Don't Give A Dwarf (Dwarf Bounty Hunter Book 2)

by Martha Carr

  “That’s not my fault.”

  When he didn’t say anything, she whirled away from him and stormed toward the bow as she swiped her hair out of her face with an angry hand. The hounds had lowered to their bellies to lie on the deck for the return trip without the game they’d come for. Neither of them said anything as she brushed past them and took her seat again and crossed her legs beneath her. This time, her shoulders were hunched and all her previous excitement over an airboat ride through the Everglades had been snuffed out.

  The dwarf rubbed a hand over his mouth and beard and shook his head. Kids. She’ll get over it.

  Luther inched toward her on his belly. “It’s all good, pup. We’ll get that ʼgator next time.”

  “Yeah, next time, Johnny.” Rex looked at his master and panted. “Not like he’s goin’ anywhere. Except for maybe a new nest.”

  “We’ll find that too.”

  “Johnny.” Rex’s tail thumped once on the deck. “Hey, lighten up. She’s only a pup. Remember when Luther and I—”

  He snapped his fingers and both hounds stared at him. “That’s enough, boys.”

  I don’t need two coonhounds tellin’ me to go soft when she can hear every damn word of it. There’s no way to come out on top in that scenario—not that I ever will with a twelve-year-old headstrong shifter goin’ on twenty.

  Chapter Three

  The second Johnny pulled the airboat up to the dock behind his cabin, Amanda stormed onto the creaking wood and trudged across the grass toward the house. Rex and Luther darted after her as he tied the boat up.

  “Man, I’m hungry.” Luther looked at the girl as he trotted beside her. “You hungry, pup? No ʼgator jerky, but I bet Johnny’s got treats in the fridge.”

  “Yeah, he always does.” Rex caught up on the girl’s other side. “You like pickles.”

  “Ooh, pickles. And roast beef. One time, Johnny dropped a whole package of roast beef although he was fast enough to snatch it up.” Luther uttered a high-pitched giggle. “Rex almost had a roast beef and dwarf-hand sandwich.”

  The bounty hunter swung the strap of his rifle over his head and carried it in one hand. He ran the other vigorously through his thick head of hair as he followed them to the front of the house.

  It’s gonna be an awkward fuckin’ afternoon now. Serves me right for thinkin’ I could lay down vague ground rules. I’m outta practice.

  The hounds stopped beside the front porch and their tails wagged as they stared after Amanda who strode down the dirt drive. “Where you goin’, pup?”

  “Hey, the fridge is inside!”

  “I’m going to Darlene’s.” She didn’t turn to gauge Johnny’s reaction, but he didn’t seem to have one.

  “Johnny, she said she’s goin’ to Darlene’s.” Rex spun and trotted dutifully at his master’s side. “She’s going.”

  “She’s gone.” Luther whined and hurried after his brother to slip through the screen door before it swung shut with a creak and a bang behind them. “Want us to bring her back?”

  “No. If she wants to head off on her own, that’s fine. Ain’t a safer place for her around here than Darlene’s.” Except for this house and I ain’t keepin’ her in a cage. Fuck that alpha.

  He shoved the front door open, gave the hounds five seconds to scramble inside after him, then closed it and headed to his workshop. The dogs’ claws clicked across the wooden floor after his heavy footsteps.

  “Hey, that means more pickles and roast beef for us, right?” Rex lowered his nose to the floor and sniffed in a wide circle.

  “Or at least some cheese. Hey, Johnny. Did you feed us this morning?”

  “I feed you every morning.” The dwarf placed the break-action rifle on the shelf beside his worktable and retrieved the heavy-duty crossbow he’d been working on instead. “I’m workin’ now, boys. If you ain’t fixin’ to lie down and be quiet, go on outside.”

  “Ooh, outside.” Luther’s ears pricked and he stared at his brother. “It’s been forever since we were outside.”

  “Race ya.” Rex barked once and streaked past Johnny, through the kitchen, and around to the back.

  “Hey! Not fair.” Luther scrambled after him. “I wasn’t ready.”

  “You’re just slow!”

