Maybe the assassin had been following the girl, looking for just such an opportunity. Maybe he’d known she was coming to the Pork Pit today to eat lunch and ask about somebody named the Tin Man. Either way, when she’d gone into the restaurant, he’d decided to make sure that she never came out again. It would have been easy for him to slip into the building unseen, find the empty apartment, and jimmy the lock. All he would have ahd to do after that was wait for the right moment, the right angle, and then pull the trigger.

I stared at the cracked storefront of the Pork Pit. He would have hit her too—four kill shots clustered in her chest.

If the restaurant didn’t have bulletproof windows.

No, this didn’t have anything to do with Jake McAllister and me. The girl—it was all about the girl. Somebody wanted her dead.

As I stood there brooding, the front door of the restaurant opened. Violet stepped outside and hurried away.

“Fuck,” I snarled and sprinted from the apartment.

———

The assassin was long gone, so I didn’t bother reaching for my Stone magic to harden my skin again. Besides, he wasn’t after me anyway. Instead, I ran down the stairs and out of the apartment building. I hung a left and sprinted down the block in the direction the girl had gone.

She must have been power walking because she was already a full block ahead of me. She raised her arm, and a cab slid to a stop at the curb in front of her.

“Hey, you!” I yelled. “Stop!”

The girl paid no attention to me. I was too far away for my voice to carry over the traffic on the street. Even if she had heard my cry, she probably wouldn’t have thought it was directed at her. Hey, you wasn’t the most personal of greetings. So I picked up my pace, running at a full sprint. If the street had been empty, I might have reached her. But every five steps, I had to duck right or left to avoid someone talking on their cell phone.

I reached the end of my block. On the corner across from me, the girl had settled into the cab. I stepped out onto the street, my eyes fixed on the bright yellow vehicle—

Beep! Beep!

And abruptly stepped back as a car horn blared out. A second later, a minivan zoomed by, running the red light.

The driver shot me a dirty look.

“Red means stop, you twit!” I screamed.