But Bart was quicker, and he reached out and grabbed the end of the bat, pulling it and her in close to his body. “I’ll deal with you soon enough,” he growled into her face, then shoved her away.

   Isabelle let out a muffled cry, staggered back, and tumbled to the ground, the baseball bat flying out of her hands.

   While Bart was distracted, I combed the ground with my hands, shoving my fingers through the dirt and the grass, desperately trying to find my gun. I didn’t locate the weapon, but my fingers wrapped around something heavy and metal, with odd edges that dug into my palm. For a moment, I couldn’t figure out what it was, but then I realized that it was Leo’s fire truck, the toy I’d tripped over earlier today.

   “And now, back to our main event,” Bart said as he drew his fists back to hit me again.

   Crack!

   I snatched up the fire truck and slammed it into the side of his head. The toy didn’t do any real damage, but it was enough to get the giant to grunt in surprise and fall over onto his side. I dropped the toy and scrambled up and away from him, even though the quick motions made my chest ache even worse and caused more white stars to flash before my eyes.

   Bart growled again and started to get up, but I gritted my teeth, pushed my pain away, and kicked him square in the face, making him fall back and tumble ass over teakettle down the lawn. All the while, my head shot back and forth, back and forth, still scanning the lawn for my gun. A small glint of metal caught my eye.

   There.

   “You little punk!” Bart hissed. “You ruined my suit! You’ll pay for that!”

   The giant rolled over, got up onto his knees, and threw himself forward, trying to drive me back down to the ground so he could finish beating me to death. I sidestepped his lunge and threw myself forward, doing my best quarterback slide and stretching my hand out, desperately trying to snatch my gun out of the grass before he latched onto me again.

   “You’re not getting away that easy,” he snarled.

   My fingers closed over the cold metal. Bart grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet, drawing his fist back for another strike.

   I whipped around, shoved my gun up against his body, and fired.

   Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!

   I shot the bastard three times in the gut.

   Blood spurted all over both of us, the drops stinging my hand like hot candle wax. Bart staggered back, a shocked expression on his face. He looked down, watching as more blood stained his shirt, along with the rest of his fancy gray suit.

   “I told you I didn’t want to get your blood on my suit,” I hissed.

   The giant’s head nodded, almost like he was agreeing with me, and then he crumpled to the ground and was still.

       7

   Once I was sure that Bart the Butcher had been, well, butchered, I put my hands on my knees, blinking away the last of the white stars. Every breath I drew in through my sore, bruised, battered ribs hurt, but the pain was better than not breathing at all.

   Isabelle slowly pushed herself up into a sitting position. She blinked a few times, shaking off her own rough fall, and looked over at Bart’s body, which was now decorating her lawn like an overgrown garden gnome.

   “You . . . you killed him,” she whispered.

   “Yeah. And his friends too.”

   She glanced at the two giants lying by the SUV, as dead as their boss. Her face paled a little more, and she raised a shaking hand to her heart. “What—what am I going to do? There are three dead giants at my house!”

   I shuffled over and crouched down in front of her, staring into her hazel eyes. “You’re not going to do anything. As far as you know, nothing happened here. On the off chance that someone does come around asking questions, you were inside with Leo the whole night, and you didn’t see or hear anything. Okay?”

   She kept looking at me with wide, panicked eyes, so I made my voice even gentler.

   “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m going to take care of everything. This won’t come back on you, I promise. Do you trust me?”

   Isabelle stared at me, then at the gun in my hand, then at the three dead giants. She blanched, as though she was going to be sick, but she managed to push down her fear and anxiety. “I guess I don’t have a choice.”

   “Not really,” I agreed. “Now, do me a favor. Go inside, get cleaned up, and check on your son.”

   She opened her mouth like she was going to argue, but after a moment, she pressed her lips together and jerked her head. She let me help her to her feet, then hurried up the lawn to the front-porch steps and disappeared into the house.

   I waited a few seconds, until I was sure that she wasn’t going to come back outside, and pulled my cell phone out of my jacket pocket. It was still in one piece, and I hit a number on the speed dial. The person on the other end picked up right away.

   “Yeah?” A harsh voice filled my ear.

   “It’s Finn. I need a favor. Of the large variety.”

   Silence. “How many?”

   “Three.”

   I could hear the smile in her voice when she answered me. “I’ll be right there.”

   Twenty minutes later, a classic convertible with swooping fins pulled up and stopped in front of the Vargas house. The driver’s door opened, and a woman got out. She was a dwarf, a little more than five feet tall, with a strong, stocky body. She looked like she should have been doing maintenance work, given her black coveralls and heavy boots, but her specialty was definitely cleanup. Sophia Deveraux, the head cook at the Pork Pit and my go-to body disposer.

   From my spot on the porch steps, I waved to Sophia, then got up and met her in the middle of the lawn. She eyed Bart’s crumpled form and those of the two giants by the SUV at the curb.

   “Looks like someone had fun tonight,” she rasped in her rough, broken voice.