A Good Day for Chardonnay (Sunshine Vicram #2) - Darynda Jones Page 0,17

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.”

4

Makeup fades. Tacos are forever.

—SIGN AT TIA JUANA’S FINE MEXICAN CUISINE

Sun eased open the door to Auri’s darkened room and crept inside. Even though the center of her universe had just turned fifteen, and their house was mere inches away from Sun’s parents’ back door, Auri had a permanent room at her grandparents’ house. If Sun wasn’t home by nine, Auri had to come to Freyr House and stay until Sun got her. Usually when Sun worked that late, however, she just left Auri there until morning—a necessary evil that was becoming a habit of late.

She’d written her a love note and had planned to leave it on her nightstand, but Auri turned onto her back