by Martha Carr
Her jaw dropped. Lemonhead’s comment— it had to be the Red Boar’s comment—was dated three weeks earlier. She scrolled through the comments and switched to a different episode chat when she didn’t find anything else from the exact criminal she’d hoped to find.
Half an hour later in Season 3, Episode 9: Shift This, she found another comment from Lemonhead buried among the replies to a disgruntled fan’s dismantling of the television idol that had been Dwarf the Bounty Hunter. It was the identical message dated six weeks before and aimed at a completely different generically numbered username.
Dammit. This will take forever.
Fortunately, after scrolling up and down and moving the bottom scroll bar left and right, she found a tiny search bar at the bottom beside the barely visible copyright information and link to the privacy policy. Lisa typed in Lemonhead and clicked on the search icon.
She was rewarded with the comments from Lemonhead in one nice, neat collection—fourteen in total—all of them replying to the same kind of agitated comments either trying to defend the captured criminal in each episode or downright bashing Johnny for apparently no reason. Each one said the same thing as Lemonhead posed a shared dissatisfaction with the show in general and the bounty hunter in particular. The most recent was dated only five days earlier. The first was dated the end of May, two days after Lisa and Johnny had crashed the Monsters Ball in New York.
“This is insane,” she whispered and skimmed the comments to which Lemonhead had posted his replies. He knew exactly who Johnny was in that penthouse. And he’s been reaching out to a number of seriously pissed-off criminals. How many of these guys were actual bounties Johnny brought in?
That was impossible to tell with the information she had and so many numbered usernames generated specifically for this site alone. But she could still try to get in on the action.
She retrieved her phone from beside the laptop and snapped a quick series of pictures, then scrolled down to capture every single comment with the dates and times. That done, she clicked on Lemonhead’s most recent comment and was prompted with an option to create her username or use a randomly generated number. She went with the second option and created a basic account under the name Rex Coon. It made her grimace but it was the first thing that came to mind. Better than Light Elf.
Once she’d tagged both him and the original commenter in her reply, she typed her message.
User7495: There has to be a better way to spend our time than going through a host of old episodes and hate-posting at our desks. Right? What about doing something?
Her palms were sweaty when she posted the reply, so she wiped them on the thin cotton of her pajama shorts and downed the rest of her water. Don’t blow this, Breyer. There’s no way anyone knows who you are. Imagine hating his guts so much that you’d troll a fan site.
That made her laugh but the sound cut off abruptly when her laptop screen flashed with a horizontal line of white. A small black box appeared in the center of the screen and it looked way too much like a command prompt.
“Uh-oh.”
White letters scrolled across the box after the blinking cursor and paused, waiting for her reply.
8/14 11:00 p.m. Baltimore, MD. If you want in on this, you’ll have to prove your vision aligns with the rest of us. Background check. The kind you wouldn’t want your mama to see. Full-color photo. Any possibly useful skills. Send it all to this link in the next five days or you can fuck off. Write it down. This isn’t a chat.
Below that was a hyperlink of incomprehensible numbers and letters that didn’t say what the hell it was for. Lisa fumbled with her phone and managed to take a picture of the command prompt box a second before the screen flashed again and the box disappeared.
She checked to make sure she’d obtained a clear image and breathed a sigh of relief. Something tells me asking nicely for a do-over isn’t an option.
In the next moment, the pieces of the puzzle all clicked together in her head.
“Wait a minute—” She leapt up and practically ran into the bedroom to retrieve her tablet. It took her two attempts to unlock it and she pulled up the digital file for the next case Agent Nelson had sent her the day before with a request to pass it on to Johnny. She swiped through the first page detailing all the various internal accounts to which the file itself had been sent, then stopped at the front of the case report. “Baltimore. Ha!”
Lisa scratched the back of her head absently and mussed her sleepless bedhead even more as she stared at the case file. She returned to the desk in the living room for her phone. Tommy doesn’t want him to lose his shit over this. No one does. And no one cares how Johnny’s handled with these cases as long as he’s handled. It’s not like Tommy’s completely in the dark.
