I glared at Finnegan Lane, who sat on a stool across from me drinking a cup of chicory coffee. Finnegan looked every bit like the smooth-talking, money-swindling investment banker he was. A fitted gray suit draped over his solid frame, along with a matching wool coat. His starched, tailored sage shirt brightened his eyes, which were the slick green of a soda pop bottle. His walnutcolored hair curled over the collar of his coat. His thick locks had a sexy, stylish, rumpled look that had taken Finn at least ten minutes, two mirrors, and several squirts of product to obtain.
In addition to being my money man, Finnegan Lane was also the son of my mentor, Fletcher. Finn was like a brother to me and one of the few people I trusted since the old man's murder. Finn was also my handler now, for lack of a better word. He didn't like my decision to retire, as it robbed him of his lucrative fifteen percent handling fee, but he understood why I'd done it. That I was honoring Fletcher's wishes. Besides, Finn had plenty of other less-than-legal schemes to keep him busy - when he wasn't out fucking anything in a miniskirt or attending some high-society function and rubbing elbows with his clients who were even more devious, crooked, and dangerous than he was.
"Besides," Finn continued in a matter-of-fact voice.
"You can't kill the reporter. Nobody wants him dead, ergo, there's no one to pay your rather substantial fee. Remember what Dad said - never work for nothing."
Finn took another sip of his coffee. I drew in a breath, letting the rich caffeine fumes fill my lungs. Fletcher had drunk the same chicory coffee when he'd been alive, and the familiar roasted smell comforted me better than a warm hug. Finn was right. I couldn't kill the reporter for doing his job. No matter how much trouble he'd just caused me with his story.
"All right, so I won't kill him," I said. "How about you ruin his credit instead? Call in his mortgage or something?"
"Mortgages," Finn scoffed. "Dime a dozen in this city, penny ante, and not worth the trouble."
He drained the rest of his coffee and stared at me.
"What about the kid, the would-be robber? Did you know he was Jonah McAllister's son when you broke his wrist and threatened to slit him from groin to gills?"
"It wasn't a threat so much as a promise." I shrugged.
"And no. Didn't matter to me who his daddy was then, and it doesn't matter to me now."
Finn swiveled around on his stool and looked at the rest of the restaurant. Just before noon on a Tuesday. Despite the gray clouds and cold, rainy weather outside, I should have had at least twenty customers by now, with more coming in every minute, all eager to get their barbecue fix on, and the phone ringing off the hook with takeout orders. Instead, a lone woman huddled in a booth in the back of the restaurant, out of sight of the storefront windows. A young girl who looked all of eighteen, nineteen, tops.
Nobody else sat at the long counter or in the booths.
Not a single person stood outside staring in through the windows, and no one had called for takeout. Not even my Tuesday regulars. Hell, nobody besides the girl had come in all morning, not even the mailman. He'd just slid the day's bills through the mail slot and scurried on to the next stop on his route as though this were a house of lepers.
"And you wonder why you don't have any customers," Finn murmured. "Jonah McAllister's put the word out that you are persona non grata. And I'm sure the story in the newspaper didn't help matters, either. Nobody wants to eat someplace where they might not have cleaned up the blood yet."
"What does McAllister think he's going to do?" I asked. "He can't keep people away forever. The food's too good. Even if he could, I still wouldn't starve."
"Thanks to my years of wise monetary advice and stellar investing skills," Finn not so humbly stated.
I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, thanks to your skills. If Jonah McAllister thinks a couple of days of lousy business are going to intimidate me into dropping the charges against his loser kid, then he needs to think some more."
"Jonah McAllister doesn't know who he's dealing with," Finn replied. "If he knew you were the assassin the Spider, he'd probably just borrow a couple of Mab Monroe's giants to try to kill you before you could testify against his son."
"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.
