. Violet stepped outside and hurried away.

"Fuck," I snarled and sprinted from the apartment.

The assassin was long gone, so I didn’t bother reaching for my Stone magic to harden my skin again. Besides, he wasn’t after me anyway. Instead, I ran down the stairs and out of the apartment building. I hung a left and sprinted down the block in the direction the girl had gone.

She must have been power walking because she was already a full block ahead of me. She raised her arm, and a cab slid to a stop at the curb in front of her.

"Hey, you!" I yelled. "Stop!"

The girl paid no attention to me. I was too far away for my voice to carry over the traffic on the street. Even if she had heard my cry, she probably wouldn’t have thought it was directed at her. Hey, you wasn’t the most personal of greetings. So I picked up my pace, running at a full sprint. If the street had been empty, I might have reached her. But every five steps, I had to duck right or left to avoid someone talking on their cell phone.

I reached the end of my block. On the corner across from me, the girl had settled into the cab. I stepped out onto the street, my eyes fixed on the bright yellow vehicle –

Beep! Beep!

And abruptly stepped back as a car horn blared out. A second later, a minivan zoomed by, running the red light.

The driver shot me a dirty look.

"Red means stop, you twit!" I screamed.

She didn’t see me flip her off. Too busy nattering away on her cell phone to do something safe, like pay attention to pedestrians and traffic signals. And she’d cost me any chance I’d had of catching the girl. Up ahead, the cab had already pulled out into traffic. Five seconds later, it turned right, disappearing from sight.

Gone. The girl was gone.

And I had no idea where she went or more importantly, why someone had tried to kill her.

I stood there a moment, cursing my own stupidity. I should have known the second the girl asked for the Tin Man that something was seriously wrong. That it wasn’t just a fluke or an accident or dumb luck. That trouble had just walked into the Pork Pit.

Trouble that had gotten away from me.

"Fuck," I snarled again before turning and heading back to the restaurant.

I tucked my knives up my sleeves and slowly, calmly, quietly strolled the block and a half back to the Pork Pit.

No need to draw any more attention to myself today. If I kept this up, somebody might call the police and report a crazy woman. Not too long ago, I’d spent several days in Ashland Asylum on one of my jobs. I had no desire to pay the facility a return visit.

A couple minutes later, I stepped into the Pork Pit.

Sophia was adding some red pepper and paprika to her macaroni salad. Finn sat on his usual stool, sipping another cup of chicory coffee and reading the rest of the financial section.

"Problems?" he quipped.

I gave him a sour glare.

"I only ask because a) you’re not smiling and covered in someone else’s blood, and b) I saw you run out of the building across the street like there were a pack of hungry vampires after you," Finn said. "I take it Jake McAllister managed to allude you?"

I shook my head. "It wasn’t McAllister. The shooter wasn’t even gunning for me. He was aiming at the girl."

I filled Finn and Sophia in on my theory about the shooter being a pro and my conclusion his target had been the girl, not me.

Finn let out a low whistle. "Someone hired an assassin to take out the girl? She must have really pissed somebody off."

"Mmm-hmm." Behind the counter, Sophia grunted her agreement.

"I don’t care who she’s pissed off right now," I snapped. "I just need to find her before the assassin decides to make another run at her."

"Why?" Finn asked. "It’s her problem, not yours."

I stared at him. "Because she comes in here asking about the Tin Man, asking about Fletcher, and a minute later, somebody’s shooting at her. I want to know why. Why she came here, what her connection to Fletcher is, all of it."

Mainly, I wanted to make sure there was no way her almost or future murder was going to get laid on my doorstep or on Finn or the Deveraux sisters. Covering myself had been one of the first things Fletcher Lane had taught me.

"Now, what happened after I left? Did she say anything, do anything?"

Finn shook his head. "No. She sat there a minute getting her breath back; then she got up and left."

My gray eyes narrowed. "And you didn’t try to stop her?"

Finn shrugged. "I figured as long as she wasn’t screaming and calling the cops, it was all right. We both thought it was Jake McAllister shooting at you, not somebody else gunning for her."

I bit back another curse. Finn was right. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. Still, I needed some answers, and the girl was the only one who could give them to me. But she was miles away by now. So how could I track her down? I thought for a second, then went over to the counter.

"Uh-oh," Finn muttered. "I know that look."

"What look?" I asked, lifting up the cash register.

"That look. The one that makes you resemble a hibernating bear someone just poked with a sharp stick. The look that says you’re not going to let this go, even though it’s not your problem."

I put my hand over my heart and batted my lashes at him. "You know me all too well."

"But how are you going to find her?" Finn asked. "She didn’t exactly leave you a personal dossier."

My fingers probed the dark space under the cash register.

There it was. I pulled out a scrap of paper from beneath the register. The girl’s credit card receipt from lunch. The one with her name on it. Violet Fox. Not as good as a dossier, but it was a place to start.