Elemental Assassin 02 - Web of Lies (7 page)

“Former assassin,” I corrected. “And let Jonah McAllister send some of Mab’s goons after me. We both know exactly how that would turn out.”

Finn snorted. “Yeah, with their blood on the floor of the restaurant.”

I grinned. “C’mon. You have to admit I do good work.”

“Deadly work, perhaps. You know how I feel about the word
good
.” He shuddered.

Like me, Finnegan Lane was firmly entrenched in the shady side of life, with morals that bent easier than wet grass. Banking regulations, married women, public indecency laws. Finn fucked around with whatever and whomever he could without getting caught. Even when he did, he always found a way to wriggle out of whatever messy love triangle he currently found himself in.

Finn was more slippery than grease on a hot skillet. He preferred to tackle problems in a roundabout way, which usually involved pulling his pants up while he ran away from whatever gun-toting husband was hot on his trail.

Me? I went at my problems straight on—and knife point first. Another reason Fletcher Lane had trained me to be the assassin, and not his son, even though Finn was two years older than me.

Finn held up his empty cup and let out a low whistle between his teeth. A moment later, Sophia came through the double doors that led to the back of the restaurant.

The dwarf clenched a battered silver coffeepot in her stubby fingers. The one she always kept warm for Finn.

Fletcher too, before he’d died. Once again, Sophia wore her usual Goth outfit—black jeans, a black T-shirt, and black boots. Today, dainty silverstone hearts hung from her black leather collar. They clanged and clashed like cymbals as she walked.

“Sophia? Pretty please?” Finn smiled and held out his empty cup.

The Goth dwarf grunted, but the corners of her lips, crimson today, twitched upward into a tiny smile.

Finnegan Lane could charm any woman he set his mind to, and he enjoyed practicing his skills on every female within a twenty-foot radius. Young, old, pretty, toothless.

Didn’t much matter to Finn. He enjoyed playing the part of the old-fashioned, charming, Southern gentleman to whatever audience was handy. Even the gruff, tough Sophia Deveraux wasn’t immune to his ladykiller smile.

Then again, he’d had thirty-two years to wear her down.

Finn batted his green eyes at Sophia while he sipped his fresh cup of coffee. Sophia gave him another minuscule smile, then moved over to the double sink, where she was draining a colander of elbow macaroni to make some salad. Normally, during the lunch hour rush, there wouldn’t be room to move or turn around back here.

Waitresses would be stacked three deep behind the counter, waiting on Sophia and me to cook up their latest order. But it was just the two of us today. I’d sent the rest of the staff home with pay, after it had become apparent I wouldn’t need them to man the Pork Pit.

“What about Owen Grayson?” Finn asked between sips of steaming coffee. “How are you going to cash in that favor?”

Grayson’s visit hadn’t made the newspaper article, but I’d mentioned it to Finn last night when I’d called to tell him about the attempted robbery at the Pork Pit. He’d been more excited about Owen Grayson owing me a favar than the fact Sophia and I had foiled the would-be robbers.

“I’m not,” I said. “ I would have done the exact same thing to Jake McAllister and his friend if a couple of homeless guys had been eating here instead of Eva Grayson. Saving her from getting dead doesn’t change anything for me.”

Finn shook his head. “Gin, Gin, Gin. You really need to learn to take advantage of these golden opportunities when they present themselves to you.”

“And what golden opportunity would that be?”

He gave me a calculating look. “I’ve had dealings with Owen Grayson before. He’s deeply devoted to his sister. Their parents died young, and he raised her himself. A real family guy that way. I imagine you could ask him for the moon right now, and he’d find a way to deliver it.”

“Good thing I don’t want the moon then.”

“But—” Finn started.

“Forget it,” I said. “I’m not asking Owen Grayson for anything. All I want to do is cook Fletcher’s barbecue sauce, run the restaurant, keep my head down, and make sure Jake McAllister gets what’s coming to him.”

“Even with your testimony, the girls’ testimony, it’ll never go to trial,” Finn pointed out. “Jonah McAllister will make sure his boy won’t spend a day in jail, no matter what he has to do to accomplish that feat.”

“And what if I called in that favor Owen Grayson owes me?” I asked. “You know, take advantage of this
golden opportunity
I have? Asked him to help me make the charges stick?”

Finn snorted. “Then you’d be wasting your favor, and you know it. Even if you got Owen Grayson to back you up, Jake McAllister still would never see the inside of a jail cell. Because Jonah works for Mab Monroe. Even somebody like Grayson would think twice about crossing Mab, especially since he has his sister to think about. I imagine Owen would like to be around to help her finish growing up and not die a fiery, torture-filled death at the hands of Mab or one of her giant flunkies.”

“I know. But it’s still a nice thought. The idea of Jake McAllister being somebody’s prison yard bitch gives me the warm fuzzies.”

Finn snorted. “You are deeply disturbed.”

I grinned. “And that’s why you love me.”

Finn snorted again, then batted his eyes at Sophia to get another refill on his chicory coffee. After the dwarf obliged him, Finn stuck his nose in the financial section of the
Ashland Trumpet
. I leaned my elbows on the counter, stared at the newspaper photo of the Pork Pit, and brooded about my unwanted publicity. Maybe the reporter could have a small accident. Something painful, but not immediately lethal—

A shadow fell over me, blocking my light. “Ahem.” A small, polite sound.

I looked up. My lone customer of the day, the girl, stood in front of me. My eyes immediately flicked to the dishes on her table, the way they always did. I liked knowing my customers enjoyed their meals, and there was no better proof of that than an empty plate.

But food still covered the girl’s dishes. She’d barely touched her grilled cheese sandwich, steak-cut fries, and triple chocolate milkshake. A shame, really. Because with Sophia’s sourdough bread, I made the best grilled cheese in Ashland. And the milkshake? Heaven for your taste buds.

The girl cleared her throat again and held out the ticket I’d written her order down on.

“Was there something wrong with your food?” I asked.

“Because it doesn’t look like you ate a lot of it.”

“Oh, it was fine.” She shifted on her feet. “Guess I just wasn’t as hungry as I thought I was.”

I frowned. Everybody got hungry in the Pork Pit. No true Southerner could resist the combination of spices, grease, and artery-clogging fat in the air. But the girl couldn’t be a Yankee. Not with that soft drawl that made her voice ooze like warm preserves. More than likely, she’d thought there was something off about the food, considering no one else had been brave enough to come in and try it today. I’d never met Jonah McAllister, but I already disliked the man.

I rang up her total. “That’ll be $7.97.”

The girl dug through her wallet and handed me a credit card. I raised an eyebrow.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. “I don’t have any cash on me.”

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 breasts, 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.

5

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.