  The dog door clacked open and closed behind them, followed by their twin baying howls as they set off in pursuit of some creature.

  Johnny lifted the huge tackle box he used for his tools from under the worktable and thunked it noisily on the surface. The kid will be fine at Darlene’s. They’ll look after her there. Or at least they know who to call if they think she’s fixin’ to stir up more trouble.

  “That’s how people are,” he grumbled and snapped the lid open. “Folks look out for each other.” He found his pliers and pick set and dumped them beside the tackle box. “Keep each other away from fucking shifter packs tryin’ to steal little girls.”

  With a grunt, he slammed his palms on the worktable and hung his head. Pull it together, Johnny. You’re doin’ the best you can.

  He took a deep breath, rubbed his mouth and beard with a sniff, then selected the other tools he needed. Still scowling, he slid the hulking black crossbow toward him, turned it over, and studied the barrel before he walked to the shelf to pull down the box of bolts he’d tinkered with over the last two weeks.

  You can bet your ass a crossbow does a hell of a lot more than guns goin’ after some slimy goo monster. Plus a few magi-tech improvements.

  The dwarf opened the box of crossbow bolts and withdrew the red one on top. With one of his long picks, he activated the device on the bolt’s tip and watched the red light blink slowly. The tracker’s still a good bet.

  With a sniff of irritation, he placed it beside the crossbow and scowled again. “What the hell does an Oriceran monster think it’s gonna get by blowin’ resorts and gas stations up?”

  “Johnny!” Rex barked furiously and burst through the dog door. “She’s here, Johnny.”

  Luther leapt through behind his brother. His rear leg caught and tripped him into a pile of squirming hound before he scrabbled to his feet and raced into the workshop. “Let her in, Johnny. Come on.”

  “Who?”

  “Lisa!”

  “Man, oh man. Wonder what she ate today.” The hounds raced to the door. “Bet it’s somethin’ good, Rex.”

  “She wouldn’t look like that if she ate chips and M&Ms all day.”

  “Hey, I like chips. Johnny, why don’t you ever let us have M&Ms?”

  He pushed away from the worktable and strode to the window beside the door. “Besides the fact that I don’t eat crap? You boys get into enough you ain’t supposed to as it is.”

  “And it’s chocolate, man.” Rex sat at the front door and whined. “Idiot.”

  “Oh.” Luther spun in quick circles beside his brother, who backed away and sat again two feet behind him. “Well, let her in, Johnny. Come on. I miss her. You miss her.”

  “Quiet.” He snapped his fingers as he peered through the sliver of curtain over the window. Both hounds obeyed. The sky-blue Camry rolled to a halt in the drive and he tugged the curtain closed again before he returned to his workshop. “Let her be, boys.”

  “But Johnny. She’s here.”

  Johnny ignored them and tried to focus on the new crossbow bolts he’d been building. The tips held empty chambers he mostly filled with explosives but could hold anything at this point. He merely didn’t know what he needed yet to fight an incendiary monster that currently splattered purple goo on a rampage across Florida’s waterways and shorelines.

  “Johnny, she’s on the porch.”

  “She’s at the door.”

  The dwarf closed his eyes. I’m not in the mood for visitors but at least it ain’t Nelson about to knock on my door.

  Agent Lisa Breyer didn’t knock. She simply turned the handle on the front door and let herself in.

  “Hey, lady!” Luther’s tail wagged furiously and caught Rex in the
face as his brother joined him at the open doorway. “Bring us anything?”

  “Ooh, legs.” Rex licked the woman’s bare leg and snorted. “Woah. Easy on the lotion, lady.”

  “Hey, lemme try.”

  Lisa chuckled and closed the door behind her before she held a hand out to each of the hounds. “Hey, boys. Good to see you too.”

  Hidden from view in his workshop, the dwarf rolled his eyes.

  “Johnny?” She sidled around the dogs who sniffed her enthusiastically and moved slowly through the house. “Are you home? I saw both your cars outside, so I assumed—”

  He snorted. “What you drove is a car. I have a truck and Sheila. And simply because they’re both out front don’t mean I’m inside.”

