Tobias turned back to face us and spit another mouthful of tobacco juice onto the porch. “All I’m saying is it would be a damn shame if something was to happen to you—or your sweet granddaughter.”

The dwarf leered at Violet, staring at her boobs like he wanted to bury his head between them. Behind him, the giants and other men did the same. Violet’s face paled a little more, but she crossed her arms over her chest and lifted up her head. She wasn’t backing down any more than her grandfather was.

“By the way, Miss Violet,” Tobias drawled in his twangy voice. “You haven’t seen my brother Trace around anywhere, have you? Short guy, looks a fair bit like me, has a stick of dynamite tattooed on his arm. Drives a great big ole truck.”

My gray eyes narrowed. Dawson had a brother named Trace? With a dynamite tattoo on his arm? That must be the dwarf that Finn had pancaked in the parking lot last night. The one whose body Sophia had disposed of.

“He was going to take care of some business for me in Southtown, over near the community college,” Tobias said. “But he didn’t come home last night. I thought you might have seen him, seeing as how you take all those classes at the college.”

Violet’s eyes widened behind the frames of her black glasses. She’d just realized Trace was the dwarf who’d attacked her, and she didn’t know how to respond to Tobias Dawson’s veiled innuendos, hints, and threats. But Finnegan Lane, being the Southern gentleman he was, stepped forward and intervened.

“Southtown’s a dangerous neighborhood,” Finn said in a soft tone. “Who knows what could have happened to him in a place like that? Just about anything, I imagine. Rough crowd, down in that part of Ashland. Junkies, vampire hookers, pimps. Not safe for a man to walk those streets by himself.”

Tobias fixed Finn with a hard stare. “I wasn’t talking to you, son. And what the hell would you know about it anyway?”

Finn smiled. “I grew up down there.”

The dwarf stared at Finn with open hostility and suspicion. The two giants and two other men sensed their boss’s displeasure. They shifted forward on their feet, as if to storm past him and come up onto the porch. Tobias tensed, ready to give the order. I palmed another knife.

This was not going to end well.

But before the dwarf could tell his men to charge and take care of Warren T. Fox once and for all, Donovan Caine stepped down off the porch and pulled open his coat. The noontime sun made the gold badge on his belt glisten next to the dark shadow of his gun.