by Martha Carr
“Are you threatening me with a knife, Johnny?” Phil’s hands raised despite the fact that he was trying to play it brave.
The dwarf glanced at the camera still rolling while Cody stepped lightly toward him. “Last warning.”
“That’s good, that’s good.” Phil nodded furiously. “Get some of that anger—”
The bounty hunter kicked one of the hounds’ plates off the patio and it thunked into Cody’s shins.
“Aw, shit, man!” The cameraman lowered his gear to glance at his legs. “What the hell?”
“Yeah, Johnny, what gives?” Luther sniffed around the patio where his missing plate used to be. “I wasn’t finished with that.”
“Get out!”
Their server darted out of the restaurant and onto the patio. “Is…is there a problem here, Mr. Walker?”
“There will be if these dumb shits don’t get out.”
“I’m sorry, guys. Patio seating is for paying customers only.”
“We’re with Johnny!” Phil shouted.
“No, they ain’t.”
The man nodded. “Then I’m going to have to ask you and your…friends to leave.”
“We got it, we got it,” Howie muttered, waving the man away, and his cane clicked on the paving as he hurried toward Phil. “And this scheming idiot’s about to get the fun side of my cane if he doesn’t do what I say.”
The director glanced from Johnny to the old man and clapped his hands. “That’s a wrap, people. It’s time to go.”
“Yeah, and ice my damn shins.” Cody rubbed his leg and grimaced at the dwarf. “We’re only doing our jobs, man.”
“Move.”
Howie pulled the cameraman away with him and nodded at Johnny to assure him that everything was taken care of.
Rex and Luther stalked after the retreating film crew and continued to utter low growls until the party crashers disappeared around the corner. Luther stopped at the shattered plate on the patio and sniffed. “Oh, look. Leftover mashed potatoes.”
The bounty hunter stalked to his chair and slumped into it. His elbows thumped onto the table, making silverware clatter and drinks slosh in their glasses. Without a word, he snatched his spoon up and shoveled the rest of his grits into his mouth.
Lisa stared at him. “Are you okay?”
“I’m eatin’.”
“Is there anything else I can get for you?” the server asked.
“To-go boxes and the check, pal. That’s it.”
“Johnny, we don’t have to leave—”
“Well, I ain’t stayin’ here.” He downed the rest of his whiskey and growled. That’s the closest I got to sayin’ somethin’ real, and those fuckers had to come in and ruin the whole thing.
“I’ll be right back with those.” The server nodded and hurried inside.
When they got their check and the boxes, Johnny added the leftovers furiously to the containers, eating pieces here and there as he did so.
“Truly,” Lisa said in an attempt to diffuse the suddenly tense situation. “It’s okay.”
“No, it ain’t, darlin’.” A huge chunk of rockfish went into his mouth. “Now the whole world’s gonna see me and Stephanie Wyndom sittin’ at a fancy spot laughin’ it up and gettin’ cozy.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
He pulled his wallet out and placed enough hundred-dollar bills on the table to cover the tab and leave a thirty-percent tip. Then he smacked his hand down on the surface, picked up the to-go boxes, and stood. “’Cause it ain’t no one else’s damn business and it ain’t you.”
The bounty hunter stalked around the corner, and the hounds whipped their heads up from more sniffing to follow him.
Lisa sat in her chair for a moment longer and frowned in surprise as she drained the rest of her cocktail. I wonder if he even knows what he said.
Chapter Sixteen
They reached Johnny’s huge hotel suite without being badgered by the film crew again. He slumped in the high-backed armchair built for a giant and stared at the area rug beneath the coffee table.
Lisa looked at him from her place on the couch and raised an eyebrow. “Will you be pissed off about one filmed dinner all night?”
“If it suits me, sure.”
“Hey, Johnny.” Luther stared at his master from the edge of the kitchen and took slow, cautious steps toward the counter beside the fridge. “Johnny…”
“I don’t think he can hear us, bro.”
“Well, make sure.”