  Lisa rounded the corner into the workshop and smirked when she saw him tinkering at the worktable. “Right. You also have a boat.”

  “And two legs. Sometimes a guy merely likes to walk—” Johnny paused when he saw her, scrutinized her in silence, and finally snorted. “Where’d you find that getup?”

  “What?” She spread her arms and looked at her outfit—Daisy Dukes with frayed hems, a washed-out tank top in green-and-brown camo, and black calf-high boots that gave her already tall form an extra two inches. The wide-brimmed cream cowboy hat slid forward over her long brown hair, and she pushed it back with a smirk. “What’s wrong with my…uh, getup?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Half of you is in Florida and the other half’s in Texas, and those boots won’t do shit to keep your feet dry.”

  She smirked at him and placed her hands on her hips. “My feet are perfectly dry, thank you.”

  “Yeah, after rollin’ up in your car.” He shook his head and tried to hold back a chuckle as he returned his attention to the crossbow bolts and his tinkering. “You’ll stick out like a sore thumb in all that.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “That’s not what I said, darlin’.” Those legs go on forever.

  Lisa tweaked the wide brim of her hat and stepped into the workshop to stand on the other side of the table. “Well, I’m trying a new look.”

  “So it seems.”

  “And I wanted to check in with you about the case.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  A little impatient now, she drummed her fingertips on the table and watched him fit new hollow tips onto half a dozen bolts. “The department’s getting a little nervous about how long this one is taking you.”

  Unperturbed, he picked the tracker bolt up and pressed the pick into the side to turn it off again. “It’s been two weeks.”

  “Yeah, and Johnny Walker doesn’t take two weeks for monsters.”

  “It isn’t time-sensitive until that creature strikes again.” He studied the bolt tip, then tilted it forward to point it playfully at her. “Once it does, we’ll be hot on its trail. I ain’t seen hair or hide of it. There’s no point in runnin’ around like a lone—” Don’t say wolf, Johnny. Come on. Too soon. “Like a lunatic huntin’ a creature I don’t understand. The next time it blows something up with that purple goo, I aim to check out what’s left and get more info.”

  “But if it happens to pop up in front of you, you’ll eliminate it, right?”

  He plunked the bolt down and hooked his thumbs through his belt loops. “I thought you knew me, darlin’.”

  Lisa smirked and gave him a playful shrug. “I’m merely making sure.”

  “But that ain’t likely to happen—the monster rollin’ up to my front door. I gotta know what I’m dealin’ with so I know what gear to bring. And that report in Nelson’s little file wasn’t especially informative.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Quit worryin’ about it. Look.” Johnny went to the shelf and fiddled with one of the dials on a long black box beside his usable rifle collection. A hum of static and shriek of changing radio frequencies filled the workshop. “I built this myself.”

  The speakers crackled. “…have a report of a break-in on Copeland Avenue. All units in the area, please respond to dispatch…”

  He turned the dial again and the box fell silent.

  “You built your own police scanner.” She folded her arms.

  “Well, don’t look that surprised.” He patted the top of the box. “This baby taps into reports and dispatch all over the state of Florida. I had to widen the radar and it’s rigged to pick up certain keywords.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “You know, like monster, creature, Oriceran, goo—”

  “Johnny, I get it.”

  He sniggered and returned to the worktable. “A little time to sit back and enjoy life never hurt anyone. You should try it sometime.”

  “I enjoy life.”

  “Uh-huh. I reckon you do.” He peered into his tackle box and retrieved a smaller pair of pliers to help him wriggle one of the bolts’ hollow caps free. “Any news from Nelson about my daughter’s case?”

  Lisa tilted her chin and frowned at him. “He’s doing that for you, Johnny. Why would he tell me about it?”

  A crooked smile spread above his red beard. “’Cause he’s head-over-heels for you, darlin’.”

  “Oh, come on.” She rolled her eyes but paused when he flicked his gaze up to meet hers. “What? You can’t be serious.”

  “You can’t be that clueless.”

  Lisa scowled at him but couldn’t completely hide a small smile. “No, Johnny. I haven’t heard anything from Nelson beyond, ‘Tell Johnny to hurry up. The department’s getting antsy.’”

