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

She remembered the clear liquid soaking into his jacket, onto her pants, and running over the seat of a truck. Mortified, she tried to wipe it off but her limbs were filled with cement. Impossible to lift. And again she fell.

“I’m at the hospital,” Quincy said. “What’s wrong? Where are you?”

The overhead lights blinded her. She felt his warmth again. Heard the heartbeats in his chest. He called out. “Nurse!” But she couldn’t figure out why he was calling for a nurse in his truck.

No, not his truck. Too sterile. Too bright.

His warmth evaporated and the blinding lights overhead rushed past her. People’s faces popped in and out of her vision, all of them talking to her, but she was falling again. She reached out for him.

“Did you get a name?” someone asked.

“No. He took off. He looked hurt.”

He was gone.

Sun pressed the phone to her ear with a shoulder as she took the turn out of Levi’s drive too fast. Her tires spun and dirt billowed in her headlights. “I’ll be there in an hour,” she said, then hung up as her world spun in circles around her.

Auri and Cruz were asleep when she got to the hospital. Her parents had gone back to the hotel, and Quincy sat in the room scrolling through his phone. He shot to his feet when she walked in, questioning her with a single look.

“It was him,” she said, breathless from running and panicking and freaking out. “It was Levi. He fought with Kubrick. He got stabbed. He killed him and took me to the hospital and never said anything. After all these years, why wouldn’t he tell me?”

Quincy shook his head and led her out of the room. “That’s not possible. The DNA test. It was Wynn’s blood on Kubrick’s jacket,” he said as they walked toward the elevators.

“Where are we going?” she asked, oblivious.

“Coffee. Unless you want something stronger.”

“I want something stronger.”

They ended up at a bar on Central named after a tenacious frontierswoman and performer in the 1800s.

“It makes no sense,” he said, his brows knitting in confusion.

“They’re related,” Sun said, throwing back a shot of one of Levi’s creations, a butterscotch-flavored moonshine called Warm Butter Moon. It scorched her throat and she coughed before tapping the bar for another.

“I’ve never said anything out loud, but just an FYI, you don’t handle your liquor nearly as well as you think you do.”

“I know. I promise to take this one slower.” It was hot and sweet and delicious, much like its creator.

“And it doesn’t matter. The test would’ve told us if it was a relation or the real deal, and Wynn is the real deal.”

“It was him, Quince.” She ended up downing the drink after all. After another cough, she breathed cool air into her burning lungs, and said, “I remember. Only bits and pieces, but I remember.” She tapped the bar again. The bartender, a woman with rich brown hair and the most incredible gold irises Sun had ever seen, poured her another, but not before raising a quizzical brow.

Sun nodded and the woman poured, albeit reluctantly.

“You do realize that shit is a hundred proof,” Quincy said.

Again, just like its creator.

When she ignored him, he looked at the bartender. “What do you think?” he asked her.

She grinned, forming the most charming dimples at the corners of her mouth, and said, “In my limited experience, it always boils down to one, unmitigated fact. People lie.”

Quincy nodded. “And there you go.”

The bartender winked at him, then went to take another order at the end of the bar. It was a good thing, because next time Sun spoke, she did so with a slight slur. “I agree. People lie. Tests don’t.”

“Sun, you and I both know those tests aren’t foolproof and human error is a real thing, even in the world of forensics.”

“Especially in the world of forensics. It was odd, though,” she said, thinking back. “I’d sent those samples in months ago. True, I held on to them for too long, but it still took longer to get the results than I’d expected.”

“You didn’t get the results.”

“Yes, I did.”

“No. You never got them. You had to call the DPS for the results. And they just happened to be ready on the day you called?”

Sun took a sip of the warm liquid, her thoughts tumbling around in her brain like dice on a craps table. “On the day after we visited Wynn Ravinder in Arizona?”

“What’s the common denominator?”

“Nancy is a good friend of mine,” she said.

“Okay, who’s Nancy and what does she have to do with this case?”

“Nancy works at DPS. She ran the labs for this case.”

He leaned back in his chair. “As my mentor would say, when you’ve eliminated all the impossible crap, whatever crap remains, however improbable that crap may be, must be the true crap.” He turned to her. “I’m paraphrasing.”

She breathed through a head rush as though she were in labor and practicing Lamaze. Then she frowned at him. “I thought Allan Pinkerton was your mentor.”

“He’s my hero. Sherlock is my mentor.”

“I want a fictional character as a mentor.”