text: Senator Richard Hugh lived in Guilford, and after the case file's description of Yarren Brork's multiple visits to the senator's home in the last few weeks, that seemed like the next best place to look.
  
  Johnny killed the truck's engine in front of Hugh's large, Victorian-style house and nodded. "If the Kilomea ain't inside, I reckon Mr. Senator will be more'n happy to illuminate whatever we're missin'."
  
  "Do you think he'll know where Brork is?"
  
  "Maybe." He shut his door, whistled for the hounds to jump out of the truck, and hooked his thumbs through his belt loops as he started up the clean, smooth driveway. "Not that I trust a word comin' from a politician's mouth, but there's an art to readin' between the lines."
  
  The doors of the film crew's vans rumbled shut as everyone took their places to follow Johnny toward the front door.
  
  "Stop, stop, stop." Howie pointed at them with his cane. "Not here."
  
  "This is part of the show, old man—"
  
  "Sure. If you want to get your asses majorly sued by a Maryland-raised senator. Turn the cameras off." Howie snapped his fingers at Cody. "I mean it."
  
  "And how are we supposed to get enough for this episode?" Phil blustered. "If we keep getting told to turn the cameras off, we won't have anything to—"
  
  "Oh, come on and quit your yammering." The old man rolled his eyes. "We stay here, and I'll make sure Johnny stops to answer some questions before we move on. Fair enough?"
  
  Phil rolled his eyes and scowled at Johnny, Stephanie, and the hounds walking up the driveway. "All right. Everyone stays. Keep the senator's house out of it. We'll wait."
  
  "Whoa-ho-ho, Johnny." Rex sniffed at the rows of hedges along the driveway. "This place has everything."
  
  "It's huge." Luther snapped at a small white butterfly flittering from flower to flower in the bushes. "Hey, if we get this Kilomea, do you think the two-leg who lives here will be grateful enough to give us snacks?"
  
  "Only way to thank a hound, Johnny."
  
  "Yeah, and belly rubs."
  
  "Heads in the game, boys." Johnny's boots thudded onto the wide covered porch with a two-person swing hanging from chains at the far end. "We're here for a chat. If Yarren happens to be here at the same time, we'll catch him in the—"
  
  "Back up, asshole!" The muffled shout came from inside. "This will not go well for you if you don't start listening!"
  
  Johnny pounded on the door with a fist. "Richard Hugh?"
  
  Someone roared inside the house, followed by the thump and bump of a scuffle before something shattered.
  
  "Hey! What the hell? This wasn't part of the deal—"
  
  A gunshot went off, and Johnny snorted. "Fuck privacy, then."
  
  He pulled two black explosive beads from his pocket, crushed them, and stuck them on either side of the doorknob. When they detonated, the brass knob popped in its setting. He kicked the door in before the piece of hardware landed on the porch.
  
  Out on the street, Phil circled his finger in the air and took off running. "We gotta get this, people. Let's go!"
  
  Johnny and Lisa raced inside and the hounds darted through the foyer with them. "Definitely Kilomea here too, Johnny."
  
  "Yeah. Unless it's the senator."
  
  Johnny turned at the sound of light footsteps trailing behind him. Cody darted through the doorway first, his camera rolling, quickly followed by Dave with the boom and two other crewmembers trying to squeeze through all at the same time. "Do you have any brains at all? This is real violence. Get the fuck outta here!"
  
  Two more shots were fired at the back of the house, followed by more shouts. Johnny sneered at the film crew, then spun to race toward the noises with Lisa and the hounds.
  
  "Get him down, man!"
  
  "This fucker's lost his mind!"
  
  "Drop the gun. Hey, hey—"
  
  Removing her Stephanie illusion, Lisa drew her firearm from her shoulder holster beneath her lightweight overshirt. The second she and Johnny reached the end of the long hallway and darted into the massive living room in the back, she raised her weapon and shouted, "FBI! Drop your weapon and put your hands in the air!"
  
