by Martha Carr
“Well, now there’s no way in hell I ain’t joinin’ ya.”
“But you stay outside—”
“I get it, darlin’. I hear you loud ʼn clear.”
“Good.” Lisa looked at both hounds curled up in front of the armchair and raised an eyebrow.
“What?” Luther lifted his head to stare at her. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Don’t look at me.” Rex sighed and closed his eyes. “It was probably Luther.”
Agent Breyer didn’t have to say it out loud. Johnny had already had the same thought. “Lisa and I are headin’ out, boys.”
Luther leapt to his feet, his tail wagging furiously. “All right! Yes! You know how hard it is to stay cooped up in the same room all day without a change of scenery?”
Rex stared up at his master with wide eyes.
“But no hounds on this particular outin’. Sorry.”
“What?” The smaller hound snorted and trotted after Johnny as the dwarf headed into the huge bedroom.
Lisa glanced at Rex and shrugged. “It’s better this way tonight.”
“Yeah, I know you know I can hear you, lady. But it’s not fair when I can’t argue.”
“What do you mean no hounds?” Luther whined. “Johnny, we’re a team!”
“I aim to stick to the outside where no one’s gettin’ a whiff of a dwarf spyin’ in on their secret hate meetin’,” Johnny muttered. “I ain’t gonna risk the two of y’all gettin’ found out too.”
“Aw, man. We can be quiet, Johnny.”
“Yeah, you already know that,” Rex added from the living area. “We’re great huntin’ dogs.”
“That ain’t the point this time, boys. No huntin’ and no sniffin’ out. Only watchin’ and waitin’, and that’ll be hard enough for me.” Johnny took his duffel bag from the closet and heaved it onto the bed to root through the gear he’d brought.
“This sucks.” Luther jumped up to settle both forepaws on the bed and sniffed at the black duffel bag. “You won’t be gone forever, will you?”
“Or we’ll shrivel up and die in here, Johnny.”
The dwarf snorted. “Few hours tops. Y’all ain’t got nothin’ to worry about.”
“Except there’s no grass in the hotel, Johnny. What if we have to…go?”
He smirked at Luther, then crossed the bedroom and opened the bathroom door. “Do it in the shower.” He turned to leave, then remembered the toilet and closed the lid with a loud clack. “And stay outta the john.”
“Johnny, did you tell them to do their business in the shower?” Lisa called from the living area.
“Uh-huh.”
Rex chuckled. “She’s getting very good at guessing the rest of the conversation when she can only hear half. Hey, lady. Try to read my mind. What am I thinking right now?”
Lisa stepped toward the open bedroom doorway to watch Johnny rummaging through his bag.
“Figures.” Rex snorted and lay his head back down on his forepaws. “No one even wants to try.”
Leaning against the doorway, Lisa watched Luther sniffing around the opposite side of the bed. “We can take them out before we go, Johnny.”
“No, we can’t.” Johnny strapped the belt loaded with explosive disks around his waist, then pulled out the pistol he’d repurposed into a tranquilizer. “How much you wanna bet Phil and his damn crew put someone out in the hall to watch for either one of us leavin’ this suite?”
“What? They wouldn’t do that.”
“Feel free to check, darlin’. I’m sure you’ll find somethin’.”
“No…” With a frown, she turned hesitantly away from the bedroom doorway and hurried across the suite to check through the small peephole in the front door.
Johnny smirked and took a six-inch square device from the bag.
“Wow.” Lisa reappeared in the doorway and ran a hand through her currently red curls. “I honestly didn’t expect that.”
“Someone camped right outside the door?”
“Yeah. Cody with his camera and the woman they have with them. The one with the bandana. What’s her name?”
“I have no idea.” Tucking the tranquilizer into its holster which he’d slung over the belt of disks, Johnny carried the black device into the living room. “But we ain’t getting’ out that way without the whole damn team refusin’ to let us go on our own.”
