A Good Day for Chardonnay (Sunshine Vicram #2) - Darynda Jones Page 0,38
doubt the DA would even pursue it.”
He nodded and dropped his gaze. “I didn’t think of it that way.”
She didn’t believe him. He was far too smart not to have thought of that angle.
“They were friends of mine,” he said after a moment. “The couple I was convicted of killing. They were friends and I’ve spent almost a dozen years in prison while the person who really killed them has walked around free. They deserve better.”
He was good. “Do you know who did it?”
He sat down and wiped at some imaginary dirt on his palm. “Yes.”
“Did you tell your lawyer?”
“No. I didn’t know then. I know now.”
“Why not just have him taken care of ?”
“Too easy. I want him inside. I want him to be in fear for his life every single day for as long as he lives.”
“Like you are?”
He scoffed. “Not hardly, but that’s not the point. Most people don’t thrive in here like I have.”
“Are you her father?”
The question slipped out before she could stop it. She didn’t know what to believe at this point. Even if he did know everything he was claiming, he could still have been involved in her abduction. Maybe the plan went south and he and Kubrick fought. It made a lot more sense than his galloping to her rescue.
He cast her a sideways glance. If her question surprised him, he didn’t show it. “No,” he said softly.
Not that he would tell her if he were. “Tell me who is and you have my word I’ll do everything in my power to get your conviction overturned.”
“’Fraid I can’t do that, apple blossom. I have to have something to bargain with.”
“You mean something to hold over my head.”
“Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.”
“Even if it were possible, even if I found the evidence needed to get the case reopened, it would take years to get your conviction overturned.”
“I told you, I have complete faith in you.”
Sun watched as he scrubbed the palm of his hand with a thumb, the clinking of the metal cuffs not unlike the sound of the metal chains she wore for five days when she was seventeen. Her chains were heavier. The sound deeper. They’d echoed on the walls of the dark shed. But somehow the sound was still similar.
She shook out of the memory and decided on one more test. “Whose knife was it?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The knife you killed Kubrick with. Whose was it?”
“Mine.”
“That’s how you cut my ropes?”
He took a moment to study her, probably catching onto the fact that she was testing him again, and said, “I don’t remember. But I’ll give it to you the minute I’m transferred. Even more incentive to get me moved.”
He must not have known about the ID bracelet. She did wonder how he would explain Kubrick’s clutching a bracelet with Levi’s name on it, but that little piece of evidence was not common knowledge and she didn’t want to tip him off.
She could only think of one more test. One more piece of evidence that could prove he was indeed her rescuer. She stood, walked around the table, and leaned against it in front of him.
Wynn angled away from her warily. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had a body like yours this close to me, apple blossom.”
“May I look at your hands?”
After a moment, he gave her the barest hint of a nod.
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