My friends noticed the giants as well, and they acted casual and concentrated on their food, just like I did, until the guards moved away from the restaurant windows.

   Silvio eyed me a moment, then sighed, crumpled up his napkin, and pushed his plate away. “Uh-oh. I know that look.”

   “What look?”

   He stabbed his finger at me. “That look. The one that says that you’ve already thought of some plan to save Finn, Bria, and Owen, at considerable danger to yourself.”

   I frowned. “Is there any other kind of plan? I’m certainly not going to put you guys in danger.” I paused. “Well, no more danger than I absolutely have to.”

   Silvio sighed again. “And that’s exactly what that look means.”

   “What do you have in mind?” Lorelei asked.

   I waited until the waitress had refilled our drinks a final time, left the check, and moved on to the next table. “It’s simple, really. I’m going to give Hugh Tucker exactly what he wants.”

   Phillip tilted his head. “And what would that be?”

   I grinned. “A grand ole time in the Wild, Wild West, Spider-style.”

22

   I didn’t want to get into the specifics of my plan here, so Silvio paid the bill, and the four of us left the restaurant.

   “I want to check on Ira,” I told the others. “Get our supplies, and make sure that he’s okay and that Roxy didn’t cause him any problems. His cabin is that way.”

   Silvio, Phillip, and Lorelei ambled along the wooden sidewalks, pretending to window-shop like all the other tourists, while I strolled along behind them, keeping them in sight, even as I smiled and posed for yet more stupid photos. Slowly, the four of us made our way from Main Street, down one of the alleys, and over to the curving, wooded path that led to Ira’s cabin.

   Once we’d left the crowds behind, we moved much quicker, although I made my friends step off the path and creep through the trees when we got close to the cabin. I sidled up to a large maple and peered around the thick trunk.

   In the clearing beyond, Ira sat in a rocking chair on the front porch of his cabin, the lights on his snowflake sweater flashing and making the shotgun laid across his lap gleam. I carefully examined the area around the cabin and the woods beyond, but I didn’t see Roxy, Brody, or any giants lurking around. They must have come and gone already, when they realized that I wasn’t here. I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d been worried about Ira.

   Still, I gestured for my friends to stay back as I stepped out of the trees and slowly approached the dwarf, still looking around for any sign that he wasn’t alone. Ira stopped rocking and got to his feet at my approach, his shotgun dangling from his hand.

   “Don’t worry,” he said, patting the barrel of his weapon. “They’re gone. And they won’t be back. I told Roxy and Brody that if I ever spotted them on my land again, that I would put a load of buckshot in both of their hides.”

   I laughed. “You should do that anyway.”

   He thought about it a second, then grinned back at me. “You’re right. I should.”

   I waved my friends over, and we stepped into the cabin. Ira locked the door behind us, while Phillip moved over to one of the windows, keeping watch on the off chance that Roxy and Brody decided to come back after all.

   Ira jerked his thumb at a large black steamer trunk that sat in front of the fireplace. “It wasn’t easy, but I managed to bring in those supplies that your friends brought along with them. Lots of guns for just the four of you.”

   “Believe me,” I said, “we’ll need them.”

   Ira opened the trunk, and Silvio started sorting through all the items inside, complaining that the dwarf had just thrown everything into the trunk and had ruined Silvio’s careful organization. Ira slapped his hands on his hips, ready to snark right back at the vampire, and Lorelei went over to mediate between them.

   That left me to get the ball rolling with Tucker, so I pulled out my phone and dialed the main number for the hotel.

   “Hello, this is the Bullet Pointe resort hotel. How may I assist you today?” a cheery feminine voice chirped in my ear.

   “This is Gin Blanco. Tell Roxy Wyatt that I want to speak to Hugh Tucker. Don’t worry, I’ll hold.”

   “Um, okay. Just a second. Let me see if I can find her.”

   “Oh, I’m sure that she’ll come running once she realizes that I’m on the line.”

   “Um, okay,” the clerk said again, obviously having no idea who I was or what was going on.

   She put me on hold, and I leaned against the fireplace, listening to the same sort of plinka-plinka piano music that they played incessantly in the Good Tyme Saloon.

   Five minutes and endless off keys later, my phone clicked. I put it on speaker and waved at my friends, who all fell silent. A few seconds later, someone picked up on the other end of the line. He didn’t say anything, though, so I decided to start the conversation.

   “Why, hello there, Tuck,” I drawled. “Bet you can’t guess who this is.”

   “Blanco,” the vampire’s voice filled my ear. “How disappointing. I was holding out a faint hope that you’d crawled up into a hole somewhere and died.”

   “We both know that you could never be that lucky.”

   “No, I suppose not.” His voice was calm and emotionless. “What do you want?”

   “I want my friends back. And I’m going to get them back. How much bloodshed there is in the meantime depends on you.”

   Tucker let out a low, sinister laugh. “As if I care about bloodshed. Besides, why would I give your friends back when I went to all the trouble to get them down here in the first place?”

   “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe several million dollars’ worth of shiny gemstones? Surely, that’s worth a life or three, even to a coldhearted son of a bitch like you.”