A Good Day for Chardonnay by Darynda Jones

3

Do we serve drunken, sarcastic assholes?

Find out next week onWe 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.

Then again …

She leaned closer, breathed in the hint of subtle cologne he wore, and whispered, “I couldn’t be more serious if you paid me.”

Careful not to hurt him, not that he would feel it on his current adrenaline high, she slipped the cuffs over his battered hands, baseball cap and all, and tightened them just enough so they wouldn’t fall off.

“Don’t do this, Vicram.”

Her chest tightened around her heart. “You were defending a friend in battle and then got hit by a truck, Levi. Just get a couple of X-rays and then Quincy will release you.”

“Me?” Quince asked, surprised.

Levi let out a frustrated sigh. “They’ll be out of the state by then.”

“We don’t know that. Zee called it in. Every trooper in New Mexico is looking for that truck.” She took his arm and led him toward Quincy’s cruiser, a little surprised he didn’t resist. “You do this and I’ll go talk to Mr. Walden.” Mr. Walden, the owner of the Quick-Mart, would not appreciate her late-night invasion, but at that point, she really didn’t care.

“Walden saw something,” Levi said. “He’s just too much of a weasel to get involved.”

“I can handle Walden.” Levi wasn’t wrong. The man was a bit of a weasel.

He stopped and the look on his face told her more than any words could have. Whoever Keith Seabright was, he meant more to Levi than most of his family members did. Not that that was saying much.

“Let me come with you.” It wasn’t a request. “I’ve been deputized. It would be legit.”

How could she forget? “We can discuss it after the X-rays.” The hemorrhage in his eye was getting worse. The entire white was now blood red and the swelling around his orbital socket was darkening to a startling array of purples and burgundies and blacks.

He bit down in frustration. As though a last resort, he said, “One of them is already dead.”

“What?”

He pressed his mouth together, clearly reluctant to say anything. After a moment, he repeated, “One of the assailants is already dead. I wrested his knife away and severed his femoral artery. He will have bled out in minutes, so they’ll have to dump his body. They headed north on 25, so odds are they’ll pull off the highway and dump it, then get back on. That gives us time to find them.”

The fact that everything he said shocked her to the core had to show on her face. She stood speechless a solid minute as Rojas and Zee moved closer, flanking Quincy. They must have overheard.

“It’s what Seabright would have done had he not been drugged. They’d all be dead. Not just one. They’ll have to burn the truck, too, but that can wait until they get to Denver.”

Sun held up a hand to slow him down, then said, “First, are you sure you got his femoral?” When he only deadpanned her, she asked, “Okay, how do you know they went north? They could have gone either way once they got to the on-ramps.”

“They went north,” he insisted.

“How do you know?”

He bit down, his jaw flexing, before repeating himself. “They went north.”

Sun wanted to curse. Or arrest him for real for obstruction, which was well within her rights. He was the most stubborn … “We’re on the same side, Levi.”

He lowered his head and studied her from beneath a set of impossibly thick lashes. “These cuffs say otherwise.”

She didn’t argue.

“Uncuff me and let me go get them.”

Frustration ripped through her gut, but she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of that knowledge. “Call it in, Quince. Make sure the state troopers know one of them is seriously injured. We need to call all the hospitals within a hundred-mile radius.”

“They won’t go to a hospital. He was dead before they hit the interstate.”

She opened the back door of Quincy’s cruiser, but he stood his ground. “Uncuff me, Vicram.”

She looked past him, and asked Quincy, “You still have that dart gun?”

An evil grin spread across his face. He was about to answer when a tiny voice drifted toward them. “Levi?”

They all turned to see the very fruit of Sun’s loins planted smack-dab in the middle of their crime scene. The auburn-haired beauty stood panting with round eyes and wet cheeks.

“Auri,” Sun said, rushing to her. “What are you doing here?” She spotted the abandoned bike Auri had ridden over and cupped the girl’s face in her hands. “Sweetheart, what is it?”

Auri had yet to tear her gaze off Levi, her lashes spiked with wetness, her bottom lip trembling. “I heard on the scanner.”

Behind her Cyrus Freyr’s SUV skidded to a halt and both he and his wife Elaine, aka Sun’s parents, bolted out and hurried over, their journey coming to a sudden stop thanks to the crime scene tape. They waited on the other side of it.

