A Good Day for Chardonnay (Sunshine Vicram #2) - Darynda Jones Page 0,12

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.

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