text: "Okay, Johnny." Phil stood off to the side as the crew rolled cameras and zeroed in on the bounty hunter's scowl. "We'll simply ask a few questions about the case and going to Baltimore. Don't give us too many specifics. Parts of this will get to the east coast before you do."
  
  The man sniggered and Johnny rolled his eyes. Beside him, Lisa in her Stephanie disguise crossed one leg over the other and leaned back in the Adirondack chair, her arms resting casually on the wide armrests.
  
  "So answer honestly. That was the best part of the show back in the day. You didn't hold back so feel free to let it all fly now, okay?"
  
  "Uh-huh."
  
  The woman with the bandanna approached Johnny with a makeup pallet and a sponge in hand. "I need to—"
  
  "No, you don't." He glared at her from his chair.
  
  She returned his scowl, glanced at Phil, then snapped the compact shut and stepped away.
  
  "Here we go." The director stepped back and spun a finger in the air.
  
  A man with a thin line of a beard and mustache trimmed around his mouth and jaw stepped forward and lowered the boom mic over Johnny's head. The dwarf jerked his head away from the equipment and growled. "Man, get that fuckin' thing and your douchebag beard outta my face."
  
  At a nod from the director, the man stepped back two paces.
  
  Phil nodded. "So tell us about this new—"
  
  "Hold up." Johnny stood with a grunt and took the shotgun with him as he strode down the side of the house.
  
  "Wait. Where are you going?"
  
  "We're missin' somethin'."
  
  The director frowned at Lisa. "Will it be like this the whole time?"
  
  She smiled and nodded slowly. "Probably. But you guys are the professionals. I'd say roll with it."
  
  "Yeah, we're flexible." The man scratched his head and focused on the side of the house where Johnny had disappeared.
  
  When the dwarf returned, he'd lowered the shotgun at his side in one hand and now had a neon-pink plastic yard flamingo cradled under the other arm. Lisa snorted.
  
  The hounds trotted behind him and sniffed at the long plastic feet and the stake at the end of the flamingo. "What is this?"
  
  "Looks like a bird, Johnny."
  
  "Smells like dirt."
  
  "Hush." He returned to the interview setup, drove the flamingo stake into the soil beneath the grass, and gave it a good hard push to be sure it stayed in place. That done, he sat beside Lisa again and settled the shotgun across his lap.
  
  Cody looked up from behind the camera with wide eyes and shook his head at Phil.
  
  "Let me see." The director headed toward the camera to check the shot and grimaced. "That's too close. Johnny, we need to move this somewhere—"
  
  "It ain't movin'."
  
  Phil glanced at the shotgun in the dwarf's lap. "It's taking up a quarter of the frame here."
  
  "You can land in Baltimore with or without your leg blown off at the groin, pal. Your choice."
  
  Clearing his throat, the director clapped a hand on Cody's shoulder and nodded. "Roll with it."
  
  "Okay…"
  
  Lisa looked at the dwarf in exasperation. "What are you doing?"
  
  "Makin' it my own." He shifted in the chair. "And if Ronnie gets wind of this damn show filmin' here in the Glades, I ain't never gonna hear the end of how that flamingo didn't get its time in the spotlight."
  
  "Huh. That's an odd promise to make someone before you even knew this was happening."
  
  "It's unspoken code down here, darlin'. I don't expect you to understand."
  
  With a wry chuckle, she tossed the curls of her illusioned strawberry-blonde hair over her shoulder and nodded at the camera. "We're ready."
  
  Rex and Luther sniffed around the chairs and moved between them and the film crew. "Hey, Rex. How come we never noticed all this out here in the yard before?"
  
  "What?"
  
  "Chairs. Cameras. All these shoes." Luther's snout bumped against a woman's shoe and he snorted as she stepped away. "It's like it showed up outta nowhere."
  
  "Boys." Johnny snapped his fingers. "That's enough."
  
  "Oh, hey. Yeah." Phil grinned. "Let's get the dogs in the shot too. That'll be great."
  
  "Yes!" Luther barked and trotted to his master's side. "You hear that, Johnny? He wants us in the shot. We're in the shot!"
  
  "We're gonna be on TV!" Rex spun in a tight circle, then raced toward his master and skidded to a halt in front of the chairs. Lisa laughed as the larger hound spun and sat, panting.
  
  Luther sat but looked at Johnny instead. "This is the coolest thing I've done all day, Johnny." His tail swept across the ground, scattering dry grass and twigs and dirt.
  
  The dwarf sniffed and gestured to the crew. "The camera's that way."
  
  "What? Oh!" Luther spun to face the right way and sat again. "Awesome."
  
  "Okay, here we go." Phil twirled his finger in the air again. "Johnny, you're heading out to Baltimore for a new bounty. Tell us about it."
  
  Johnny glowered at the center of the large camera lens and cleared his throat. "Well, some asshole's blackmailin' a…person of interest. It sounds like he's makin' a mess of his target's life, so I aim to clean up and throw the bastard out with the trash."
  
  Phil pumped a fist in the air and grinned. "Is it a human bounty or magical this time?"
  
