by Martha Carr
“Someone else here, Johnny.”
“Sounds like your least favorite fed.”
Johnny grunted. That could be any of ʼem.
“Oh…it’s the balding one.”
Rex growled and shook his head vigorously. “The one who tastes like ass.”
“Ha. Good one.”
The screen door opened and shut, followed by a brisk knock. “Johnny. It’s Nelson. I have something you want to see, so open up.”
“This is not a good fucking time,” the dwarf muttered as he thrust an extra magazine into his back pocket in case. I ain’t goin’ into this one expectin’ to use it, but Terrance ain’t exactly playin’ by the rules anymore. I might have to join him.
“Johnny?” Tommy Nelson called.
Rex and Luther barked once.
“For chrissakes, Johnny. At least put your dogs out this time.”
“We can go around back, Johnny,” Luther suggested.
“Yeah, and chase him off that way. He’s so dumb, he won’t know where we came from.”
He was too pissed-off and too intent on showing Terrance Glaston that Johnny Walker didn’t fuck around. Not when he sends six fuckers after my kid. The only one I got now.
Lisa pried herself gently out of Amanda’s hold to answer the door for agent Nelson and darted Johnny a confused frown that went completely unnoticed. “Hey, Tommy.”
“Oh. Agent Breyer.” The man cleared his throat. “Johnny here?”
“Yeah, but he’s… I mean…” With a shrug, she closed the door behind him as he walked down the hallway and darted wary glances at the hounds.
“Give the word, Johnny.”
“We’ll send him packin’ for ya.”
“Johnny?” The agent stepped into the workshop where the bounty hunter slipped one black explosive disk after the other onto his belt. His eyes widened. “I came as soon as I could—”
“This is not a good time, Nelson.”
“You’re not exactly gonna like what I have to say, but I thought you’d be even more pissed off if you found out that I’d sat on it for a few days before I brought it to you.”
“Not now.” Johnny growled his annoyance. “Whatever it is can wait.” He finished strapping his belt and pulled his phone out to text Arthur and at least let the man know that Amanda was safe and home in one piece. Physically, at least.
“You were right.” Tommy stepped toward the worktable and slapped a huge, heavy green file folder onto the wooden surface. “The department cleaned Dawn’s file before you saw it. Before either of us saw it. It looks like their agenda for hiding what they did only went so far as the clerk’s bribe limit. Which, by the way, was much higher than I expected.”
The bounty hunter froze. This asshole must have bad timin’ in his goddamn blood.
Slowly, he turned to study the folder. “That’s her file?”
“That’s the one.”
“All of it?”
“As far as I can tell.” The agent folded his arms. “A fair amount is still redacted, but there’s a hell of a lot more than either one of us was shown fifteen years ago.”
“Fuck!” He took one step toward the folder, growled, then spun and stormed into the kitchen.
“It’s not that much of a surprise, is it?” Tommy followed him. “You’re the one who suspected it in the first place. Otherwise, this would’ve stayed buried.”
Johnny snatched up his bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label with one hand and jabbed a thick finger at Agent Nelson with the other. “Any other day, Nelson.”
“What?”
“I got shit to do. Business to take care of. And you bring me this fucking cherry on the bullshit Sunday.”
“I…” The man’s eyes widened when the dwarf lifted the bottle to his mouth and took a massive sip. “That was the deal, Johnny. Your deal. I thought you wanted to see—”
“Not now.” He thrust the corked lid onto the bottle and walked through the kitchen, past agent Nelson, and forced himself to not look at the fifteen-year-old file on his daughter’s murder. He whistled sharply, and both hounds jumped away from sniffing the visitor’s shoes. “It’s time to pay a shit-for-brains businessman a little visit.”
“What?” Tommy gestured in bewilderment. “Johnny, I just got here. You can’t leave without at least—”
“I don’t give a fuck whether or not you’re still here when I get back, Nelson. But try to follow me, and you won’t leave Florida in one piece or twenty.” Johnny jerked the door open and the hounds bounded out after him.
