He stayed inside the cab, waiting to see if I needed him again. I picked up my dropped knives and walked across the pavement to the dwarf.

The wheels had flattened out the man’s thick, strong, compact body until now it resembled a fleshy, bloody pancake that had been pressed into the asphalt. Greasy black tire tracks covered his torso, and his arms and legs lay by his sides, crushed and useless. But Finn hadn’t hit his head, and the dwarf was still alive. His blue eyes burned with pain and hate as he watched me come closer.

“Want to tell me who you’re working for before I kill you?” I said.

The dwarf spat blood on my jeans.

“I’ll take that as a no.”

I leaned down and cut his throat. His eyes bulged, and he gurgled once, twice, three times before his head lolled to the side and the light leaked out of his irises. I gave him a minute to bleed out, then put my fingers against his lacerated neck to make sure. No pulse. As dead as dead could be. I wiped off my bloody hand on my jeans and gestured at Finn.

Finn killed the engine, got out of the truck, and walked back to me. His green eyes flicked to the dwarf ’s body. “You still had to cut his throat? Tough little bugger, wasn’t he?”

“He’s a dwarf,” I replied. “They usually are. Now, give me your cell phone.”

Finn dug into his jacket pocket and handed me a slim, silver phone. I used it to snap a picture of the dwarf ’s frozen face, along with the tattoo on his bicep, the one that resembled a lit stick of dynamite. It had been flattened by the truck tires, but there was still enough flesh there to get an idea of the original shape of the rune. I handed the phone back to Finn, then stuck my hand into the dwarf ’s front pockets. No wallet, no money, no ID. Probably in his back pocket, but I wasn’t going to peel him up off the pavement to look for them. Messier than I wanted to get tonight.

“Get the car,” I told Finn. “We need to take the girl to Jo-Jo’s.”

Finn nodded and trotted off to retrieve his Aston Martin.

I walked over to Violet.

Sometime during my fight with the dwarf, Violet Fox had slid off the hood of the pickup. She sat propped up against the tire. Her fingers were stuck in her purse, as though she was trying to get her cell phone out to call the cops. I crouched down until I was eye level with her.

“You’re safe now,” I said in a soft voice. “He’s not going to hurt you anymore.”