  Lisa—as almost-redheaded Stephanie—leaned forward toward the camera. "Johnny doesn't discriminate when it comes to doing his job."
  
  Luther sniggered. "Or ladies."
  
  Johnny snapped his fingers. "That's right. If a criminal's doin' enough to get my attention, I don't give a shit who they are, what they are, or how smart they think they are. I take ʼem down and turn ʼem in."
  
  "Excellent. And what's the price on this bounty in Baltimore?"
  
  The dwarf glanced briefly at Lisa and she shrugged. "Naw, I ain't talkin' ʼbout money."
  
  "Okay. Is it more or less than your usual bounties? I mean back in the day, of course."
  
  "It's enough, okay?" He scowled at Phil and not at the camera now. "Move on."
  
  "Sure. How do you feel about going into this one, Johnny? From what you know, would you say this will be an easy retrieval, or will you have to work a little harder—"
  
  "Who wrote these questions?"
  
  The director looked startled. "I'm sorry?"
  
  "They're shit. Look, I ain't takin' cases 'cause they're easy or hard. I take ʼem 'cause somethin' needs doin' and I'm the one to do it."
  
  Beside him, Lisa lifted her chin toward the camera and smiled sweetly.
  
  Luther lowered himself onto his belly and stared at the device. "TV's so boring."
  
  "All right. We'll move on." Phil cleared his throat. "You've spent fifteen years in retirement after suffering a family tragedy."
  
  "Are you for real?"
  
  "You stopped the show and holed up here down south," the director continued, "leaving your bounty hunter days behind you. How do you feel about getting back into the business after all this time?"
  
  Johnny turned to scowl at Lisa and pointed at the man as he muttered, "Is this guy for real?"
  
  "Johnny?"
  
  "Phil."
  
  "Do you have any concerns about your ability to find and apprehend this next bounty, given your previous record as a bounty hunter and your rather long hiatus?"
  
  His disbelieving snort matched his disdainful expression. "I'm a dwarf, asshole. I coulda stayed outta the game for thirty years and still known exactly what I'm doin'. This is bullshit."
  
  He started to stand and Luther leapt to his feet and blocked his master momentarily before he padded across the grass toward the yard flamingo.
  
  "You were a household name by the time the seventh season of Dwarf the Bounty Hunter ended so abruptly. Is there anything you want to say to your viewers and fans around the world who are watching this now?"
  
  Johnny stared at Phil and his lip curled at the corner of his mouth in a half-snarl. The plan's off if this asshole keeps pryin' where he don't belong. Before he could say anything, the steady, hollow patter of Luther relieving himself against the plastic flamingo filled the silence.
  
  The dwarf gestured toward his hound. "That about sums it up. We're done."
  
  This time, he didn't have a hound to prevent him from standing and he walked away with his shotgun cradled in one arm.
  
  "Johnny," Phil called. "Johnny, I still have a few more questions—"
  
  "No, you don't. Lisa, when's our flight?"
  
  "One o'clock." She stood from her chair and pointed at Cody behind the camera. "Stop filming. And do not put him saying my name in anything you use, got it?"
  
  "Yep."
  
  "It looks like it's time to pack up and get moving." She gestured toward the scattered crewmembers. "We'll resume filming later."
  
  The crew made no protest as Johnny and Agent Breyer disappeared inside the cabin. Rex and Luther trotted behind the house to enter through the dog door. "Man, if that's what being on TV's like, it sucks."
  
  "Johnny did this? For years?"
  
  "No wonder he's so grumpy."
  
  Phil sighed in exasperation and gestured for his team to return all their equipment to the vans. "This is only the beginning, people. We'll get our gold in the next few days."
  
  Inside the house, the bounty hunter stormed into the kitchen, whisked the paper towels off his cold breakfast, and tossed them into the trash. Lisa shut the front door behind her, removed her alias illusion, and found Johnny hunched over the stove. "Are you okay?"
  
  "It's a loaded question, ain't it?" he asked through crunching a mouthful of bacon.
  
  "That doesn't make it any less worth asking."
  
  He turned away from the stove and grimaced as he sucked bacon out of his teeth. "You know how I feel ʼbout cameras and attention and questions."
  
  "Yep."
  
  "All right. That bein' said, I gotta hand it to ya, darlin'. It's a brilliant fuckin' idea."
  
  She grinned and turned as he strode past her and out of the kitchen toward the hallway. "I'm glad you think so."
  
  "Oh, I do. The Red Boar and I have a beef to settle, and if he thinks he's smart enough to cut to the chase first, this is a perfect distraction. For him." Johnny disappeared into his room and she stood and listened to the sound of clothes being jerked off hangers and shoved into his duffle bag.
  
  "Will it be too much of a distraction for you?"
  
  A drawer shut sharply and he poked his head through the open doorway. "Naw. I handled it for seven years and I can handle it again." The only difference is fifteen years of uninterrupted privacy and an idiot callin' himself a director. He hauled his black duffel with him out of the room and headed to the workshop. "And that Phil fella… Hell. He knows exactly the right buttons to push, don't he?"
  