“Screw it.” She pulled up Agent Nelson’s personal cell number and made the call. When the line rang four times, she almost hung up but fortunately stopped when a loud click and rustle came through from the other end.
“Fuck,” the man grumbled.
“Oh, hi, Tommy.” She lowered herself slowly onto the hard cushions of her hotel couch and rolled her eyes. “I’m good. Thanks for asking.”
“What the hell, Breyer.” Tommy inhaled deeply and grumbled a little more, accompanied by the rustling of bedsheets. “It’s almost two in the morning.”
“Shit. Right.”
“If this isn’t an emergency—”
“Well, it might be—but the good kind.”
“Dammit. Give me a sec.”
It sounded like he dropped the phone onto the bed, but instead of the sound of lights clicking on or footsteps across the floor, she heard three swift, sharp smacks of flesh on flesh. She pulled the phone away from her ear and glanced wearily at it.
“All right. Shit.” He groaned. “I’m up. What’s the…good emergency?”
“I found Lemonhead.”
“What?”
“I mean the Red Boar. He took over all Lemonhead’s—you know what? It’s not important.” Lisa shook her head and took a deep breath. Keep it together and stick to the facts. “Did you know there was a Dwarf the Bounty Hunter fan site on the dark web?”
“What the fuck?” Tommy cleared his throat. “First, I have to deal with Johnny slipping back into his old drinking habits and now, you’re…what? Tweaking in the middle of the damn night and calling me about that stupid fucking show?”
“Huh. Well, first of all, I’m not on drugs, Tommy, but you might be if you’d seen what I saw in Portland—”
“Yeah, I heard it sucked. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, merely putting in overtime because I haven’t quite caught up on lost sleep. Please hear me out and pretend like everything I tell you makes sense, all right?”
“Lisa…”
“I was looking for the Red Boar. If the guy was there the night Dawn was murdered, he would have guessed she was Johnny’s daughter and he would’ve confirmed that again when we crossed paths in New York.” She glanced at the tablet in her lap and tried to gather her thoughts. “But what I found, Tommy, was a fan site of people freaking out over Johnny’s old show.”
“It’s been off the air for fifteen years.”
“I know. But the site’s still active and Lemonhead’s posting on it.”
“Who the hell is—”
“The Red Boar. Deadroot. Whatever the hell his name is. I think he’s recruiting some of Johnny’s old bounties to form some kind of…team. Most likely to target Johnny.”
Tommy groaned. “Payback’s a bitch. Look, if those idiots want to slog through the muck to find that dwarf and get their heads blown off for their troubles, that’s their choice.”
“Not if we find them first. They’re meeting in Baltimore on Thursday.”
“Wait. That’s where—”
“Yeah. The Hugh case.” Lisa sat up straight on the couch and scanned the walls of her hotel suite. Come on, Tommy. Wake up and use your brain.
“And you want to crash this meeting and go after
the Red Boar instead?”
“Not exactly. But I do want to run something by you right now before I take it all to Johnny tomorrow. And if this works, we might bring back a hell of a lot more than one Kilomea with a blackmailing problem.”
“Huh.” He sniffed. “What exactly did you have in mind?”
She grinned and leaned back against the couch cushions.
Chapter Two
“There’s more than one use for everything.” Johnny hauled the stiff, wobbling folds of thick chicken wire across the dry grass of his back yard.
Luther yelped and skittered away from the clattering pile of metal mesh. “Hey! Watch where you’re throwing things, Johnny. Come on.”
The dwarf pointed at his smaller black-and-tan coonhound and frowned. “You watch where you’re sniffin’ while I’m workin’. It’s as simple as that.”
“You could’ve taken my head off with that,” the hound muttered as he skulked away.
Rex left the six-inch hole he’d been digging in the dirt and turned to face his brother. “You have no idea how gravity works, do you?”
“Huh?”