“I’m sorry, Sun,” her dad said, out of breath. “We heard that a male had been stabbed multiple times, and then Ravinder’s name came up and she was out the door before we could stop her.” He looked at Levi with a grin. “It seems the rumors of your demise have been greatly exaggerated.” He gave him a once-over and corrected his statement. “Or at least mildly exaggerated.”

Levi offered him a cursory nod before returning his attention to Auri. “I’m okay, Red.”

“I thought …” Her voice broke and she swallowed hard.

With the gentlest of nods, he beckoned her toward him.

Auri ran and threw her arms around him. Sun didn’t miss the wince. Despite being in obvious pain, he lifted his cuffed hands over her head and hugged her to him.

“I’m okay.”

“I thought you were stabbed,” she said between sobs.

Once again, the strong connection between her daughter and the man Sun had been in love with since the beginning of time hit her square in the chest. Even the fact that he was covered in the blood of, quite possibly, three men didn’t convince her to separate them.

Her chest tightened again, this time for a different reason. Levi Ravinder seemed to grow more enigmatic by the hour. The fact that he’d saved her daughter’s life when she was seven only added to his thundering appeal.

Sun’s parents stood watching, as well, with the most endearing expressions on their sweet faces. For reasons unknown to Sun, they seemed to love Levi. Sun had figured that out a while ago. But even after everything, there were still so many questions Sun had about his past. Or, more to the point, her past and his involvement in it.

She’d been abducted when she was seventeen. Held for five days. Violated, or so the evidence would suggest since nine months later she gave birth to a squalling copper-headed ball of fire appropriately named Aurora Dawn.

Fifteen years after that, on Sun’s second day on the job, they found the decomposed body of one of Levi’s uncles near where Sun had been held. He’d been stabbed once through the chest and left there for over a decade. The timing fit perfectly with Sun’s abduction, and after Levi’s sister confessed to killing their uncle, Levi confessed as well. Then one of Levi’s cousins confessed. His plant manager. His barber. Hell, even Doug, the town flasher, confessed.

Thus far, eleven people had confessed to killing Kubrick “The Brick” Ravinder.

But the man’s denim jacket had been soaked with blood that was not his own. He’d hurt his opponent. Bad. And Sun had Levi’s DNA. She’d sent it in and was still waiting, four months later, for the results.

She understood. A cold case was hardly high priority, but she knew people. She could’ve rushed the job. So why hadn’t she?

She walked over to Levi and Auri.

“Why is he in handcuffs?” her daughter asked, then looked at Levi. “Why are you in handcuffs?”

“You’ll have to ask your mother.”

“Mom!” she said in that spitfire way of hers. She stepped toward Sun and asked under her breath, “Why do you have Levi in handcuffs?”

“Because I’m arresting him,” Sun whispered back.

“What?” She jammed her fists on her narrow hips. “Why?”

“Because he won’t go to the hospital.”

“So you’re arresting him?” she asked, her voice rising an octave.

Sun smiled inwardly with the knowledge that she was about to win this particular argument. It didn’t happen often and she took her victories where she could get them.

“First, he thwarted an attempted murder. Then he fought off the three knife-wielding assailants unarmed. And then he got hit by a Toyota Tundra when he tried to stop the knife-wielding assailants from getting away because, apparently, he thinks he can stop a half-ton truck with his two-hundred-pound body. So now we know two things.” Sun raised an index finger. “One, he’s bad at math.” Her middle finger joined the first one to form a V. “And two, he most likely has internal injuries and is bleeding to death on the inside.”

Auri dropped her jaw and shifted her outrage to the man standing beside her.

Sun fought the urge to pump her fist in triumph. “I just want some X-rays to be safe,” she said instead. “And Levi is not only refusing to go to the hospital, he is insisting on going after the assailants. Alone.”

“You are so under arrest,” Auri said, pointing to the inside of Quincy’s cruiser.

A sly grin spread across his face. “Traitor.”

She pointed harder. “In.”

He leaned down, kissed her cheek, then did as he was told.

It was Sun’s turn to drop her jaw. If she’d known that was all it would take, she would have called Auri to the crime scene half an hour ago.