“So what do you want me to do with the file?” The door slammed shut again. Tommy sighed and turned to look at Lisa. “What crawled up his ass? Hey, kid.”
Amanda raised her chin in the semblance of a greeting but stared at the hefty file on Johnny’s worktable.
Lisa extended the to-go caddy toward Agent Nelson with a weak smile. “Coffee?”
Chapter Thirty
Johnny knocked forcefully on the front door of a two-story Victorian in Marco Island. Three weeks ago, I was startin’ my days with a good hunt and complete privacy. Now, it’s this fucking shit.
A muffled thump came from inside before the door unlocked and opened. Wallace stood in boxer briefs and fuzzy sky-blue slippers and gaped sleepily at the bounty hunter on his front doorstep. “What the hell are you doin’ at my house, Johnny?”
“What’d you do with the failed thief I tied up in your shop yesterday?”
The gnome yawned and tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes. “You mean the one you tied up with the chain from a designer handbag?” He snorted. “Not your best work, but I guess you get points for creativity.”
“I told you to put it on my bill. What happened to him?”
Wallace frowned and rubbed his balding head vigorously. “The second I saw his eyes, I knew what he was tryin’ to do and why. We roughed him up a little. That’s all. Had a couple of my boys give him a clear warning and we let him go.”
“Not without a contingency, though, right?”
“Come on, Johnny,” he replied with a smirk. “We’ve known each other too long for you to ask a stupid question like that. And I can see you want it. Come on in. I’ll fetch it for you.”
“I’m good right here, Wallace. But I’d appreciate whatever you have.”
“Yeah, okay. And I’m gonna close the door to keep the bugs out.” The gnome studied him for a long moment, then shut the door and shuffled through his house again in his slippers.
The three minutes it took for him to return felt like three hours. But the door opened again, and the jeweler-cum-magical-scientist handed Johnny a small gray device. “I know yours is better but this gets the job done.”
“Where’d you put the tracker?”
“In his skin.” The gnome grinned. “With a good ol’-fashioned bitch slap.”
“Thanks.” The bounty hunter shook the tracking monitor at his friend and nodded. “I’ll bring it back.”
“Well, if you don’t, I’ll add it to your bill with the rest.”
With a brusque wave of thanks, he scrambled into his Jeep and stared at the device. Rex and Luther panted and their tails thumped against the back seat.
“What’d he give you, Johnny?”
“You need us to sniff the bastard out?”
“Wait, can we trail somebody all the way to Miami?”
“We’ll get to Miami in a while.” Johnny reversed Sheila out of Wallace’s driveway and headed toward the other side of Marco Island. “I gotta pick up a squirmy little package first.”
“Ooh, like some kinda rodent?”
“The smelly ones are always the most fun to chase.”
The dwarf’s grin was closer to a madman’s determined sneer, but Johnny Walker wasn’t crazy. He was simply done playing nice. “Somethin’ like that.”
Ten minutes later, they pulled into a run-down property with overgrown weeds and a sagging chain-link fence around the front yard. The gate hung crookedly on its hinges, and it flew of
f completely to thump onto the dirt yard covered in patches of dry grass when Johnny kicked it open.
“Whose ass are we kicking today, Johnny?” Luther asked.
“Ha. Or biting. We can bite too.”
“Same as the hog, boys.” Johnny drew his knife and flipped it open as he stalked across the yard toward the sunken, rotting steps of the front porch. “We’re takin’ this one in live.”
“You’re gonna feed a guy to that dragon?” Luther asked.
“Draksa, numbnuts.” Rex snorted. “Dragons aren’t real.”
He glanced at his hounds and didn’t bother to correct the misconception. “We’re here to send a message. And then we’ll head to Miami.”
“Yeah, yeah. No problem, Johnny.”
“We’re great at messages.”
The bounty hunter readied himself to break the front door down if he had to, but it was unlocked and already slightly open. He kicked that too and it thunked against the inside wall with a puff of dust.
