A Good Day for Chardonnay (Sunshine Vicram #2) - Darynda Jones Page 0,103

a solid minute before she heard Elliot’s voice.

“Is he dead?”

Sun hurried to cover Carver with the blanket, then let Quincy help her up. She rushed to the boys. “He is, honey. Are you guys okay?”

Zee had let them come back in. “Sorry, boss. They got away from me.”

Sun summoned her best mommy frown and planted it on them. “I can’t imagine how.”

Elliot gave her a sheepish grin, but Adam’s gaze was locked onto the body. They both had black residue on their faces and scorch marks on their T-shirts.

She knelt in front of them, turning them this way and that and lifting their shirts to get a better look. “Are you hurt? Were you burned?”

When she lifted Elliot’s shirt where most of the scorching was, he grinned at his little brother. “What’d I tell you? Chicks dig me.”

His skin was red. He was burned worse than his brother, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could’ve been had the tank exploded.

Then she heard it. Someone else coming down the tunnel, but the newest visitor was having a hard time trying to navigate the narrow opening while running. All Sun heard was an occasional, “Son of a bitch,” and a “What the fuck?”

After a few seconds, Rojas emerged, a little bloody but no worse for wear.

He skidded to a halt in the chamber, his sidearm drawn, and watched as Zee knelt to officially check Carver for a pulse, noting the time of death for the ME. He braced an arm on the cavern wall to catch his breath.

Sun no longer cared what her attentions would do to the boys. They would be traumatized regardless. She gathered them in her arms and hugged, making sure to avoid the scorched parts of their shirts. To her eternal joy, they hugged her back.

Adam visibly shook, but either Elliot was amazingly well-trained or he was in shock. He wasn’t shaking at all, but he did hold on to her for dear life.

Then he turned and hugged Levi.

“What do you say we get you to your mom?” Sun said.

Adam nodded and wiped at his eyes.

She stood and nodded to Levi. “Thank you.”

He didn’t respond. He stared at her neck instead before walking closer and doing some checking of his own. “He got you.”

“No. That’s not my blood.”

“It is.”

Sun felt and realized the bullet had grazed her before ricocheting off the propane tank. “Oh.” She drew her hand back for a look. “It’s not bad. I’m fine.”

The worried expression on his face confirmed he wasn’t so sure. It left her warm and fuzzy inside, but she had to stay focused. She turned to Quincy. “How did you and Zee know Carver was up here?”

“Carver?” he asked, gaping at the assailant. “That was your date?”

“My parents set me up with an assassin.”

“Told you,” Rojas said, still panting. “Sociopath.”

“If you didn’t know he followed us up here, why did you run all that way?”

“We figured out that the third guy staking out the town wasn’t at the hotel. We thought maybe he’d slipped past us on the trail.”

A soft groan echoed off the rock walls around them.

Elliot cringed and looked at his brother. “He woke up.”

“Excuse me?” Sun said.

“Thank goodness he didn’t die,” Adam said. “Mom would be so mad.”

Elliot grabbed the charred lantern, eased around Carver’s body, and ducked back through the alcove. “Careful,” he said, stepping gingerly toward the edge of a very large, very dark hole bordered by a layer of rocks. He held the lantern over it and Adam shined a flashlight.

Sun, Levi, and Quincy looked over the edge. At the bottom of what looked like a mile-deep hole lay a man in a suit. He raised an arm against the light.

“Our third man?” Sun asked Quincy.

“I’d say so.”

“And the money?” She looked at Elliot.

“Yeah, I moved it.”

The man lay on a cushion of hundred-dollar bills. He laughed softly and called up to them. “I can think of worse ways to die.”

A couple of the plastic-wrapped blocks of money had broken open and hundreds spilled out around him.

“Still,” Sun said. “I know fifty million is a lot of money, but I didn’t think it would be quite that voluminous.”

“Try one hundred and fifty million,” the man countered.

“Holy cow,” Rojas said, leaning over the edge, shining his own light into the man’s eyes. “You a cop?” he asked him.

“DEA.”

“I suspected as much in town.”

She stared at Rojas slack-jawed. How the hell did he know these things?

“DEA?” Adam asked. He punched his brother on the arm.