  “All right.” He inclined his head in acknowledgment. At least she’s humble about it.

  He worked silently for a moment, and Lisa exhaled a long sigh. She leaned toward the doorway out of the workshop and scanned his empty living room. “Where’s Amanda?”

  “Darlene’s.” He grunted. “As soon as I’m done with a few adjustments to this crossbow, I’ll head out and pick her up.”

  “You let her run around here on her own?”

  The dwarf detached the scope from the crossbow and peered into it. “She can handle herself.” Except when she’s out on a boat, it seems. “I thought we settled that when we brought her here.”

  “She’s still a kid, Johnny.”

  “It doesn’t make what she’s been through any less real.” He sniffed, adjusted the lens on the scope, and twisted it onto the crossbow’s mount. “Runnin’ around this part of town is a hell of a lot safer than where she grew up. Folks’ll keep an eye on her exactly like folks kept an eye on me when I was raised.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Careful.”

  Lisa chuckled. “I only mean nowhere is as safe as it used to be. Even out here in the Everglades, things change.”

  “Not that much. Not here.” He took another box from the shelf and opened it to remove more bolt tips in three different weights and point sizes. His expression focused, he placed them on the worktable one by one. If I quit talkin’ about the girl, she’ll change the subject all on her own.

  “What are those?”

  Bingo. Johnny fought back a smile. “Upgrades.”

  “For a crossbow?”

  “You’ve never used one of these, have you?” He glanced at her and lifted one of the bolt tips filled with a glowing yellow liquid. “Explosive.”

  “Of course it is.” Lisa rolled her eyes playfully.

  “I call the stuff in here Boom 3. It won’t take a bastard’s arm off but it will leave a hole that makes him wish he had no arm.”

  “And how many…uh, boom levels are there?”

  “I think you can guess.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Six.”

  “Damn straight.”

  “You know what? You pretend to be fed up with this whole ‘return to bounty hunting’ scenario, but it’s hard to take seriously when a level-six bounty hunter still has six different strengths of—” She snorted. “Boom.”

  “Do you know how many the department had for me when I started?”

  “
I can’t even begin to guess.”

  He raised a finger. “One. Only one goddamn type of explosive, and it didn’t even work half the time. All the shit their so-called experts came up with was like handin’ Crayola markers to Michelangelo and sayin’, ‘Go ahead. Do your thing but make it better than everyone else.’”

  Lisa folded her arms and a smile appeared but vanished almost instantly. “That’s a surprisingly cultured reference coming from you.”

  “You gotta know the masters if you’re gonna compare yourself to one.” He cleared his throat. “The department wouldn’t disagree with me either.”

  “And they gave you the go-ahead to make your own gear and ignore theirs?”

  “No. They quit tryin’ to stop me when they realized I could take the best tech they had to offer and improve it ten times over. I have patents on most of this now. I ain’t lettin’ the feds get their greedy paws on these babies.” He lifted another bolt tip, this one filled with a swirling silver liquid, and raised his eyebrows at Agent Breyer. “No offense.”

  “None taken. It looks like you haven’t lost your touch after fifteen years.”

  “We all have our gifts, darlin’.”

  “Mm-hmm.” She studied him openly from the other side of the table, and a small divot formed in her bottom lip when she bit the edge of it.

  Johnny tried to ignore the speculative look in her eyes. I didn’t mean it like that, but okay.

  “Well, I’m glad to see you’re ready to find this monster.”

  “I took the case. That’s all there is to it. And I’ll keep takin’ ʼem until Nelson brings me that goddamn file I know I haven’t seen half of.”

  “For the sake of everyone else who’s about to get Johnny Walker’s help, I hope it takes him a while to find it.” When he looked quickly at her with a scowl, she added, “For your sake, I hope it’s sooner.”

  “Yup.” He sniffed and returned to the bolt tips. Real backhanded way to wish me luck.

  “My offer still stands, by the way.”

  He didn’t look up at her as he worked, using various tools to deftly put the finishing touches on his work. “Yeah, I know.” One thing at a time, Johnny. Nice and easy.