He climbed inside the SUV and sat back, but Auri wasn’t finished. She jumped onto the step and kissed his stubbled cheek. “Thank you.”

The look he gave her, the adoration in his eyes, took Sun’s breath away.

Auri stepped down and offered her mom an apologetic hug. “I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to contaminate your crime scene.”

“It’s okay, bug,” she said, even though in some places she could lose her job for such an indiscretion. She looked at her parents. “You have my permission to duct tape her to a chair and lock her in the basement.”

Her dad chuckled, but her mom was still looking on dreamily, so enamored with Levi Ravinder, Sun fought a knee-jerk reaction to stake her claim. Mostly because she had none.

They’d certainly never been a couple. The one time they almost hooked up, they were just kids and he was half-drunk on his family’s moonshine, a recipe he’d legitimized and grown into a very successful business. He owned one of the most famous corn whiskey distilleries in the world, Dark River Shine.

But she’d been back four months and, apart from her first week on the job in which he helped with a missing persons case, she’d only seen him a handful of times. And most of those were from a distance. Auri visited his nephew, Jimmy, but even when Jimmy came over to their house, Levi was never the one to pick him up.

Sun helped her dad put Auri’s bike in the back of his SUV, then watched as they drove off. Quincy was talking to one of the onlookers, so Sun turned back to the cruiser and walked over to Levi.

He’d laid his head back and closed his lids, but he still sensed her presence. “You’re not forgiven,” he said without opening his eyes.

She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the door. “I didn’t ask to be.”

His face, so impossibly handsome, looked tired. He was three years older than her, but he somehow looked younger at that moment. More vulnerable.

She watched him a while, reveling in just being so close, then said, “I saw the wince.”

Confusion flashed across his face but he caught on quickly. “What wince?”

“When Auri hugged you.”

“Wince is a strong word.”

“What would you call it?”

“Flinch.”

“And how is flinch better than wince?”

“A wince is a facial expression. I’ve spent years perfecting my poker face. I don’t wince.”

“Fine. Why’d you flinch?”

“I’m sore.”

“Because you have internal injuries.”

“Mm, I don’t think so.”

“You were hit by a truck.”

“You hit harder.”

That stopped her. She paused a moment to take him in, then asked, “Do I?”

“And it hurts worse.”

“If you two are finished,” Quince said from behind her, “I’ll get him to the medical center. You know, since he could die from massive internal bleeding any second now.”

Sun took one more lingering look at his powerful profile, then stepped back. “Thanks, Quincy. I’m going to talk to Walden. Surely, he saw something if that argument at his store was as bad as everyone said.” She looked around, spotted her target, and called out to Salazar.

Salazar excused herself from questioning the fan club and hurried over. “Yeah, boss?”

“If you have everyone’s names and contact info, you can let them go. The forensic team from Albuquerque will be here soon. Hang out and make sure they go wide. I want every speck of trash collected and photos of everything, no matter how small. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“You got it.”

“Thank you, Deputy,” she said, before yelling over her shoulder at Quincy.

He was just climbing into his cruiser.

“Make sure he stays there, Quince! I want at least five X-rays, three blood tests, and a sonogram!”

“You got it, boss!” He closed his door and eased onto Main toward the Del Sol Urgent Care Center.

Sun was busy fighting the urge to glance at Levi as Quince drove past when she heard gravel crunching behind her followed by a feminine voice. “Sheriff,” the woman said, trying to get Sun’s attention. “Sheriff Vicram?”

Sun turned to her. A disheveled brunette with a skintight miniskirt and a puffy pink jacket hurried up to her, which was a feat in those heels. And here Sun thought she’d had it bad.

“Sheriff, I saw the whole thing,” she said breathlessly, probably due to her jaunt in the six-inch heels.

“Did you give your statement to one of my deputies?”

“What?” She came to a wobbly stop and glanced around, wild-eyed. “Oh, yes. Of course. Tricia asked me to come in tomorrow and give an official statement. We went to school together. But you need to know he didn’t stab that man. Levi Ravinder? He—”

“We know, Miss … ?”

One of her ankles gave way and she veered to the side. Sun bolted forward to catch her, but she recovered like a pro, and said, “Crystal. Crystal Meth.” When Sun’s lids rounded in surprise, she said, “I know. My parents are hilarious. Which is why I’m having it legally changed. Getting a job is a bitch. I usually go by Crys.”

