Jennifer Estep - Web of Lies

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.