text: With a coffee caddy in one hand and a massive bag of assorted pastries tucked under the other arm, Johnny stepped out of the elevators on the fourth floor and grinned. It only took half an hour. She's probably only now startin' to roll over and wake up with no idea this dwarf brought a damn feast.
  
  His whistle echoed around him as he hurried down the hall, and he chuckled when he stopped in front of Lisa's hotel room. After switching the bag of pastries to under his other arm, he knocked briskly on the door. "It's me. Johnny."
  
  There was no reply.
  
  "Come on, darlin'. I know you're an early riser. Open up, huh? I brought you somethin'."
  
  He waited for ten seconds and when he didn't hear a sound on the other side of the door, he retrieved his phone from his back pocket and pulled up Lisa's number. The line rang six times, then went straight to voicemail.
  
  "Huh." The dwarf turned and scanned the empty hallway. Maybe she had the same idea as I did. We must have missed each other on the way.
  
  He crossed the hall and had to set everything down to pull his wallet out and flash his key card at the door to his suite. The green light blinked and he opened the door and propped it open with one boot while he gathered the drink caddy and the bag of pastries again. When he held them securely, he slipped inside and let the door click shut behind him.
  
  "I'm back, boys. Hey, did y'all hear Lisa steppin' out while I was gone?" Johnny placed the pastries on the half-wall of the kitchen beside his tranquilizer gun. "Boys? I swear, if I find y'all drinkin' outta the toilet again, you're fixin' for a real talkin' to after this."
  
  He set the drink caddy down too, peeled the lid off his black coffee, and took the to-go cup with him down the hall.
  
  "Rex. Luther. What are you up to?"
  
  When he received no reply, he felt a faint prickle of alarm.
  
  Taking a tentative sip of his piping-hot coffee, Johnny walked down the hall with a frown and peered around the corner of the wall blocking the huge living area from view. "Whatever game you're playin', it's time to cut it out. I need to—"
  
  He froze in the entrance to the living area and took in the scene in a split second.
  
  Both hounds lay sprawled on the floor in front of the massive armchair with its back to the wide windows. Neither of them moved but for the barest rise and fall of their bellies, and in the armchair sat the one magical Johnny would've recognized anywhere.
  
  "Welcome back." The Red Boar grinned and his gray, burn-marred skin drew tight around the corners of his mouth on his squashed face. He glanced at the pistol in his hand, which was already pointed casually at Johnny's chest.
  
  "What the fuck did you do to my hounds?"
  
  "I didn't want them to raise the alarm." The intruder shrugged. "It was fairly easy to disable them when their master wasn't around to shout commands."
  
  Johnny gritted his teeth and took inventory of the room. All I have on hand is a fuckin' cup of coffee. He's likely to blow my brains out before I can put a hand on my knife. Shit.
  
  He cleared his throat and scowled at the huge, scarred magical in the armchair, which looked like it had been built specifically for an asshole of that size. "What do you want?"
  
  "The first part's very simple." The Red Boar cocked his head, that twisted grin unwavering. "I want to know why you're working again."
  
  "Huh. If you're waitin' to hear me say I came outta retirement to bag your ass, you're gonna be disappointed."
  
  "No. You had no idea who I was until we met face to face in New York." The gray magical chuckled. "So what got you back in the game?"
  
  "That job in New York. You merely happened to be the motherfucker who wanted a shifter girl badly enough to fight me for her. I happened to be better and faster."
  
  "I'll give you that one, Johnny. Sure." The armchair groaned beneath the Red Boar's weight as he shifted and crossed one leg over the other. "That shifter girl doesn't matter anymore. But why don't you tell me why you're hunting me, now."
  
  "Who said I was?"
  
  "The look on your face. Which I wasn't sure I'd see but now you've given me everything I need. The Level-Six Bounty Hunter, Johnny Walker the pissed-off dwarf, has some kind of personal vendetta, isn't that right?"
  
  Johnny studied the magical, then slowly took a sip of his coffee. He came here for a fuckin' heart-to-heart. Sure. We can play all cards out on the table.
  
  "All right. I want your head on a fuckin' silver platter. Is that good enough for ya?"
  
