A Good Day for Chardonnay (Sunshine Vicram #2) - Darynda Jones Page 0,58
is local. A couple of their tattoos are exactly the same, so they’re affiliated. I guarantee it. Just not with anyone around here.”
“Around here as in Del Sol?”
“Around here as in the whole of New Mexico. If I had to guess, I’d say they’re East Coast.”
“Wonderful.” Because that was what she needed. A crime war on her turf. His teasing about La Cosa Nostra may have not been that far off the mark. “Which ones have been to prison?”
He pointed out two of the three. The stocky one with the scorpion tattoo and a taller one wearing a black leather jacket from the seventies.
“The third one,” he said, scrolling to an older gentleman with salt-and-pepper hair and a spray tan if Sun ever saw one. “I’m just not sure about him. If he did do time, he did it well. Probably a higher-up of some kind. I can run facial recognition when we get back, but I doubt we’ll get a hit. We need someone with access to a federal database.”
“I can ask my contact in the FBI.” She looked out and studied the two men she could see from her vantage. “How do you know all of this? What’s the giveaway?”
“It’s in the eyes. The way they move. Their posture.” He looked at her. “You ever notice how men in prison either hunch or stand ramrod straight with their chests puffed out?”
She thought back and nodded. “I do actually. It always seems to be one or the other.”
“And therein lies the tell. The differences in the pecking order.”
“What about the ones that do neither?” she asked, thinking of Wynn Ravinder. He didn’t seem to feel the need to put on a show. As though he were just as relaxed in prison as Sun was at the spa.
A slow, calculating smile spread across Rojas’s face. “Those are the ones with true power. Those are the ones to watch out for.”
A wave of goose bumps raced over her skin. Maybe she was playing with fire by inviting Wynn back into the state, but she wanted to know everything. Especially the son of a bitch who violated her. What she would do with that information, she didn’t know, but at least she would have it.
She looked out the window. “What about anyone else in town? Have you noticed—”
“Him.”
She blinked. “That was fast. Who?”
Rojas pointed to a gray-haired gentleman walking toward the coffee shop. A man who just happened to be her father, Cyrus Freyr.
Sun propped her elbows on the table and faced him. “Have you been messing with me this whole time?”
“No way, boss. Why?”
“That man has never even spent a day in jail, much less prison.”
He eyed the guy again. “Sorry, boss. That man has spent time inside, but from the looks of him, it was maybe a military prison? Or something similar?”
She snorted, then rethought her doubt and turned back to study the man in question. Had he been in jail and never told her?
Her father got a text, turned, and headed back to his SUV down the street.
Sun shook it off and asked, “Can you send those pics to me?”
“Already did. I also set Zee on surveillance until I could brief you. I’ll take over in a few.” He took a sip of his pink lemonade spritzer topped with whipped cream and a maraschino cherry, then pointed. A plainclothes Zee stood browsing the books the Book Nook employees were just now moving onto the sidewalk, her tall, lithe form doing anything but blending in. The girl was stunning, and one of the men they were watching had taken note. A fact that could play in their favor.
She looked back at Rojas’s fruity drink. “It takes a confident man to order a drink like that.”
He tilted his head and smiled in appreciation. “Thank you, boss.”
She laughed and decided to take a second for an impromptu check-in. “Got any questions for me?”
“I have two, if you’re asking.”
She took another draw on her pinon coffee sweetened with hazelnut. “I’m asking,” she said, echoing the conversation they’d had a couple of days before.
“First, why do you call the yellow fire truck Big Red?”
A surprised giggle bubbled out of her. She’d expected something a little more … official, but that worked. “When the town ordered Big Red, they threw a naming party. They were really excited. They chose the name before she was delivered, and while they’d ordered a red hook-and-ladder, she showed up yellow. Unfortunately, they’d already ordered a nameplate for her, so