She wrinkled her nose. “If we told them what we were doing, though—”
“Darlin’, those idiots followed us into an active shootout at the senator’s house. They ain’t concerned about gettin’ into a little danger—or startin’ it—as long as they get their damn shot.”
“So we have to sneak out of our hotel. Is that what you’re saying?”
A dark chuckle escaped the dwarf as he slid the dining table away from the window. He jerked the window open as far as it would go and punched the screen out. “Sneakin’ out. Sure. It’s one thing I’ve always been good at.”
Lisa stared at the open window that allowed in a full, bay-air breeze with nothing in the way. “Seriously? We simply climb through the window like a couple of thieves?”
“’Course not. Like a couple of professionals who need to go get a job done without the paparazzi makin’ a mess of the whole damn thing.” Johnny returned to the center of the living area and set the square black device on the floor in front of Rex. “And this is for y’all.”
Luther stepped up immediately to sniff at the device. “What is this, Johnny? Doesn’t smell like treats.”
“Doesn’t look like anything for hounds at all,” Rex replied.
“I got a job for y’all, boys. While you’re stayin’ here.”
Rex perked up at the idea of being more useful. “What’s the job?”
“We can do whatever you want, Johnny. We’re your hounds.”
“It’s a pedal.” Johnny nodded at the device. “Anyone comes knockin’ on this door lookin’ for me, y’all make sure to press the damn thing, understand?”
“Press?”
“You mean paw?” Luther did exactly that and stepped on the black device.
“I ain’t interested.”
“Oh, shit!” The smaller hound sprang away from the pedal with a yelp. “Johnny! How the hell did you get inside that little box?”
The dwarf chuckled. “It’s only my voice. It’s looped with a few Johnnyisms if you gotta use ʼem but make sure you keep the barkin’ up real loud too, all right? It keeps most folks too confused to realize Johnny Walker’s repeatin’ himself with the same six lines.”
“Huh.” Luther sniffed the pedal, then pawed it again.
“Get outta here before I come throw you out.”
Rex tittered. “That’s a good one, Johnny.”
“Yeah, definitely you.”
Lisa smiled at the dwarf in confusion. “You came to Baltimore prepared to use that, didn’t you?”
Johnny raised his eyebrows. “’Course I did. I used this all the damn time back when Nelson thought it was his inalienable right to knock on my door at any damn hour he pleased. Granted, that was before I had a couple of coonhounds to put the fear of Johnny Walker in him. It’ll do fine for the film crew.”
“You can count on us, Johnny.” Rex stood to sniff the device. “No one will know you guys snuck out. Promise.”
“Yeah, we won’t say a thing,” Luther added. “Not like anyone would hear it anyway. They won’t get past us, Johnny.”
“All right. It’s only a few hours, boys. Y’all be good.”
“You got it, Johnny.”
“We’re on it like my paw on this—” Luther stepped on the pedal and backed away.
“I ain’t fixin’ to repeat myself. Now git!”
“Ha-ha. Johnny, that is you.”
The dwarf shooed his hound away from the pedal. “Not until we’re gone, huh? I ain’t tryin’ to explain why I was havin’ conversations with myself all night.”
Lisa glanced at her watch. “We need to get going.”
She glanced at the open window with Baltimore’s cityscape lit up across the darkness outside and shrugged. “Be my guest.”
“Well it’s my suite, so it’s technically the other way round. But sure.” Johnny crawled onto the windowsill and moved gingerly along the small ledge toward the first-story roof protruding from the back of the building.
Lisa ducked through the window behind him and looked into the parking lot. “At least we’re only on the fourth floor.”
Chapter Twenty
After Johnny disappeared around the corner of the building with a promise to stay out of sight and not cause any trouble, Lisa glanced at the marquee over the front door. A staffing agency’s main office isn’t too bad. At least they’re not holding this Johnny-hater meeting in the basement of a church or something.