  "Get them!" The shouting man pointed at two Kilomea and a half-wizard fuming at him from across the living room. "Get those animals out of my house!"
  
  "Animals? You're the one who—"
  
  "Hey!" Lisa shouted. "I said drop your weapons!"
  
  But there were no weapons to be dropped. The only firearm lay in the center of the living room between the portly Senator Hugh and his blackmailers.
  
  The half-wizard hissed and summoned a fireball in one hand before he hurled it toward Hugh. Lisa's fireball was faster and struck the assailant in the wrist to make his attack fly wild. His spell streaked into the bookshelf behind the senator's head and he turned toward her with a snarl.
  
  Both Kilomea roared and turned toward Johnny and the hounds. "We got ʼem, Johnny."
  
  "Which one's the one we want?"
  
  "Which one of you is Yarren?" Johnny shouted.
  
  The closest Kilomea with flecks of white tipping the fur around his face charged and swung a huge fist to knock the bounty hunter aside. He ducked and spun behind the giant magical to deliver a perfectly aimed blow to his kidney.
  
  The other blackmailer bellowed and flailed, dragging Luther through the air by the hound's jaws clamped around his wrist. His opposite leg kicked out and struggled against Rex's vicious grip as the bigger hound whipped his head and jerked his target's ankle in every direction.
  
  Lisa ducked another fireball from the half-wizard and raised her firearm again. "This isn't the way you want to go! Hands up!"
  
  Rather than comply, he darted behind the long white leather sectional and hurled a fireball at Johnny.
  
  The dwarf yanked the detonating beads out of his pocket, crushed a handful, and slapped some of the gooey substance on the back of the white-tipped Kilomea's legs and the rest on his huge back before he leapt away, drew his utility knife, and flicked it open.
  
  In a series of sputtering pops, the crushed beads detonated one by one and threw the large magical forward with a grunt. He collided with the glass coffee table and shattered it to spill shards over the Persian rug and the wooden floors.
  
  Ducking another fireball, Johnny raced after the downed Kilomea, leapt onto his back, and wrapped a thick forearm around his target's throat. He pressed the tip of the blade against the side of his neck and leaned down to mutter, "If you ain't Yarren, I ain't here for you."
  
  "What the hell do you want?"
  
  "Ah, shit!" The second Kilomea stumbled back into the half-Elf, still flailing with two fifty-five-pound coonhounds attached to his limbs. Both magicals fell in a pile of fur, teeth, and grunts.
  
  Rex and Luther leapt off him and skittered out of the way before they turned to snarl, their hackles raised. "Can't crush us that easily, man."
  
  "Yeah." Luther licked his muzzle repeatedly and snorted. "But I think you might have fleas."
  
  "Don't move." Lisa hovered over the recovering half-wizard and the hound-bitten Kilomea. "I mean it."
  
  "We almost had it taken care of," the half-wizard snarled. "And you fucked the whole thing up."
  
  Johnny looked at the guy and flexed his arm around the Kilomea's throat. This big guy had better be the right guy. Instinct told him it was Yarren. "Sure. Y'all almost had the senator murdered right here in his home. Is that what you were takin' care of?"
  
  "What?" The downed Kilomea raised his hands in surrender to Lisa's firearm and shook his head. "Man, you have this whole thing—"
  
  "These brutes have been stalking me for the last three weeks!" Hugh shouted and fumbled with his thin-framed glasses to straighten them on the bridge of his nose. "Take care of it!"
  
  "Well, hold on now." Johnny turned to Hugh and flicked the point of his blade toward him. "We have this under control, Senator. You let us—"
  
  "If they're still breathing, it isn't under control!" Hugh stormed across the living room and snatched the wayward pistol off the floor. His house shoes crunched across the shattered glass of his coffee table as he approached Johnny and the Kilomea he'd tackled. The man lifted the gun toward the Kilomea's head and thumbed the hammer back. "I can't even pay someone to do a job the right way."
  
