by Martha Carr
“Johnny did this? For years?”
“No wonder he’s so grumpy.”
Phil sighed in exasperation and gestured for his team to return all their equipment to the vans. “This is only the beginning, people. We’ll get our gold in the next few days.”
Inside the house, the bounty hunter stormed into the kitchen, whisked the paper towels off his cold breakfast, and tossed them into the trash. Lisa shut the front door behind her, removed her alias illusion, and found Johnny hunched over the stove. “Are you okay?”
“It’s a loaded question, ain’t it?” he asked through crunching a mouthful of bacon.
“That doesn’t make it any less worth asking.”
He turned away from the stove and grimaced as he sucked bacon out of his teeth. “You know how I feel ʼbout cameras and attention and questions.”
“Yep.”
“All right. That bein’ said, I gotta hand it to ya, darlin’. It’s a brilliant fuckin’ idea.”
She grinned and turned as he strode past her and out of the kitchen toward the hallway. “I’m glad you think so.”
“Oh, I do. The Red Boar and I have a beef to settle, and if he thinks he’s smart enough to cut to the chase first, this is a perfect distraction. For him.” Johnny disappeared into his room and she stood and listened to the sound of clothes being jerked off hangers and shoved into his duffle bag.
“Will it be too much of a distraction for you?”
A drawer shut sharply and he poked his head through the open doorway. “Naw. I handled it for seven years and I can handle it again.” The only difference is fifteen years of uninterrupted privacy and an idiot callin’ himself a director. He hauled his black duffel with him out of the room and headed to the workshop. “And that Phil fella… Hell. He knows exactly the right buttons to push, don’t he?”
“I can talk to him about that if you want.”
“Naw, don’t bother. If I ain’t lookin’ pissed off and ready to bash in a few heads on camera, the Red Boar’s gonna think I ain’t genuine about the whole thing. It sucks but it’s perfect.” He rifled through his explosive gear, firearms, ammunition, and random tech stacked on the shelves of his workshop to carefully choose the best for the trip. “You said a Kilomea, right?”
“That’s right.” Lisa leaned against the workshop doorway and folded her arms, intrigued by the focused way he worked through his options.
“Okay.” A huge metal box slid out from beneath the bottom shelf. Johnny felt inside it for a moment before he retrieved what looked like a bright silver handgun with the tops of the chamber and the barrel sawed off. They’d been replaced instead with a thick glass tube. He snatched a small canvas bag from the metal box, returned the stash with the toe of his boot, and packed it all in the duffel bag with everything else.
“What was that?”
“The little silver guy?” The bounty hunter sniggered. “That’s old school, darlin’. It still works like a charm for those hairy bastards, though.”
“That still didn’t answer my question.”
“Huh. Sleep juice.”
“From a pistol?”
“Sure. What used to be a pistol, anyhow. Now it’s exactly what I want it to be.” He grinned at her and slung the strap of the duffel bag over his shoulder.
When he reached the kitchen, Rex and Luther sat perfectly still in front of the oven and stared up at the pans of cold breakfast on the stove. Rex’s ears perked up at the sound of his master’s footsteps but he didn’t move. “Johnny.”
“Yeah, Johnny. Come on.”
“You forgot the most important part.”
“Uh-huh.” With a heavy sigh, the dwarf gave the hounds three slices of bacon each, which disappeared before he had time to take the remainder of the cold, crunchy meat for himself.
Luther licked the crumbs on the floor. “Bacon!”
“No one makes it like you do, Johnny.”
“Yeah, yeah. Hey. You think if we caught a pig, sliced it up, and did whatever you just did to this bacon, it’d taste as good?”
Johnny and Rex both stared at him.
“What?”
“Sure.” He turned toward the stove and the egg pan with a snort. “I suppose I might try it out on coonhound too.”
Luther gasped. “You wouldn’t.”
Rex sniffed the floor behind Johnny’s feet. “Dude, at this point, I’m right there with him.”