“Johnny!” Rex barked. “Anyone home?”
The dwarf rubbed his mouth and continued to stare at the rug.
“He’s totally gone. Hurry.”
Luther leapt up and put his front paws onto the counter beside the to-go boxes Johnny had neglected to put in the fridge. He darted a wary glance over his shoulder at his master, then buffeted both boxes onto the floor with his snout.
“Yes,” Rex whispered.
“Victory! We—ow. Quit nipping me.”
“Then quit shouting or you’ll break him out of his pissed-off concentration.”
Luther sniggered. “Probably thinking of all the ways he could blow up that guy with the crazy hair.”
“Howie?”
“No, the other one. Hey, look. Shrimp!”
“Shh!”
Lisa turned to look into the kitchen, but the corner of the hallway blocked the conniving hounds from view. If Johnny’s not stopping them, I won’t say anything. She took her laptop from the couch cushion beside her and opened it on her thighs. “Well, how about something else to take your mind off it, huh?”
“I ain’t watchin’ more IdiotTube videos.”
She snorted. “No, I was talking about next steps with this dark-web Johnny-hater meeting. But feel free to sit there and sulk.”
He looked at her with wide eyes and finally heard the barely contained snuffling and chewing coming from the kitchen. “Boys?”
“Uh…yeah, Johnny.”
“Shit. Stop for a sec. What’re y’all up to?”
Rex trotted into view and his claws clicked on the kitchen’s tiled floors. When he met Johnny’s gaze, he licked his muzzle and stared. “Hanging out. Grabbing a drink. You know, the usual.”
Luther’s head-butted the cabinet as he licked the destroyed pieces of to-go boxes across the floor. “Ow.”
“That don’t sound like water,” Johnny muttered.
Rex sniggered. “Does it surprise you that he can’t find the water bowl, Johnny?”
Luther smacked his head against the cabinet again when he looked up to stare at his brother. “Hey—”
Rex whipped his head toward the far end of the kitchen. “Wait. Luther. Did you hear that?”
“What?”
“I think it’s a mouse. In the cabinet.” The larger hound darted out of his master’s view to pounce on the to-go boxes.
“Ha-ha. Who’s dumb now? I already checked that one, Rex. There’s no mouse—”
“The other cabinet,” Rex snarled.
“Oh, right… Yeah, get it.”
“Johnny?” Lisa leaned sideways to try to catch his attention. “I’m about to make another big move, so if you want to see what’s happening here—”
“Yeah.” He pushed out of the armchair with a grunt and stepped slowly across the living area and frowned at the entrance to the kitchen. “Did you see those hounds get up to somethin’?”
She logged into her laptop and shook her head. “I’ve been watching you the whole time.”
“I like her, Johnny.”
“Shh. Focus.”
With a shrug, Johnny sank onto the couch beside her and glanced at the laptop screen. “Next big move, huh?”
“For us, at least. Honestly, this is my first time interacting on the dark web instead of…you know. Poking around.”
He looked curiously at her. “For what?”
“Well, we can start with the time I entered a dark-web auction and bid for a twelve-year-old girl with your mon
ey.”
“But that wasn’t the first time.”
“No. I did some digging for the Department a time or two before they assigned me to Amanda’s case with you.” She stopped typing and looked up at him staring at her. “Okay, fine. Twenty-one cases where dark-web scouring was a priority.”
“I didn’t say a thing.”
“Yeah well, you didn’t have to. Stop looking at me like that.” Lisa pursed her lips to hide a smirk as she pulled up her VPN and dove into the dark web. Then she retrieved her phone and brought up the picture of the anonymous Johnny-haters private invitation.
The dwarf grumbled and shook his head. “You can’t simply do all that with one damn piece of equipment?”
“What?”
“What’s your phone gonna do?”
She turned the device to show him. “This is the link to upload some perfectly legit fake documents.”
“Huh.”
Lisa typed the hyperlink into the URL bar that displayed .onion domains and pressed the Enter key. Another horizontal flash of white light darted across her screen a second before the link’s direct page came up.