She opened the front door and stepped inside in her full redheaded Stephanie illusion. The front room of the staffing agency was empty and all the lights turned off, but some were on down the hall, so she followed them and the sound of low, agitated voices.
When she stepped into the room off the hall, the conversation stopped. A dozen heads turned toward her—magicals and humans—and the massive shifter seated at the head of the long conference table nodded at her. “Look who finally decided to show up.”
A witch in a thick black hoodie snarled at Lisa. “Did you have a hard time getting away from your new boyfriend without him noticing?”
The agent took the last empty chair around the table and didn’t bother to meet the witch’s gaze. We were right. The Red Boar’s not here but I’m willing to bet that shifter’s his mouthpiece. She sat and nodded at the shifter. “I hope you didn’t get started without me.”
“You’re not the one who put this together, Stephanie.” He sneered when he said her name. “Merely another invite.”
She glanced around the table at the disgruntled ex-bounties and recognized most of them from their photos under the episode descriptions on the Johnny Walker fan site. This is surreal.
“Man, that fucking dwarf must’ve lost most of his brain cells if he brought an ex fucking con on with him for this joke of a show,” a half-Kilomea grunted. He picked at his long eyeteeth with the pointed end of a shish-kabob stick, his takeout box open and empty on the table in front of him.
Lisa shrugged. “He lost a lot of things fifteen years ago.”
“Not nearly as much as the rest of us.” A crystal woman seated across the table tossed her long braids over her shoulder. “That’s for damn sure.”
“And not nearly as much as he deserves,” the agent added with a firm nod. “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
Two gnomes closest to the shifter at the head of the table—one with an eyepatch and the other with his left ear missing—lowered their heads together for a whispered conversation. The one with the eyepatch sneered. “Do you expect us to believe you’ve been running around Baltimore with that damn bounty hunter for days and don’t give a shit about what happens to him?”
She gestured toward the shifter. “I sent all my details exactly like the rest of you. At least I assume the vetting process was the same given that we all found each other in a place where most people—and magicals—do what we can to stay anonymous. I don’t know about you, but I’m very sure the shifter, whoever he is, wouldn’t have told me how to get here if I didn’t check out.”
“Kellen,” the shifter grumbled. “If you need a damn name, call me that.”
“Okay, Kellen.” She folded her arms and glared at the gnomes. “I thought we were here for the bounty hunter with his head so far up his ass he still thinks he’s Oriceran’s gift to Earth, not to interrogate me.”
A few ex-cons chuckled at that. The gnomes huddled together again for another unheard conversation but didn’t say anything else.
At least that got their attention. Whatever Johnny’s picking up with that spy bug, I’ll have to remind him later that I don’t mean any of this.
“But I’m having a hard time buying all this,” the witch in the hoodie added, her glare still extremely hostile. “We’ve all seen the clips that stuck-up prick put all over the Internet. It looks like you two are cozier than you want anyone to believe. And I don’t think I believe you.”
“And that’s why I’m on the show with him now and you aren’t. Because I’m smart enough to know that the best position to turn on someone and rip their life apart from the inside out is from right next to them. Up close and personal. The dwarf trusts me enough for that. And when I’m sure he trusts me with his life, that’s the best time to strike.” Lisa leaned sideways in her chair and raised an eyebrow at Kellen. “I assume you guys didn’t do a meet-and-greet before I arrived.”
“It’s not exactly something we need,” a half-wizard interjected and smoothed his oiled hair away from his temples with both hands. “Our identities were plastered all over the TV for months after that shithead dwarf put us away. But you haven’t shown up anywhere.”
“Look, he didn’t break into bounty hunting when he started that stupid show,” Lisa told him. “That was merely something he added to his fucked-up resume. And I happen to be on his bounty list that predates his idiotic scrounging for ratings and his sucking up to the goddamn FBI when they pulled him in as a regular contractor. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to see him bleed any less than the rest of you.”
