A Good Day for Chardonnay (Sunshine Vicram #2) - Darynda Jones Page 0,6
“Sometimes I forget you’re a girl.”
“Please. Like you don’t have bad hair days.”
“True. Remember our senior pictures?”
She stopped and stared dreamily into the vast oblivion. “How could I forget the greatest memory of my life?”
“And it’s forever commemorated in our yearbook.”
“I’m a little disappointed no one calls you SpongeBob anymore.”
He stuck his fingers through the cage and petted their unconscious guest. “If we did keep him—”
“Quincy,” she warned.
“—and I’m not saying we will, but if we did—”
“Quince.” She knew he would do this.
“—he could be our mascot.” He raised a hopeful gaze. “I’ve always wanted a raccoon to assist me with petty crimes.”
Sun struggled to hide her amusement and joined him in admiring the fluffy furball. “He is adorable.”
“Right?”
She looked at Quince, then back at the raccoon. “He’s kind of like your spirit animal.”
“What if he has rabies, though?”
“Then he would be exactly like your spirit animal.”
Sun’s newest recruit walked in then, Poetry Rojas, freshly graduated from the police academy and looking spiffy in his pressed black uniform.
“Hey, Rojas,” she said.
He handed her a file. “Boss, can I ask you something?”
“Of course.” She grabbed her cup and took a long, scalding draw.
“Did you hire me because you feel sorry for me?”
She choked, not sure if it was due to the scalding liquid burning the back of her throat or Rojas’s question. Most likely a combination of the two.
“I’m not a charity case,” he continued. “I want to earn this position on my own merit.”
She tossed in a few last-minute coughs, then asked, “Seriously?”
“No.” He grinned, an enchanting lopsided thing. Never mind that underneath the uniform lay enough ink to print The New York Times for a month. He was a good officer. “It just makes me sound like a better person when I say shit like that.”
She tapped her temple and looked at Quince. “Always thinking, this one.”
“I think,” he said, defensively.
“Mm-hm.” She glanced over the report Rojas had brought in. “I want you to pay attention to this, Quince. Rojas knows how to write up a report.”
“I write reports.”
“Listen,” she said before reading aloud. “‘Single-handedly and with zero safety incidents, updated the communication and output device that utilizes and produces vital information while simultaneously sharing critical data with coworkers and creating a more efficient and productive work environment.’”
After taking a moment to let the sentence sink in, Quince frowned at Rojas and asked, “What does that even mean?”
The glib smirk the new deputy offered her BFF was too much. “I changed the ink cartridge in the printer.”
Sun nodded. “I like the way you think, Rojas.”
“Thanks, boss.” He bent to check out the caged menace snoring away. “How’d it go?”
“I had a raccoon’s crotch in my face for what seemed like hours.”
He arched a brow. “I didn’t know you were into that sort of thing.”
She picked up her cup and took another sip. “I have many sides, Rojas.”
After a quick glance over his shoulder at Quince, he straightened and started to leave, but Sun could tell there was something more lingering just below the surface. He had questions. And doubts. She knew he would.
“Quince, can you give us a sec?”
“Sure thing.” He gave Rojas a challenging stare, one that warmed Sun’s heart. She’d known they would get along when she hired Rojas, and Quincy’s ribbing was proof that she’d been right.
She sat at her desk and motioned for him to sit across from her.
The situation with Poetry Rojas was one that she would never have believed if it hadn’t happened on her watch. Four months ago, U.S. Marshals had descended upon the town of Del Sol searching for an escaped convict named Ramses Rojas, Poetry’s twin brother. What she figured out during the manhunt was that Ramses was actually Poetry. He’d gone to prison in his brother’s stead.
How he had pulled it off, she would never quite understand, but it was important to Poetry. He’d implied once that he’d owed his brother, so when the cops mistakenly arrested him, he didn’t correct them. In Sun’s opinion, unless Ramses had given up a kidney for him, Poetry got the short end of the stick. Three years inside for a crime he didn’t commit was asking a lot.
While there, however, Poetry had earned a bachelor’s in Criminal Justice and was actively working to get his case—his brother’s case—overturned. Getting caught in the middle of a jailbreak hadn’t been his plan. Sun had seen the footage from the van the prisoners had escaped from. He’d had no choice but to go along. Luckily