Jennifer Estep: The Spider

I rustled around in the refrigerator, grabbing cold cuts, cheese, and more, before taking everything over to the counter, where a fresh loaf of Sophia’s sourdough bread was waiting. I hummed under my breath as I built my meal. Thin slices of smoked turkey and honey ham; thick slabs of sharp cheddar cheese; sweet, crispy romaine lettuce; a couple of rings of red onion; sliced fresh tomatoes sprinkled with salt and pepper; all of it topped off with a hearty layer of mayonnaise, a dollop of mustard, and another piece of bread. Three minutes later, I had the perfect sandwich.

Too hungry to get a plate, I stood at the counter and sank my teeth into the layers of goodness. The tomatoes were like a bright burst of summer in my mouth, brought out by the creamy mayonnaise. The meats were the ideal blend of smoky and sweet, while the lettuce and onions gave every bite a healthy bit of crunch. I quickly finished that sandwich and made myself another one.

Fletcher entered the kitchen, still dressed in his blue work clothes, although he’d taken the time to wash his hands and face. He wandered over to the counter.

“That looks good.” His stomach rumbled in time with his words.

I gave Fletcher the second sandwich and fixed a third one. He put it on a napkin, poured himself a glass of sweet iced sun tea that I’d made this morning, and carried everything into the den. I thought he might turn on the TV, but the area remained quiet. I stayed in the kitchen, finished my sandwich, and opened the fridge again, wondering what I could whip up for dessert. I had some chocolate chip cookies that I’d baked yesterday. Maybe I’d use them and a pint of fudge ice cream to make some quick and easy ice cream sandwiches—

“Gin,” Fletcher called out. “Come here, please.”

I sighed at the interruption, but I closed the refrigerator and trooped into the den, where he was sitting on the worn plaid sofa. “Yeah?”

He hesitated, then picked up a manila folder from the scarred wooden coffee table and waved it at me.

I perked up, forgetting all about dessert. “What’s that?”

“A job—maybe.”

I sat down on the sofa next to him. “Why is it just a maybe ?”

He shrugged.

Fletcher wasn’t an elemental, so the stones never whispered to him of any potential dangers like they did to me. But more than once, he’d turned down a job because something didn’t feel right to him. And more than once, he’d found out after the fact that he’d been right to refuse it. That the assignment had been some sort of trap or double-cross or that the client was only going to pay half the money and then try to take him out after the job was done. I might have my magic, but Fletcher had his instincts.

He hesitated a moment longer, then handed me the file. “I was going to wait on this. At least until I could check out a few more things, like exactly who the client is and why they want this person dead. But apparently, the client wants to remain as anonymous as I do, because I haven’t been able to find out anything about them so far.”

“How did they make contact?” I asked.

“I answered a rather cryptic newspaper classified ad asking for information about pork prices, followed up by some more pointed conversations through one of my anonymous e-mail accounts.”

Newspaper ads, untraceable e-mails, and throwaway cell phones were some of Fletcher’s standard ways of booking jobs, while the mention of pork prices was one of his codes. Other codes included more tongue-in-cheek references to Wizard of Oz memorabilia, given that the Tin Man was Fletcher’s assassin alias. That way, all he had to do was scan the newspaper every morning to see if someone might want the services of an assassin and then follow up on the info he spied there. Even then, he remained anonymous, and he still screened potential clients as much as possible, in case of setups and traps.

“There was nothing unusual about how the client contacted me, but something still feels a little off.” He shrugged. “But the down payment is already sitting in the bank, and everything else seems legit, so I figured that we might as well talk about it.”

“Who’s the target?”

“Cesar Vaughn. A Stone elemental.”

I frowned. “Why do I know that name?”

“He owns Vaughn Construction,” Fletcher replied. “It’s become a big firm in Ashland in recent years. You’ve probably seen the name on signs at construction sites around the city. Vaughn and his company have put up a lot of the new office buildings downtown.”

I opened the folder. The first item inside was a photo of Cesar Vaughn, taken at some groundbreaking event. He was wearing a business suit, holding a shovel full of dirt, and grinning at the camera. He looked to be younger than Fletcher, maybe fifty or so, with a shock of peppery hair, tan skin, and dark brown eyes. He was beaming in the photo, giving him a proud, pleasant appearance, but I knew how deceiving looks could be.

More photos showed Vaughn at various construction sites. It looked like he was more than a corporate figurehead, given the fact that several of the pictures featured him loading bags onto trucks, driving nails into boards, and even pouring concrete. He seemed happy sweating alongside his crew, and his smiles were even wider in these photos, as if he actually enjoyed the hard, physical labor of building something from the ground up.

One close-up shot showed the logo for Vaughn Construction. The words were simple enough, written in a plain font, although what looked like two thorns curved together to form the V in Vaughn. That must be his business rune. Curious. I would have expected a stack of bricks or something similar for a Stone elemental. I wondered what the thorns represented to Vaughn.

“So what’s he done?”

It was the same question I always asked. Oh, I knew that what we were doing wasn’t right. We were assassins, after all, trained, ruthless killers for hire to anyone who had enough money to meet our asking prices. But the people we took out were usually worse than we were. Someone didn’t pay hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to off their kid’s piano teacher or the barista who made them a lousy cup of coffee. Well, not usually. You had to do something to someone, royally piss them off, be a dangerous threat, or stand in the way of whatever they wanted. That’s when we got called in.

Besides, Fletcher had his own set of rules as an assassin, ones that he’d taught me to live by: no kids, no pets, no torture. So you didn’t get on the Tin Man’s radar by being innocent.

Sometimes I thought that we did everyone a favor by taking out the folks that we did. It didn’t make us the good guys by any stretch of the imagination, but we weren’t the most evil folks around either. Not by a long shot. Not in Ashland.

Fletcher shrugged again. “It could be any number of things. Maybe Vaughn didn’t spread enough bribe money around to the right people, and they’re angry about it. Maybe he took a job that a competitor wanted. Maybe he’s building on someone’s land who wants his project to disappear.”

As with most other businesses in Ashland, there were certain rules when it came to the construction industry. Certain people you had to pay off for everything from building plans to zoning permits to construction materials. Such things helped to keep . . . accidents from happening—to you and yours.

“But I’m guessing that the assignment has something to do with that incident up in Northtown a couple of months ago,” Fletcher continued. “The one at that new shopping center.”

“I remember that. Some enormous third-story stone terrace collapsed at a restaurant on opening night. It was all over the news.”

“Five people died, and a dozen more were injured,” Fletcher said. “They’re still investigating the cause. But guess who built the restaurant and the rest of the shopping center?”