How could she not know there was a woman in town named Crystal Meth? Sun was starting to like the girl despite herself.

“He was trying to help his friend. Levi. He didn’t do anything.”

“We know. He’s not in any trouble.”

“Oh. I just thought … I mean, you arrested him, didn’t you? I just wanted you to know he didn’t do it. I saw the men who did.”

Sun gave the girl her full attention. “Can you ID them?”

“No. Probably not. I’m sorry. I couldn’t really see their faces. The one who did the stabbing wore a baseball cap and the other two wore beanies. Jeans. Dark T-shirts. The only thing I can tell you is that they were all in their late twenties, early thirties? All white with fairly dark hair.”

Wondering if she should bring her in for an interview immediately before her memory faded as the alcohol evaporated from her system, Sun looked around for Zee.

“He’d said goodbye to him, you know? The guy. And then—”

“Wait, who said goodbye to whom?”

“Levi. We were, um, talking and the guy, his friend, he came outside and said, ‘Later, Rav,’ and a few seconds after that we hear a scuffle.”

Rav? She let that marinate on her tongue a minute. Savored it. She’d never heard anyone call him that.

“We look over and these men are beating the guy to a pulp and they have him on the ground kicking him. Levi takes off like a rocket toward them, but before he can get there, one of them pulls out a knife.” Her eyes glazed over. “It happened so fast. They stabbed that guy over and over in a matter of seconds.”

Sun put a hand on her arm to steady her. “What happened next?”

“Levi tackled the guy with the knife and the others joined in. I can’t believe he didn’t get stabbed.” She focused on Sun, pleading with her to understand. “He was so fast, Sheriff.”

“The man with the knife?”

“No, Levi. So adept. Like the soldiers you see in movies? I’ve never seen anything like it. He took them down like it was nothing even though they got in some good swings and one landed a kick to his face.”

Every muscle in Sun’s body tensed at the thought of someone kicking Levi in the face. Or anywhere else for that matter.

“He disarmed two of them and got up, but they were already running for their truck. He caught one, though, and he must’ve really hurt him, because the guy screamed and crumpled to the ground. That’s when they hit Levi with the truck.” She squeezed her eyes shut as the memory washed over her. “He got to the driver’s side door and tried to open it, but the guy locked it, so Levi hit the window.” Her gaze drifted back to Sun. “With his fist. He shattered it. He was just so … so determined. So angry. So …” Her gaze turned wistful. “So powerful.”

Sun understood the infatuation all too well. The fact that the girl was outside with Levi and they were, um, talking, didn’t surprise her. Crys was a beauty despite her unfortunate name. Levi would be crazy not to hook up with her.

She forced the green-eyed goblin back to its corner. She had no right to be jealous. With his looks, she could only imagine all the women he’d been with over the years. All the women who’d thrown themselves at him. Jealousy was such a useless emotion. Despite that fact, she was, and it irked her to no end.

Another ankle gave way. That time Sun caught her. “How about we sit down?”

“I’m okay. I only had one drink and I sipped on it all night. It’s these stupid shoes.” She wiped at her eyes, her hands shaking visibly, and Sun realized she wasn’t so much drunk as in shock. Who wouldn’t be after witnessing a brutal attack like that?

Knowing the girl’s memory would be fine, Sun called out for Toby, the EMT. The guy was packing up. He tossed a bag into Big Red and hurried over.

“Can you get her to urgent care, Toby?”

“I’m okay,” she repeated a microsecond before her left leg collapsed. Sun caught her again and righted her the best that she could. It was like trying to hold up a tower of Jell-O.

“You are two seconds away from breaking an ankle.”

When she swayed again, the young EMT catching her that time, Sun insisted. “Urgent care, please, Toby.”

He nodded and took the girl by the arm to lead her to the fire truck. His partner rushed over to help him. Sun figured his concern had more to do with the miniskirt than his occupation, but whatever it took to get the job done.

“Wait a minute,” Sun said, stopping them.

They turned back to her.

“One of the assailants wore a baseball cap?”