“Oh, okay.” Luther whipped his head up toward his master and panted, and his tail thumped against the side of the fridge. “Well, when you do try it, Johnny, don’t forget about me. I’ve never tried hound bacon before.”
“Jesus.”
“What’s wrong?” Lisa asked with a curious smile.
“Damn hounds.” He tossed a handful of cold scrambled eggs toward Luther as a distraction, then turned toward Lisa and pointed at the smaller dog. “He makes me wonder sometimes what the hell I was thinkin’ when I made those collars.”
“You were thinking about us, Johnny.” Rex scuttled to his master’s other side. “And about how much you wanna give me some of those eggs too right now.”
A glob of cold eggs landed with a splat in front of the larger hound and vanished instantly.
“And about how much you love hearing us tell you how awesome you are?”
“Well, that’s a given, Johnny.”
“We’ll never stop.”
“As long as you never stop with the treats.”
Shaking his head, he scooped the last of the eggs and crammed them into his mouth. He turned toward Lisa with flecks of egg and cold cheese caught in his beard and nodded. “Ehs oh.”
She laughed. “Sure. If I could understand you. You have a little something right here too…”
He swiped at his mouth and beard, then swallowed. “Let’s go.”
“Aw, man. That’s it?” Luther sniffed the side of the oven and tried to poke his head up over the stove. “Johnny, what about all this smelly sludge up here, huh? That has to taste good.”
“Shit.” The dwarf snatched both pans up and headed to the back door to set them quickly out on the porch. When he closed the door again, both hounds stood in front of him.
“Go ahead, Johnny.”
“Yeah, step aside. We’ll handle it.”
“We’re headin’ out front.” He slid the plastic dog-door cover down in its slats with a clack. “Y’all had enough.”
“So who’s gonna eat it?”
“Johnny… You’re leavin’ bacon sludge out for the squirrels?”
“No way, Rex. It’s the rabbits and birds we have to worry about.”
The dwarf whistled and headed toward Lisa. “Let’s go, boys.”
“Dangit.”
They trotted after him and Luther cast longing glances over his shoulder every few feet.
“I’m ready when you are, darlin’.”
“Excellent.” Lisa grinned at him and gestured toward the door. “This’ll be fun.”
“Hold off on that assessment for now, huh? Just ’cause I ain’t got expectations don’t mean it can’t get any worse.”
“Seriously? I would have thought you had fairly high expectations of finally apprehending the Red Boar or killing him, even in Baltimore.”
He opened the front door and snorted. “I meant the damn show.”
Chapter Five
Phil wanted to put one of his team in the car with Johnny on their way to Miami International but of course, the bounty hunter refused. “There ain’t enough room in the truck anyhow.”
“Well, what about that Jeep?”
He glanced at Sheila parked in her usual place at the edge of the large gravel lot in front of his house and chuckled. “You’ve lost your damn mind.”
The director persisted in his mission to fully capture Dwarf the Bounty Hunter on their drive to the airport. Every time Johnny glanced in the rearview mirror, one of the white vans was gaining on him from behind. Whoever sat up front in the vehicle with Phil held a smartphone
up to the window, filming, and the dwarf stepped on the gas again. “Determined bastard, ain’t he?”
Lisa lurched forward when the white truck increased speed down the freeway. “He’s only doing his job.”
“Well, I ain’t payin’ him.”
The one time the crew’s other driver tried to pull into the right lane on the highway to get a good shot of him driving the truck was the only time. Lisa grabbed the oh-shit handle above the passenger door when he made quick work of blocking the van’s attempts to drive next to his truck. He cackled the whole time. The hounds bobbed and swayed in the back seat of the cab, panted, and cheered their master on.
By the time they reached Miami International, the dwarf felt damn good about things. They unloaded their luggage—and the hounds—as the film crew set up their gear to start the camera rolling again. Checking in with their tickets was a cinch, mostly because Lisa handled all of it, but they were intercepted by airport security.
“Agent Breyer? Mr. Walker?” The huge man in uniform glanced at the hounds. “Come with me, please.”
Johnny leaned toward Lisa and muttered, “What did you do?”