“It’s all about the size, bro.” He stuck his snout back into the hole and snorted. “It’s not big enough to cut your head off.”
Johnny grunted and stalked toward the storage shed for his power tools he’d left charging overnight. I ain’t fixin’ to sit down and explain physics to a couple of boneheaded coonhounds.
“Hey, where ya goin’, Johnny?” Luther trotted after his master, his alleged close call with death completely forgotten.
“Tools.”
“Tools for what?”
Rex whipped his head out of the hole and stared at the dwarf. “Huntin’ tools?”
“Ooh! You make something new, Johnny? Something new and super-cool?”
Johnny spun in front of the shed’s open front door and gestured sharply toward the wooden structure in the middle of his yard. “Tools for that. For building? The project we started yesterday? Is it ringin’ any bells?”
Luther sat and his mouth popped open as he panted quick, heavy breaths and stared at his master. “Nope.”
The dwarf scowled and uttered a low growl of restrained frustration before he turned and stepped into the shed.
“Well?” Luther called behind him. “Come on, Johnny. Spill it!”
The bounty hunter ejected the two thick batteries from their chargers and inserted one onto the base of his impact driver. “I ain’t gonna waste my breath tellin’ you somethin’ you’re gonna let slip out your mind two minutes later. Again.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay.” Luther trotted away from the shed and stopped when he saw the half-erected wooden structure sitting in the yard. “What is that?”
Rex stared at his brother. “You need help.”
“Aw, you’re jealous. We both know I got the best—hey!” Luther barked. “Johnny! It’s a—” Without finishing the thought, he uttered an earsplitting bay and raced across the yard toward the side of the house.
The dwarf straightened to turn toward the shed door and bumped his head against the bottom of the shelf over the worktable. “Dammit!”
“Johnny, someone’s here!” Rex called. “Someone’s coming!”
“In the road!”
“Moving fast! A big ol’—oh.” The hounds skidded to a stop in the gravel drive out front as the crunch of pebbles beneath slowing tires filled the air.
With his impact driver and nail gun in hand, Johnny stepped slowly out of the shed and frowned at the sudden silence. A car door opened and shut. “Boys?”
“Hey, lady.”
“Ooh! Ooh! Is that for us?”
“What did you bring us, huh? I hope it’s treats.”
“Or trash.”
“Or a stick.”
Lisa’s laughter carried past the house. “Okay, boys. Chill out. You know I’m—Luther!”
“Ha-ha, no, you’re not.”
“You already know what I smell like, dogs. Back up.”
The hounds’ tittering laughter filled Johnny’s head and he snorted. The hounds are gettin’ more friendly with her than I am.
“Can’t help it, lady,” Luther said. “You smell like food. And two-legs. And two-legs food.”
“Lemme guess,” Rex added. “You had eggs for breakfast.”
“Wait, eggs? Eggs…something about that sounds important.”
When the door of the screened-in porch creaked open, Johnny called, “Out back, darlin’.”
“Oh.” The door clicked shut again and Lisa moved down the side of the house. Both hounds trotted beside her.
“Johnny. Hey, Johnny. It’s your lady friend.”
“Yeah, I thought she’d bailed but she didn’t forget about you, Johnny.”
“Hard to believe. How long’s she been gone, Johnny? Two years? Three?”
Rex snorted. “Feels more like five.”
Lisa rounded the corner and stopped when she saw Johnny scowling at the small wooden hut with a power tool clutched in each hand. “Wow. I didn’t know it was project day.”
He glanced briefly at her and sniffed. “Ever since yesterday.”
“What are you building?” She stepped around the structure and scrutinized it with a raised eyebrow.
“A goddamn chicken coop.”
She burst out laughing.
“How’s that funny?”
“Only the…” She waved him away and shook her head. “It’s the thought of you raising chickens.”
“Uh-huh.” He stared at her and finally rolled his eyes when the laughter didn’t stop. “And I ain’t raisin’ ʼem, anyhow. That’s already been done.”