  "Johnny, watch out!" Luther ran up the seated Kilomea's back and launched off the magical's shoulders toward the angry senator.
  
  The dwarf rolled aside, ducked beneath Hugh's outstretched arm and the pistol at the end of it, and delivered a sharp blow to the underside of the man's forearm. The weapon jerked up to the ceiling and fired to rain plaster and wooden splinters around the living room. Luther's front paws landed on the senator's chest a second before Johnny disarmed the man with a deft twist of his wrist. The firearm skittered across the floor and took shards of glass with it.
  
  "And stay down!" Rex shouted from behind the couch as Luther landed on Senator Hugh's chest. The impact knocked the man's glasses completely off his face, and he wheezed at the extra weight pinning him down.
  
  "Point a gun at the wrong two-leg again, asshole, and you'll get much more than that!" Luther snarled in the man's face and snapped his jaws an inch from the senator's nose.
  
  "That's enough." Johnny snapped his fingers, and the hound stepped off the wheezing man's chest. When the Kilomea behind him stirred, the bounty hunter turned sideways and pointed his knife at the magical's throat again. "You too. Every one of y'all's lost your damn minds."
  
  Groaning, Hugh slapped the ground beside him until he finally found his glasses and fumbled with a shaking hand to put them on. "You," he seethed at Johnny. "You're the one they sent?"
  
  "Maybe. And you're the one who should be grateful for a hand, not reachin' for someone else's gun to shoot a guy when he's down."
  
  "That's his gun!" the half-wizard shouted. "He pulled it on us."
  
  Johnny glanced at Lisa and nodded. "Go ahead and check ʼem, darlin'."
  
  "Arms up." With one hand, Lisa kept her service weapon trained on the half-wizard. With the other, she patted him down, then gestured with her weapon for him to stand back. "You too, big guy."
  
  The second Kilomea nursed his hound-shredded forearm as he rose to his feet with a grunt and slowly raised both arms. "We didn't come here to shoot anyone. Honest."
  
  "Someone had to take it to a whole new level," the half-wizard muttered and glared at Hugh.
  
  "They're clean," Lisa said.
  
  "All right, enough." Johnny reached toward the senator and offered him a hand up.
  
  The man scoffed and pushed to his feet without assistance. "Every single one of you can't send your kind to do anything right the first time. Hell, not even the second or third time."
  
  Johnny blinked at him. "What was that?"
  
  "You heard me. Even the damn FBI's been compromised. And now you're taking the side of these brainless, invading ingrates!"
  
  "You piece of shit," Yarren roared and launched himself toward the senator, both hairy, claw-tipped hands stretched toward the man's throat.
  
  "Hey!" Johnny punched the Kilomea in the gut and whipped his knife up to point the tip at Senator Hugh's throat. "Now I'm here to keep y'all from tearing each other apart. And I ain't gettin' paid for that."
  
  Hugh snarled at him. "Do your job."
  
  "Oh, sure. I aim to do exactly that, Senator, and without you gettin' in the way. Luther. Keep an eye on our host."
  
  "You got it, Johnny. He tries anything funny, I'll jump him again."
  
  "Ha-ha." Rex barked behind the couch. "'Cause you jumped on him."
  
  "You got it over there, darlin'?" Johnny nodded at Lisa.
  
  "Yeah." She adjusted her grip on the pistol. "Rex has my back."
  
  "You know it, lady."
  
  "Anyone moves," the dwarf added, wagging a finger from Hugh to the three magicals who'd invaded the man's home, "I can't promise that any of y'all are leavin' this house in one piece. Understand?"
  
  No one responded, but that was all the answer he needed. With a grunt, he headed down the hall toward the garage.
  
  "W-where are you going?" Yarren growled after him.
  
  "Findin' a way to make sure everyone's comfortable. We're gonna hunker down and have us a little chat. Sit tight."