She darted him an insulted glance. “Don’t assume it was me.”
Grumbling, he followed the security guard with Rex and Luther on his heels.
Lisa waved for the crew to follow and waited for Phil to catch up. “I want to reiterate this yet again. Nothing that reveals my real identity gets broadcast anywhere. Not my name and not my face. At least, not looking the way it is right now.”
“Only the redhead. Got it.” He winked at her. “We’ll save the live streams for the ‘paint the town’ shots.”
“The what?”
“We have it covered, Agent Breyer. Don’t you worry.”
She glanced at the crew. Cody led the way with slow, careful steps to keep his hand camera steady as he closed in on Johnny from behind. “Okay…”
They were taken through a private security screening and led not to the main terminal gates for a commercial airline flight but out to the tarmac reserved specifically for private aircraft. A warm, muggy breeze blew across the expanse of black asphalt that shimmered in the August heat. It ruffled Johnny’s hair and beard and made his hounds’ fur stand on end.
Lisa adopted her green-eyed, redheaded Stephanie illusion as they approached the Gulfstream 450 waiting for them and nodded at Phil.
“All right, people,” the man called and clapped before he pointed skyward. “We’re takin’ it to the skies.”
The security guard nodded and returned to the building and a flight attendant stepped down the wheeled staircase pushed up against the jet and waved. “Are y’all ready to get this bird up in the air?”
The woman was tall, blonde, thin, and with bright-red lipstick that stood out harshly against her pale skin and the white exterior of the aircraft. Phil giggled nervously and stared at her and his mouth hung open slightly.
The bounty hunter snorted. “Oh, look. Dimples.”
Lisa frowned mockingly. “That’s what does it for you, huh?”
“I don’t mind one way or the other, darlin’.” He gestured toward Phil with his thumb. “But Mr. Nosy-Ass Director over there might have a thing or two to say about ʼem if he could talk.”
Rex looked at the man and sniggered. “Shut your mouth, two-leg. You’re gonna slobber all over her.”
“Yeah,” Luther added and spun in a tight circle as he sniffed the tarmac, his tail pointing straight up. “That’s our job.”
“The captain’s almost ready,” the flight attendant crooned, “so you’re welcome to board anytime you like.”
“We, uh…I mean, we’ll… That’s…” Phil’s mouth opened and closed.
“Thank you,” Lisa said for him.
“Uh-huh.” The woman smiled briefly at Agent Breyer, then scrutinized Johnny with almost avid curiosity before she turned to walk up the stairs. “We’re happy to have you aboard.”
“Oh, boy…” Nudging Johnny’s arm with the back of a hand, the agent nodded at the jet. “This is gonna be a fun one, huh?”
“Well…maybe.” He rubbed his mouth and frowned at the small aircraft. “What the hell is Nelson up to?”
“He booked us a private flight. Why are you complaining?”
“Naw. See, that’s where all this smells too fishy.” He wagged a finger at her and narrowed his eyes at the jet. “For about ten years straight I worked with that stuck-up Yankee and he ain’t never sprung for a private flight, even when he flew with me. Are you sure there ain’t something special about this case you’re still keepin’ on the down-low?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Johnny, I just told you there’s a super-fan Dwarf the Bounty Hunter site on the dark web and convinced you to start filming another season so we can deal with two magical criminals with one case. Why would I keep anything else from you?”
“Good point. All right, boys. I guess it’s time to—what the fuck?” He turned to Cody who held the camera in his face while Dave, the boom dude, dangled the stupid microphone over his head. “Back the hell up, son. What do you think you’re doin’?”
Cody stepped away but kept his camera rolling slowly and steadily.
“Put that away, man.”
“Come on, Johnny,” Phil said, fully recovered now that the flight attendant had disappeared into the jet. “This is a very good time to get a few more shots in. Right before you take off from your home in Florida, you know?”
He wrinkled his nose. “Why the hell does that matter?”