The thick curtains in front of every window were closed. Low yellow-brown lights cast a sickly pallor in the dusty, smoke-filled entryway. Random articles of clothing were scattered across the floor between empty beer cans and food wrappers. Johnny’s boots left footprints in the layer of dust along the floor. Yeah. He’s usin’, all right.
“Hey, Johnny!” Rex called from the next room. “I think I found something. Someone? I don’t know.”
Luther sniffed the dark pile on the couch. “Ugh. Is he dead?”
He clomped through the house and stopped at the sight of the wanna-be jewelry thief—Terrance Glaston’s idiot son—passed out on the couch with a still-smoking cigarette dangling precariously from his loose lips. A syringe, spoon, and lighter were among the other prized pieces of trash on the coffee table in front of him.
The dwarf closed his knife and returned it to his belt. This’ll be easy.
Johnny leaned toward him and plucked the cigarette from his lips. The drug-addled young man took a sharp breath and mumbled something unintelligible before he sank deeper into the couch as his visitor crushed the cigarette beneath his boot.
He snapped his fingers. “Time to wake up, asshole.”
“Yeah.” Rex barked. “Get your shit together, man.”
Luther barked too but didn’t have anything else to add.
The druggie startled, felt for the cigarette that was no longer between his lips, and frowned. Johnny smacked the side of his head and that did the job.
His eyes snapped open, his pupils barely visible pinpricks even under the low light. “Shit!”
He lurched off the couch and stumbled against the coffee table. The dwarf caught the back of his shirt and hauled him onto the filthy couch again.
“Hey, hey, hey!” Terrance’s son raised both hands and his eyelids drooped despite his panic. “I didn’t take anything, man. I swear. Didn’t hit another shop.”
“But you got your fix.”
“Man…” He looked away and almost fell sideways onto the armrest. “My old man’s got money. Okay? You happy now? I finally took it.”
“Yeah. That makes this even better.” Johnny gave his cheek two brisk pats—not quite smacks, but close enough—and leaned down to look him in the eyes. “Your old man’s fucking with the wrong dwarf. Make sure he knows that.”
The young man sighed and started to nod off again.
“If you even remember any of this.” Rolling his eyes, Johnny grabbed the man’s shirt collar again, hauled him to his feet, and dragged him through the neglected house.
“Woah, Johnny.” Luther sniffed at the drug paraphernalia on the coffee table. “I don’t know what this is, but it smells like—”
Rex nipped at his brother’s face with a snarl. “It smells like you need to stay away from everything in here. What’s wrong with you?”
“Hey. I like to sniff. You know what it is?”
“Let’s go.” Johnny snapped his fingers and both hounds scrabbled after him across the dirty, dusty floors and his stumbling hostage. Before they left, he snatched an empty cardboard box from inside the front door and didn’t bother to close the house behind him.
Terrance Glaston slammed his cell phone on the computer table. These assholes have no idea how close we were.
“What’d they say, boss?” Raul stood two feet behind the High Tide Resorts board chairman, his arms folded and a stupid-looking bandage covering the gash in his forehead.
“It doesn’t matter what they said,” he all but spat. “We lost our fucking angle.”
“Yeah, but the dwarf has a whole new one to deal with now, doesn’t he?” The huge, infuriatingly stupid hired gun guffawed at his not very funny play on words.
“Shut up.” He snapped his fingers and idiot’s laughter lapsed into a low chuckle. “Where is Jerome, anyway? He and his guys should’ve been back from the armpit of Florida by now.”
“It’s a long drive,” Raul suggested with a shrug.
“It’s not that long.” Not nearly as long as driving a speed boat around the coast in the middle of the night. “Call him. Find out where the hell he—”
An explosion wracked the south end of the building, muffled by the layers of cement and plaster, but it still sent a shudder through the room on the third floor.
“What the fuck was that?” Terrance bolted to his feet and whirled toward another of his men who sat with his feet propped on the table holding the security monitors. “Kevin!”
“Shit, boss.” Kevin withdrew his mud-splattered boots from the surface and wheeled back in his chair. “You wanna take a look at this.”