  "I can talk to him about that if you want."
  
  "Naw, don't bother. If I ain't lookin' pissed off and ready to bash in a few heads on camera, the Red Boar's gonna think I ain't genuine about the whole thing. It sucks but it's perfect." He rifled through his explosive gear, firearms, ammunition, and random tech stacked on the shelves of his workshop to carefully choose the best for the trip. "You said a Kilomea, right?"
  
  "That's right." Lisa leaned against the workshop doorway and folded her arms, intrigued by the focused way he worked through his options.
  
  "Okay." A huge metal box slid out from beneath the bottom shelf. Johnny felt inside it for a moment before he retrieved what looked like a bright silver handgun with the tops of the chamber and the barrel sawed off. They'd been replaced instead with a thick glass tube. He snatched a small canvas bag from the metal box, returned the stash with the toe of his boot, and packed it all in the duffel bag with everything else.
  
  "What was that?"
  
  "The little silver guy?" The bounty hunter sniggered. "That's old school, darlin'. It still works like a charm for those hairy bastards, though."
  
  "That still didn't answer my question."
  
  "Huh. Sleep juice."
  
  "From a pistol?"
  
  "Sure. What used to be a pistol, anyhow. Now it's exactly what I want it to be." He grinned at her and slung the strap of the duffel bag over his shoulder.
  
  When he reached the kitchen, Rex and Luther sat perfectly still in front of the oven and stared up at the pans of cold breakfast on the stove. Rex's ears perked up at the sound of his master's footsteps but he didn't move. "Johnny."
  
  "Yeah, Johnny. Come on."
  
  "You forgot the most important part."
  
  "Uh-huh." With a heavy sigh, the dwarf gave the hounds three slices of bacon each, which disappeared before he had time to take the remainder of the cold, crunchy meat for himself.
  
  Luther licked the crumbs on the floor. "Bacon!"
  
  "No one makes it like you do, Johnny."
  
  "Yeah, yeah. Hey. You think if we caught a pig, sliced it up, and did whatever you just did to this bacon, it'd taste as good?"
  
  Johnny and Rex both stared at him.
  
  "What?"
  
  "Sure." He turned toward the stove and the egg pan with a snort. "I suppose I might try it out on coonhound too."
  
  Luther gasped. "You wouldn't."
  
  Rex sniffed the floor behind Johnny's feet. "Dude, at this point, I'm right there with him."
  
  "Oh, okay." Luther whipped his head up toward his master and panted, and his tail thumped against the side of the fridge. "Well, when you do try it, Johnny, don't forget about me. I've never tried hound bacon before."
  
  "Jesus."
  
  "What's wrong?" Lisa asked with a curious smile.
  
  "Damn hounds." He tossed a handful of cold scrambled eggs toward Luther as a distraction, then turned toward Lisa and pointed at the smaller dog. "He makes me wonder sometimes what the hell I was thinkin' when I made those collars."
  
  "You were thinking about us, Johnny." Rex scuttled to his master's other side. "And about how much you wanna give me some of those eggs too right now."
  
  A glob of cold eggs landed with a splat in front of the larger hound and vanished instantly.
  
  "And about how much you love hearing us tell you how awesome you are?"
  
  "Well, that's a given, Johnny."
  
  "We'll never stop."
  
  "As long as you never stop with the treats."
  
  Shaking his head, he scooped the last of the eggs and crammed them into his mouth. He turned toward Lisa with flecks of egg and cold cheese caught in his beard and nodded. "Ehs oh."
  
  She laughed. "Sure. If I could understand you. You have a little something right here too…"
  
  He swiped at his mouth and beard, then swallowed. "Let's go."
  
  "Aw, man. That's it?" Luther sniffed the side of the oven and tried to poke his head up over the stove. "Johnny, what about all this smelly sludge up here, huh? That has to taste good."
  
  "Shit." The dwarf snatched both pans up and headed to the back door to set them quickly out on the porch. When he closed the door again, both hounds stood in front of him.
  
  "Go ahead, Johnny."
  
  "Yeah, step aside. We'll handle it."
  
  "We're headin' out front." He slid the plastic dog-door cover down in its slats with a clack. "Y'all had enough."
  
  "So who's gonna eat it?"
  
  "Johnny… You're leavin' bacon sludge out for the squirrels?"
  
  "No way, Rex. It's the rabbits and birds we have to worry about."
  
  The dwarf whistled and headed toward Lisa. "Let's go, boys."
  
  "Dangit."
  
  They trotted after him and Luther cast longing glances over his shoulder every few feet.
  
  "I'm ready when you are, darlin'."
  
  "Excellent." Lisa grinned at him and gestured toward the door. "This'll be fun."
  
  "Hold off on that assessment for now, huh? Just 'cause I ain't got expectations don't mean it can't get any worse."
  
  "Seriously? I would have thought you had fairly high expectations of finally apprehending the Red Boar or killing him, even in Baltimore."
  
  He opened the front door and snorted. "I meant the damn show."