“So prove it, then,” the Crystal woman said. “I wanna hear what you think you know about him that earns you the right to sit here and call the rest of us idiots.”
“Fine.” Lisa folded her arms. “What do you want to know?”
“When did he bag you?”
“2016.”
“Doing what?”
“I’d lifted a new Mercedes in LA and got it as far as Kansas City before I ran out of my stash and had to re-up.” Lisa sneered at the other ex-cons. “The fucker picked me up right after that and didn’t even give me the chance to get right again. He took all eighty bucks worth of what I’d just scored too.”
“How the hell’d he even find out about you?” one gnome snarled.
“The owner of the Mercedes dealership was a wizard and must have gotten word of the bastard’s skills through the grapevine. You know how it was before Earth even knew about us and magic.”
The cons grumbled amongst themselves and glanced at Kellen for confirmation. The shifter shrugged. “Like she said, she checks out.”
It’s a good thing I spent time researching my fake past. Lisa pressed her lips together in irritation. “So can we quit focusing on my fuckups and get down to the real issue here or what?”
“You’re not running the show, Light Elf,” the half-wizard snarled. “So shut the hell up and let the big dogs handle the meeting, huh?”
“Oh, sure. All you big dogs have considerable personal information about Johnny Walker already, right?” She gestured to include those present and smirked. “You’ve merely been waiting however many years to use it in a fun group setting. I get it.”
“This bitch’s head is as big as the dwarf’s,” the witch spat. “You think you’re better than the rest of us.”
“Well, you assholes aren’t exactly making it hard for me.”
The woman leapt from her chair and leaned over the table and black-and-silver light illuminated in a sharp-tipped vortex within her palm. She snarled at Lisa. “Say that again.”
“Sit down!” Kellen barked. “All of you need to shut the fuck up. This isn’t about who’s got the biggest criminal sack, understand?”
With a hiss, the witch snuffed out her unused attack spell and slumped into her chair.
The shifter shook his head and glared at every face around the table. “We’re here because the guy I answer to who reached out to all of you on that fan site wants to hear what each of you brings to the table. If you don’t have anything useful to add to what he’s looking for, you can get fucked. Understan
d?”
Those present subsided, the silence punctured only by a few grumbles.
At least I’m playing the part. Lisa focused her gaze on the shifter. “You’re talking about Lemonhead, right?”
“You saw the message boards,” he replied flippantly. “It was a ballsy move to insert yourself there without having any real ties the way the rest of us do.”
“I saw an opportunity and I took it.” She shrugged. “And it worked, obviously.”
“Uh-huh.” The shifter studied her speculatively, then slid both his hands onto the table and drummed his fingertips on the surface. “So why don’t you take this as another opportunity to tell us what you know about Johnny Walker. What makes you useful?”
Lisa glanced at his drumming fingers and tried to hold back a smirk when the thick silver ring on the shifter’s finger caught the overhead light and flashed red. The shape carved on it was the same profile of a boar she and Johnny had seen on so many drug baggies and tattooed on a random low-level drug dealer in Portland. If he’s been on the Red Boar’s payroll this long, I bet at least one of those red stones is a real ruby.
“Sure.” She took a deep breath and scanned the faces of the other criminals around her. “It wasn’t on the YouTube clips, and it won’t be on the episode, either as per Johnny’s orders. But I know where he lives in Florida. I’ve been inside his house.”
The witch scoffed and shook her head. “But you won’t tell us where?”
“Everglades City, right on the main strip and backed up to the swamp. I’d give you an address but I didn’t think I’d have to bring that information with me. And no, I haven’t memorized it.”
“But we’re not in Florida,” the gnome missing an ear piped up. “We’re in Baltimore. The fucking dwarf’s in Baltimore. We shouldn’t wait until he goes home and gets nice and cozy before we move.”
“And that’s why I’m here—why we’re all here, right?”