“Is that somethin’ you should worry about?” Johnny asked and wagged his finger across the screen. “That little flash?”
“Honestly, I have no idea.” She shrugged. “But I don’t keep my laptop synced to my tablet or phone. So if someone thinks it’ll be fun to hack into my system, they’ll find nothing but my bookmarked websites and a few random poems.”
“Say what now?”
She waved him off. “It’s only me playing around. It’s nothing.”
“Stuff hypothetical hackers would see and run away from?”
“Very funny.”
“I thought you had a handle on keepin’ folks outta your…systems anyhow.” Johnny glanced at the photo of the private message on her phone. “Don’tcha?”
“Well, I know enough to be fairly certain I’m about eighty-five percent safe. I think.” Lisa paused to look at him. “But I’m not a pro, Johnny. Yeah, technically I’ve done this and gotten paid for it, but it’s not—”
“Slow down, darlin’.” He chuckled. “I get the gist.”
“Right.”
“Now, how come you’re only doin’ this now?” He nodded at the screen. “I thought you had the whole thing set up and ready to go.”
“Yeah, I could have. But I didn’t want to seem desperate by putting all this up immediately.”
“Uh-huh. Tryin’ to fit in with the cool thugs, huh?”
“Yes, Johnny. My greatest ambition in life is to make criminals you put behind bars like me.” With a chuckle, she read through the list of information the private criminal-screening invitation wanted from her and sighed. “Here we go.”
Name: Stephanie Wyndom
Age: 47
Height: 5’11”
Weight: 127 lbs
Gender: Female
Race: Half-Light Elf
Hair Color: Strawberry-blonde
“Naw, darlin’, don’t put that in there.”
“What? Why?”
“Come on? Who says that about their own damn hair, huh? That’d be like writing your age in as, ‘I’m forty-seven a half, but all my friends tell me I don’t look a day over thirty-five.’”
She elbowed him in the ribs. “I do not sound like that.”
“Sure. I was imitatin’ Stephanie.” He gave her a crooked smile. “There ain’t no way you’re forty-seven.”
“I’ll overlook that potentially unintended insult and tell you that none of the things I’m putting in here are real. How’s that?”
“Not all of it…”
She laughed. “Wow. I made a mistake in asking you to come watch.”
“All right, all right. I’ll shut it.” Johnny stood and went to the round side table beside the huge armchair for the whiskey he’d poured as soon as they got back to the hotel.
Squinting at him, Lisa changed her last entry and moved on.
Hair Color: Red
Eye Color: Green
Identifying Marks: None
Birthplace:
“Huh.” She picked her phone up and signed into the secure server for the Department’s shared files to open the case documents with her fake identity detailed in one place.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I had to remember where Stephanie was born.”
He moved closer to her again and snorted. “That’s one of those things most folks don’t forget. Are you sure you’re ready to head out and meet these bastards tomorrow night?”
“Johnny, it’s one detail. One. Now I know I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I won’t forget it.”
“No wonder you turned to a life of booze and crime.”
Lisa rolled her eyes and kept going.
Birthplace: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Most Recent Arrest: 2015
Reason for Requesting Access:
She paused at the last one. “I need to make this good.”
“You already know what they wanna hear, darlin’. Go ahead.”
“Well, give me a minute, okay? It has to look real.”
The dwarf nudged her shoulder lightly with the back of his hand. “Why don’t you answer it with a poem?”
“Stop.”
Reason for Requesting Access: I want to see that fucking dwarf draw his last breath.
“Well, shit.” He rumbled a deep laugh that drew a smile from her. “Tell ʼem how you truly feel.”
“No, I’m telling them how they feel. Is it too much?”
“I ain’t gonna make you change it.’
“Great. That’s everything but the picture. So…” Lisa picked up her phone again and dove into the FBI-manufactured documents of Stephanie’s nonexistent life to pull up the doctored mugshot. “That’ll work.”