  "Because I tried to outbid everyone at that auction?" The Red Boar cocked his head and clicked his tongue. "It took me a while to get out from under that chandelier, but I hardly think one night at a Monsters Ball is enough of a reason for you to hate me so much."
  
  "No. That simply started the ball rollin'." He glared at the huge magical's oddly shaped face and glowing eyes. "You killed my little girl."
  
  "Oh…" The Red Boar clicked his tongue again and inclined his head slightly as if in thought. "There have been so many, Johnny. You'll have to be a little more specific."
  
  "Dawn Walker. Twelve years old. In RedHero Comics on October 27th, 2005. Creed Vilguard and Prentiss Avalon. Your fuckin' goons shot my daughter in the back of the head. Does that ring enough bells?"
  
  "Sure." The gray bastard chuckled. "But Vilguard and Avalon were caught, weren't they? The shifter's finger pulled the trigger, and he's spent the last fifteen years behind bars—"
  
  "It ain't the shifter I give a shit about. It's the motherfucker who told him to pull the trigger."
  
  The Red Boar grinned. "You sound so sure."
  
  "I am."
  
  "Good. Yes, dwarf. I was in the shop that night. Your daughter had some serious guts on her. I'll give her that. Trying to pull that sniveling human out of the clutches of his own mistakes."
  
  "And you had the shifter gun down a little girl!"
  
  "Can you blame me?"
  
  "I can and I do."
  
  With the pistol still aimed unwaveringly at Johnny's chest, the Red Boar gazed around the hotel suite as he stretched his neck. "I had to take certain precautions, Johnny. A little dwarf girl barging into that comic book store and demanding the release of an idiotic man playing drug dealer? She dropped your name, more or less, and I wasn't about to give you an open invitation to make good on her naïve promise."
  
  "You did anyway."
  
  "Because I'm the one who gave the order to shoot the little girl who said her daddy's a bounty hunter? I suppose that gives you a certain right to want to see me hang."
  
  Johnny's fist clenched at his side and the coffee sloshed in the cup in his other hand as it trembled. "I want far more than that, you bastard."
  
  "Oh, I'm sure. So do I. You have to know by now how many of us truly hate you, Johnny."
  
  "It don't mean—"
  
  A knock came at the front door. "Johnny? It's Phil. I'm trying to start over, man. Come on. We're ready to keep rolling."
  
  Johnny didn't move.
  
  "Howie's out here with me," Phil added dryly. "I thought he knows best how to get you out of your shell."
  
  "Johnny?" Howie said as if to verify his presence.
  
  Every time that damn director shows up is the wrong fuckin' time.
  
  "Tell them to get lost," the Red Boar growled.
  
  The dwarf's lip curled into a smirk. "And disappoint all my avid fans?"
  
  "We saw Stephanie stepping out front earlier," Phil continued, "so we thought this might be a good time to get some one-on-one Johnny time. Come on. Open up."
  
  The Red Boar swung the barrel of his pistol toward the front door before he returned it to Johnny's chest. "Go answer the door. Tell them you'll give them what they want later and that they're not to disturb you. Then you and I can finish this conversation in peace."
  
  Not fuckin' likely.
  
  With a grimace, Johnny turned slowly and walked stiffly toward the hallway.
  
  "Johnny, is everything okay?" Howie called. "You're very quiet in there."
  
  "I'm comin'," he grumbled. "Hold your goddamn horses."
  
  In the blink of an eye, he dropped the coffee cup, whipped his utility knife from his belt, and flicked it open. He spun and tossed the blade toward the bastard seated in his armchair. The pistol in the Red Boar's hand fired and he roared as the blade buried itself in the meaty muscle of his shoulder.
  
  Johnny smirked but it faded when he moved his hand to his belly just beneath his ribs and he felt warm, sticky wetness there. "Fuck."
  
  The pain came, and his entire gut clenched in agony.
  
  "Johnny!" It sounded like Lisa, but that didn't make sense.
  
  He fumbled for an explosive disk at his belt and tried to step toward the door, but his legs gave out. The dwarf fell with a grunt, and the door to his hotel suite burst open.