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.