A Good Day for Chardonnay (Sunshine Vicram #2) by Darynda Jones

She laughed nervously. “I only had two sips.”

“Keith Seabright is former special ops. He’s a survivalist and the best hand-to-hand combat fighter I’ve ever met.”

“Good for him,” she said with an appreciative nod. “I always hoped he’d do well. Who’s Keith again?”

One scythe-shaped brow inched up. “The man who was almost stabbed to death?”

She snapped back to attention, struggling to get a grip. She hadn’t seen him for months, so Levi Ravinder up close and personal was like a hit of heroin.

“Right. Right.” She grabbed a confused Rojas’s pen and notepad and started taking notes. Notes that her deputies probably already had. “Keith Seabright. Where do you know him from?”

“Here and there.”

Great. She was going to get cryptic Levi. Out of all of his personalities, cryptic was not her favorite. She much preferred flirty Levi. Or lusty Levi, though she’d only seen it once in her life. Twice if one were to count their last encounter in his bedroom, but he’d been beyond exhausted. Hardly in his right mind.

Then again, the first time he’d been drunk, so …

She pretended to write down his statement. “Here and there. Okay, how long have you known him?”

“Longer than most. Not as long as others.”

“Right. Longer than most. Not as long as—”

“Are we done?”

She looked up at him. “In a hurry?”

“I need to find those men.”

She lowered the pen. “This is an investigation, Mr. Ravinder. You need to go to the hospital and let us do our jobs. Why do you want me to run a tox screen on your friend?”

He huffed out a breath and looked away, annoyed at being detained. “Because he was stabbed. Multiple times.”

“From what I understand, three men with knives will do that.”

He stepped closer. “You don’t get it. There could’ve been ten and he would’ve taken them without breaking a sweat. He’s what they call an elite. No way in hell three scrawny punks can take him down. They had to have drugged him. Put something in his beer or tranqed him somehow.”

“Levi,” Sun began, but he stopped her with another scowl.

“He wasn’t moving right when he came out of the bar. And he was fighting back but it was like he was drunk.”

“Hence his exit from a bar.”

“Where he drank one beer. Seabright doesn’t drink enough to become inebriated. Not when he’s on a job. He’s a soldier through-and-through.”

“He was on a job?”

He raked his free hand through his hair and turned away from her. “I don’t know. He seemed edgy. Hypervigilant. Like when he’s working.”

While that was interesting as hell—how would Levi know what Keith Seabright looked like while he was working and what exactly did the man do for a living?—it could wait until he was looked after. If Levi was right, however, this wasn’t just a random bar fight. This was a premeditated attempted murder.

Quincy walked up then. “I might be able to explain your friend’s behavior.”

Levi turned back, tightening his grip on the cap impatiently.

“According to a couple of witnesses, he got into an argument with a man at the Quick-Mart this afternoon. They said it got pretty heated.”

Levi frowned. “He didn’t say anything about that.”

“Why did he come outside?” Sun asked. “Was he leaving?”

“I need to go,” Levi said.

Quincy stayed him by showing a palm. “Mr. Walden was working the Quick-Mart, if that’s where you’re wanting to go. We’ve already contacted him. He didn’t see anything.”

Levi looked toward the heavens as though begging for patience. “Then who were the witnesses at the store?” He scanned the small crowd. “I’ll talk to them.”

Sun had enough. “Give me your wrists,” she said, her voice razor-sharp.

He spun around to her. “What?”

“Your wrists.” She demonstrated by pointing to one of her own. “I’m placing you under arrest.”

If rage had a name at that exact moment in time, it was Levi Ravinder.





3


Do we serve drunken, sarcastic assholes?

Find out next week on We Think the Fuck Not.

—SIGN AT THE ROADHOUSE BAR AND GRILL




“I mean it.” She unclipped a pair of plastic wrist cuffs off Quincy’s belt. It was either arrest him and force him to go to the hospital or release the floodgates and beg him to go, hoping her tears would sway him. First, they would not. Second, no one needed to see that. By officially arresting him, the sheriff’s office would be obligated to take him to urgent care whether he wanted to go or not.

He bent closer and spoke through clenched teeth. “You can’t be serious.”

She wanted nothing more than to cup her hands around his jaw. To pull him to her. To place tiny kisses on his sculpted mouth and whisper promises of an inappropriate nature if he would just go to the medical center. But they had a crowd of onlookers, not to mention the fact that her deputies might lose the teensiest amount of respect for her if she tried to seduce an injured victim in the middle of a criminal investigation.