With a deep breath to calm herself, she wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “Grown chickens, huh? So you decided to…you know, I don’t even know what to call it. Does one buy chickens or adopt them?”
“Neither.” Johnny set the nail gun in the grass, picked up the long plywood boards he’d secured together at a thirty-five-degree angle, and set the whole thing on top of the structure to form the roof. “This here’s only temporary.”
“It is? That’s considerable work for a temporary chicken coop.”
“Well, Cal Hendry a couple of miles down the road ran into some kinda…I don’t know. Family squabble. He’s goin’ outta town in a few days to deal with it and needs a place to keep the hens so I offered to put ʼem up here.”
Luther licked his muzzle and sat. “Chicken.”
The dwarf shook his head and took two corner braces and a handful of screws from his back pocket. “So now I gotta make this damn thing gator-, fox-, snake-, and hound-proof.”
Lisa waited for the impact driver’s loud growl to die down before she took her tablet out from under her arm.
Johnny pulled his head from beneath the roof and looked expectantly at her. “What?”
“I hope Cal Henry a couple of miles down the road isn’t counting on you to specifically be here over the next few days.”
He glanced at the tablet in her hands and sniffed. “Is that another case?”
“Yep.”
“Dammit!”
She frowned teasingly at him. “Well, try not to get too excited about it.”
“Oh, I ain’t.”
“Johnny…”
“A dwarf can’t get a little peace and quiet around his own home? Nelson with his cases. Come on. I ain’t been back long enough to put my feet up and soak in the good things in life I spent a helluva lotta time diggin’ up.”
Lisa raised an eyebrow. “Portland was two weeks ago.”
He returned to the pile of partially completed chicken coop pieces and selected the long ramp with the thin strips of elevated wood running up the length like steps and rested it against the open side of the coop. “That ain’t nearly long enough, darlin’.”
“Okay, well, you’re officially out of retirement at this point.” She winced when the nail gun hissed and thumped into the wood. “So the cases will most likely keep rolling in—whic
h I know you expected.”
“It doesn’t mean I gotta be happy about it.” The nail gun hissed and thumped again.
With a sigh, Lisa approached him and unlocked the screen of her tablet. “Take a look at this one with me, will you?”
Johnny peered at her tablet and frowned. “No paper copy?”
“No.” Her knowing smile made him scowl. “There are a few pieces to this next case that aren’t exactly…uh, in hard copy anywhere. Or even digital.”
The nail gun dropped into the grass, and the dwarf straightened to fold his arms. “I don’t know what the hell that means but I have a feelin’ it ain’t somethin’ I wanna hear.”
“Why don’t you listen to everything first before you make that call, okay?” She swiped through the case file, then turned her tablet toward Johnny. He stared at her with a frown and didn’t bother to look at the screen. “Right. This one’s fairly simple as far as your cases go. A Kilomea in Baltimore’s been blackmailing Senator Richard Hugh—”
“Damn. Nelson’s getting’ desperate, ain’t he?”
“What?”
“Tell him to get someone else. I’m sure he has a dozen other bounty hunters who could round up one Kilomea idiot tryin’ to pick a senator’s pockets for fun, as dirty as they are.”
“It’s a sensitive situation with this specific senator,” Lisa explained. “He has friends in the Bureau—particularly Director Vance.”
Johnny wrinkled his nose. “Who?”
“Seriously?”
“I never met the guy.”
She tried to hide a patient, knowing smile. “Well, that would be because you’ve only been back in the game a few months and haven’t been to HQ.”
He cleared his throat. “I never got an invitation, either.”
“Oh, so if you were invited, you’d make the trip?”
“Probably not.”
Lisa shook her head and glanced at the file open on her tablet. “Senator Hugh also has friends in Washington, which means the Department wants this done cleanly and efficiently. So no, I don’t think they have another dozen bounty hunters who can take care of this the way they want it taken care of.”
The dwarf rubbed his mouth and the top of his beard. “They want me.”