“Okay, look. As far as our viewers—your viewers—are concerned, you haven’t left the state since you moved out here fifteen years ago. No one knows you’ve taken other cases with…clients.” He nodded at Lisa like they were the only ones in on her alias secret. “So for them, this is like a new chapter for Johnny Walker, right? A rebirth, if you will—”
“Jesus, what kinda hole did Nelson dig you out of?”
“What was that?”
“Look, I ain’t panderin’ to a horde of crazies I don’t know simply to make ʼem feel some kinda resolution fifteen years after the fact. And I sure as shit don’t give a damn about network ratings. So you can move along with this whole ‘create a story’ nonsense and let me do my job.”
Insulted, the director stepped away and glowered furiously. “Well, for this to work, Mr. Walker, you need to let me do my job.”
The dwarf growled and thrust a finger in the man’s face. “Don’t tell me what I need to do.”
“Don’t you dare threaten me.” Phil puffed his chest up. “I’m the director!”
“You’re a nut.”
The hounds tittered. “Good one.”
“Yeah, bet he’s as salty as one too.”
“As salty as the other two-legs you hate but keep letting into the house, Johnny.”
The dwarf spun away and almost stepped onto Dave’s foot. “Goddammit. And get that”—he slapped at Cody and the camera narrowing in on him—“fuckin’ camera outta my face.”
Phil snapped and turned around to wave at another crew member with a second camera. “Get over here.”
“Nuh-uh.” Johnny pointed at the second cameraman. “I ain’t doin’ it like this. You stay right where you are.”
Lisa stepped toward him. “Johnny, this is all part of the plan, okay?”
“Nope. It’s not okay at all. Nelson thought he could recreate some goddamn nostalgia and instead, he gives me this.”
“A private jet?”
“A film crew with extra balls and no brains—I said back up!”
Cody jolted at the dwarf’s sudden outburst in his direction, then sighed heavily and lowered the camera. “Well, that shot’s ruined. Thanks.”
Johnny folded his arms. “I want Travis.”
Lisa shook her head. “Who?”
“Howie Travis. The guy who handled the filming for me the last time I did a real show.”
Phil scoffed. “This is real—”
“I ain’t
talkin’ to you. Zip it.”
The flight attendant poked her head out of the open jet door and grinned at them. “Y’all can come on up now. The captain says we’re clear to go.”
Lisa gestured toward the jet. “Everything’s ready. Let’s go. It’s only a few days.”
He stared at her with a deadpan expression. “Darlin’, I ain’t gettin’ on this flight unless Howie Travis gets on it with me.”
She glanced at the waiting crew and frowned. “You want the director of your bounty hunter show from fifteen years ago?”
“That’s what I said. Travis knows what the hell he’s doin’ and he learned way more of it over seven years with me than what these bozos are tryin’ to pretend they know.”
“Wow. Okay. Fine.” She pulled her phone out. “I’ll make the call. Can someone tell the captain or flight attendant or whoever that we’re…uh, running a little behind?”
The woman with the bandana—Alicia—rolled her eyes and trudged toward the rolling staircase. Lisa stepped away from the group and the idling private jet to call Agent Nelson so they could play Find The Director.
Johnny glanced at his hounds. Rex sat perfectly still beside his master, and Luther had sprawled on the tarmac to soak in the heat from above and below.
Phil cleared his throat. “You can’t fire me from this project, Mr. Walker. You’re not the one who hired me.”
“I ain’t fixin’ to fire you. Stay on or go home. It makes no difference to me.” He regarded the man disdainfully, then turned his head slowly toward the plane. “But if you don’t hand the reins over to Travis when he gets here, I’ll send you packin’ myself.”
“You can’t force me to get on a plane.”
“Honestly, it’s fairly easy if you’re in a body bag.”
Chapter Six
Almost forty minutes later, another security guard emerged from the building and approached Johnny, Lisa, the hounds, and the entire film crew, who were either seated or standing against the wall of the airport building to get out of the sun. A hunched old man with a long gray ponytail tied loosely behind his head stepped out slowly behind the guard. He held a walking cane in one hand and it tapped on the tarmac while he dragged a small, battered roller suitcase behind him with the other.