The girl looked up in thought and nodded. “Yes. Blue or black, I think, with red on it? Maybe orange? It was dark, so I can’t be certain.”

Sun gritted her teeth. “Oh, I can. That son of a bitch.”

“I’m sorry?” she said, but Sun whirled around and stalked toward her cruiser.

She should have known Levi was clutching that baseball cap a little too tightly. In all of their years of acquaintance, she had never once seen him wear a baseball cap. Not even as a kid.

No wonder he knew they were going north. It was a Denver Broncos cap. The assailants were clever enough to drive a truck, probably stolen, with Texas plates, but not clever enough to ditch the one identifying piece of evidence that could lead the authorities in their general direction?

Of course, the cap could have been planted to throw law enforcement off the trail as well, but for some reason, Levi knew it wasn’t, and she wanted to know why.

She climbed into her cruiser and called Quincy.

He picked up and said only two words. “He’s gone.”

She slammed her lids closed. Son of a bitch. “Put a BOLO on his ass.”

“You got it.”

“He’ll be heading north on 25.”

“Okay.”

“And extend an invitation to whoever finds him to use a Taser.”

A knock sounded on her window. She lowered the phone and turned to see Deputy Salazar, bright-eyed and flushed-faced. “Boss!”

She rolled down her window.

“Las Vegas PD called,” she said, handing her a note. “They were supposed to get this to you earlier today, but someone dropped the ball. Sounds important.”

Sun opened the note. Blinked. Read it again. Thought about it. And read it a third time, just to make sure she wasn’t seeing things.

At one time, Levi Ravinder had four uncles. All of them, along with his father, were members of the infamous Southern Mafia. Levi’s father, for all intents and purposes, died in a car accident, and his uncles splintered. One was murdered—or killed in self-defense, the jury was still out—on a mountaintop fifteen years ago. One died of cancer. And one, Clay, was alive and well, unfortunately, and living at the Ravinder compound a few miles outside of town.

The fourth one took an extended vacation courtesy of the Arizona correctional system. Specifically, Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence, about an hour south of Phoenix.

It would seem that same uncle, Wynn Ravinder, wanted Sun to come to Arizona immediately. He’s dying, the note said, and has pertinent information about your abduction.

Her abduction. Information about her abduction. Those words were like a sucker punch to her gut. She read them three more times before looking back at the crime scene.

Still no word on the victim, Keith Seabright’s, condition. The forensic team would be there soon, and she would only be in their way if she stayed. Rojas could go talk to Mr. Walden about the argument Seabright got into that afternoon and gather any surveillance footage the man had. The state police were on the lookout for the assailants. As was Levi himself, most likely.

Nothing was stopping her. If she left now, she could be in Florence by morning. That familiar desire—or blind obsession, as her parents would say—to know more about those five days cinched her stomach tight. A stomach that was suddenly filled with shards of glass.

Could Levi’s uncle Wynn really know what happened? Was Brick Ravinder really her abductor or was his murder in that vicinity coincidence? And what, if anything, did Levi have to do with it?

Because of a head injury she’d suffered at the time, Sun could remember very little of those five days or several weeks prior to her abduction. She had glimpses. A patchwork of visions and scents and sounds, but nothing coherent. Nothing cohesive enough for her to stitch the images together.

And then there was the surveillance footage from the hospital in Santa Fe. Someone had brought her in and left before the nurses could get a name. That someone, tall and slim, clutched his side where a dark stain slowly spread across his hoodie. Whoever brought her to the hospital had been seriously injured at some point, and Sun had about twelve thousand questions as to why.

She woke up a month later in that same hospital with no memory of what had happened. Two months after that she realized, to her utter horror, that intake had dropped the ball at the hospital. She was pregnant. The monster who took her had violated her.

Looking back now, it was almost inconceivable how something so precious, so wonderful, could come from such tragedy. But Auri was all of that and more.

Sun heard Quincy’s voice and realized she was still on the phone. “What’s going on, boss?”

She snapped out of her musings and lifted the phone to her ear. “You’re not going to believe this.”

“I don’t know. I’m pretty gullible, apparently.”

Realizing she might need someone to take turns at the wheel of the sixteen-hour round trip, she said, “Pack your toothbrush. We’re going to Florence.”

“Italy?”

“Arizona.”

“So close.”