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

She reached down and lifted his right hand to examine the palm he’d been rubbing. The cuffs that were anchored to the belt around his waist only allowed her to lift it so far, but she could see his wrist.

She didn’t remember much about that night, but she did remember the blood oozing out of a deep wound on her rescuer’s wrist as he tilted the bottle of water to her mouth. The dark stream was thick and pulsing and his hand shook as though a vein had been nicked during the struggle.

“You think those guards can keep you safe?” he asked, admonishing her with a soft warning.

Ignoring the empty threat, she ran her fingers over the inside of first his right wrist, then his left. Nothing. Only a small scar higher up on the inside of his forearm.

Either she remembered wrong or Wynn Ravinder was indeed lying. But if he were, how did he know so much about her abduction? About that night? About her rescue?

She needed to stop with all the questions and just check the DNA. That would give her a definitive answer and a lot more to work with. Still, the Kubrick brothers were not exactly altruistic. Why would he confess to a crime he didn’t commit and in the next breath want to be exonerated from another crime he swore he didn’t do?

There was no way in hell she would take Auri to prison to have a tête-à-tête with a convicted felon, but that was a bridge she could cross when she got to it.

“I’ll be in touch,” she said, dropping his hands.





8


Big girls don’t cry.

They pop a couple Xanax,

wash them down with vodka,

and set a car on fire.

If you are this girl, we can help.

—SIGN AT DALE SAUL, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW




“Well?” Quincy said when they got back to the cruiser. “Is he your guy?”

Sun backed out and entered the prison maze once again. She rolled her eyes at her phone and put it away after seeing three texts from Carver the pest-preneur. “I wish I knew.”

“What’s your gut telling you?”

“It’s conflicted.”

He grinned. “It usually is.”

“Why would he confess to this?”

“I think the bigger question is, why does he want to meet the bean sprout?”

Her conflicted gut clenched in response.

They stopped at the guard shack and waited while the officer searched the cruiser.

“You’re good to go, Sheriff,” he said after a few, closing the hatchback.

She waved a thank-you and pulled onto East Butte Avenue. “What if he really knows who her biological father is?”

“Sun,” he said, growing serious, “I have little doubt that he does, if he knows who Kubrick Ravinder’s partner was. But is that information that you need?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, who cares? Let’s get this guy, sure, but who cares who her biological father is? Will it help Auri? Knowing who violated her mother and got her pregnant?”

“That was why I never wanted her to find out,” she said, her gut twisting painfully now.

“I have to confess something, Sunbeam.”

She cast a nervous glance his way as she pulled onto 79 toward the monastery. “That doesn’t sound reassuring.”

“What happens in the cruiser, right?” he asked, making sure whatever was said between them stayed between them.

“Always.”

“When we find out who he is, he will pay for what he did one way or another.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

“You disagree?”

“No,” she admitted. “But if we start taking the law into our own hands, we are no better than the criminals we put away.”

“Is that your official stance?”

“It is. Unofficially, however, you will do nothing of the sort, because I get first dibs. I have Auri’s DNA in the system. Have had for years, hoping for a hit.”

“If that’s the case, and Wynn Ravinder’s DNA is in the system already, wouldn’t you have gotten a hit by now? Even if Auri’s biological father were only related to him?”

“It depends on when Wynn’s DNA was entered into CODIS. I haven’t run it in a while, but he’s been in prison for eleven years. Surely it was entered then.”

“Then that would mean her biological father isn’t related to Wynn.”

Sun’s mind raced with all the possibilities the new information could bring. Could she finally find out the truth after all these years? It all hinged on the account of one convicted murderer.

“What do you think the odds are that this is going to work? Will we be able to get Wynn transferred?” she asked.

“That depends on your connections, I’d say. Maybe we should talk to Womack.”

“Royce? Good idea.” Royce Womack had been the Del Sol County sheriff way back when Sun was in middle and high school. He was the first one at the hospital after her abduction, so she’d been told. He’d beat her parents there by a hairsbreadth. Sun liked to think it had more to do with his fondness for her than his connections in law enforcement, but it was hard to say for certain. “I’ll see if he’ll meet us for coffee when we get into town. In the meantime, my gut is telling me something else.”

“And that is?” he asked.