The chairman stormed toward him and peered at the single screen that displayed the backlash of the same explosion. Flames flickered along the edge of the frame, but directly in the center, a scuffed, bright red Jeep raced out of the parking lot outside. In a moment, it was gone.
“Motherfucker.” He headed toward the door to the elevators—fortunately on the north side of the building—and shouted over his shoulder. “Get everyone downstairs! Armed. Whoever’s trying to fuck with us might get sloppy. We won’t take any more chances.”
Raul called it in on the radio, and the hired guns the other High Tide Resorts’ board members knew nothing about left their stations on multiple levels of the building to join their boss in the south parking lot.
When Terrance reached the ground floor and shoved the exit door open, the heat from the explosion almost made him withdraw again. His expression grim, he forced himself out and led the way for the brainless oafs with guns behind him, then stopped at the sound of a muffled groan on his left.
He looked down to where the young man sat propped against the brick wall, his ankles bound and wrists tied behind his back. A dirty black shirt had been stuffed into his mouth and secured around his head as a gag, and a torn piece of cardboard rested on his chest.
“Jesus Christ, Richie.” He knelt in front of his son, who’s eyes widened and drooped closed again, although he seemed to want to open them as they twitched repeatedly. With a muttered oath, he studied the piece of cardboard.
The words were written across it in thick black Sharpie. I do drugs and make my daddy real angry.
A small folded piece of paper was stuck to the bottom of the cardboard with what looked like a glob of mud. He lifted the flap and read the shorter message. First warning. I don’t do seconds.
“Goddammit!” Terrance leapt to his feet and shook his finger at his son. “You…you— Raul!”
“Yeah.” The huge man swung a pistol across the parking lot, the weapon like a toy in his massive hand.
“Get Richie inside.”
“That asshole could still be here, boss—”
“Forget about the bounty hunter. We’ll take other avenues. And no, I won’t tell you which ones. It’d go right over your head anyway.” He glanced at his son, who’d nodded off again with his chin wrinkled against the top of the piece of cardboard. “And get this idiot inside and wash him. I can’t even look at him
like that.”
The rest of his men filtered through the area to make sure it was clear, and he waited for all of them—including his highly disappointing grown offspring—to go inside before he returned to the open back door. He glanced around the parking lot again, seething.
That damn bounty hunter’s everywhere. Someone should throw him in the swamp for good.
Chapter Thirty-One
Johnny shoved his front door open two hours later, grinning like an idiot as the hounds bayed and raced toward the swamp. Nothin’ like a little cleanup to make the world right again. Time to clean up at home, too.
“All right, kid.” He headed toward the living room and dusted his hands off. “I hope you’re still here, ʼcause I reckon this is the best time we’re gonna get to sit down and have us a little—”
He stopped when he saw Amanda, Lisa, and Tommy Nelson all seated in his living room. The dwarf’s smile faded immediately into a scowl. “You’re still here.”
“Imagine that, huh?”
The dwarf glanced at Lisa, who shrugged and sniffed at the FBI liaison. “Why’d you stay?”
“Honestly, Johnny, it was out of pure curiosity this time. You left without a word.” Tommy gestured toward the door. “Then Agent Breyer and Amanda had the chance to fill me in on the last twenty-four hours, and I guess I wanted to make sure you’re doing okay.”
“You didn’t check up on me for fifteen years, Nelson. And now you give a shit about how I’m doin’?” He snorted. “Piss off.”
“And I wanted to make sure you got that file.” The man stood and followed him down the hallway.
“You saw me lookin’ at it. I got it.”
“Right.” He glanced at Lisa seated on the couch with her arm around Amanda and smoothed the front of his black suit jacket. “Then I guess that’s it.”
“I guess so.” Johnny strode into the kitchen.
Agent Nelson cleared his throat and headed out the door. Thirty seconds later, the hounds barked madly and their voices moved from the back of the house to the front.
“That’s right, Tommy boy!” Rex shouted. “You better run!”