“You’re gonna send ʼem your mugshot from the day I never took you in?”
“Well, it’s not like we had the time for a photo shoot.” She paused to study the fake image of Stephanie in an orange felon uniform, her light-red hair mussed and sticking out in all directions. “It looks like the real deal to me.”
“Sure. But the picture’s on your damn phone.”
Lisa turned toward him with wide eyes. “Honestly? Oh, you’re serious about that.”
“What?”
“Johnny, how do you stay in touch with the rest of the world on a regular basis?”
“I don’t.” The dwarf shrugged and took another sip. “No TV and no FacePage or Tweetie or whatever the hell.”
“Oh, jeez.” She closed her eyes and forced back a laugh. “Please tell me you at least know what email is.”
“’Course I do. But why the hell would anyone email me?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe to send an image file from their phone to your computer, for instance.” Which was exactly what she did with Stephanie Wyndom’s mugshot. “If you don’t know how any of this stuff works, why do you have a smartphone?”
“My last phone went overboard durin’ a hunt. The guy at the phone store pulled one over on me when he said he could put all my saved numbers into the new one.”
“It’s called the—you know what? Never mind.”
“Sure.” He frowned at her and kept drinking.
Lisa dragged the photo from her email and dropped it into the upload box on the private chat. “And that’s the end of it. Let’s see if good ol’ Stephanie stands up to the test.”
She clicked the send link, and the web page went completely blank.
“Is that it?”
“I guess so. I have no idea what comes next, so we’ll simply roll with it.” Lisa clicked around through the pathways she’d taken four days before and made her way easily to the site she wanted: Dwarf the Bounty Hunter: The Official Site – Your One-Stop Shop for All Things Johnny Walker, Bounty Hunting, and the Best Oriceran-Hosted Show on Earth!
“Aw, not this again.” Johnny leaned back on the couch with a grunt. “No one even knew about Or
iceran when that damn show was runnin’.”
“But it seems it became a cult classic sometime between the reveal of magic and…now. I’m checking to see what the official fans have to say about the show.”
“Ain’t my idea of a fun night, darlin’.”
“Well, you don’t have to look with me.”
“I won’t.” He stood and made his way out of the living area toward the kitchen across the hall.
At the sound of his approaching boots, Rex and Luther skittered out of the kitchen.
“Hey, Johnny.” Rex licked his muzzle and darted under the dining table before he curled in a ball on the floor.
“Don’t mind us,” Luther added as he ran toward the bedroom. “We’re only—aw, man. Johnny, do you have to keep this door closed all the time?”
“Y’all got no business in there unless we’re all passed out for the night.”
“What?” Lisa called.
“Only the hounds.” He refilled his whiskey glass and frowned at the empty counter beside the fridge. “Lisa?”
“Yeah?”
He opened the fridge door, peered inside briefly, then closed it again and turned. “Did you do somethin’ with those leftovers?”
“Nope.”
“Huh.” He took another sip, thoroughly confused, and turned slowly to scan the kitchen. I’d say the hounds got into my supper, but they ain’t neat about stolen food.
“You sure you brought it in, Johnny?” Luther asked and stretched out on his side in front of the closed bedroom door.
“Yeah, maybe you left it at the restaurant.”
“You were mad as hell, Johnny. Makes sense if you forgot. Happens to the best of us.”
“Y’all mind your own, ya hear?”
“Sure, Johnny.” Rex licked his forepaw.
“We’ll hang out,” Luther added as he rolled onto his back. “Chill. Keep you company.”
“Oh, whoa.” Lisa laughed and then clamped a hand over her mouth to suppress the rest of it. “This is insane.”
“I think we already settled that when you said there’s a damn website with my mug all over it.”
“If it wasn’t crazy before, Johnny, it is now.” Grinning, she scrolled through the newest posts on the page that had been recently created specifically for Dwarf the Bounty Hunter Season 8, Episode 1: Back in Black. “Did you know they’d already named the first episode?”