A Bad Day for Sunshine (Sunshine Vicram #1) - Darynda Jones Page 0,79
walked to the command tent.
“Crazy,” Quincy said when he took it all in.
“You or me?”
“This whole situation.”
Dozens of vehicles, both civilian and emergency. Over a hundred people scouring the mountain.
She put the coffee her mom had handed her on the way in on a folding table and looked at a couple of maps they’d laid out.
Quincy pulled a pair of official coveralls over his uniform, then accessorized with matching boots and gloves, ready to do his part. “It’s new to me.”
“Yeah, I’ve only been directly involved in one other search and rescue. Got to know the incident commander.” She pointed at him. “See? Networking. Get to know your fellow law enforcement officers.”
“What if I don’t like them?” he asked as he slipped on a ski cap.
They emerged from the tent, ready to face the mountain. Sun had brought her best spiked boots, wiggled into thick black coveralls with her credentials on them, and pulled a knit cap over her ears.
“I got us an ATV,” Quince said. “The IC is sending us over that hill.”
“Sounds good to me.” She greeted the Book Babes as they handed out coffee, her deputies that were on-site, and the marshals before getting onto the ATV.
“What did Melody want?” he asked, shouting over the sound of the motor.
Sun explained about the possibility that the escaped fugitive, Ramses Rojas, may have saved her daughter’s life. Not just saved it, but risked his own life, his legs, and his freedom to do so.
They bounced over the hard-packed snow, grateful for the snow tires someone had thoughtfully provided, and searched as deep into the forest as they could before they had to get off and walk. She could hear other searchers, including many of the townsfolk, calling out Jimmy’s and Sybil’s names, and she wondered where Levi was. She’d heard he’d closed the distillery and now had several of his cousins and employees searching as well.
One would think with that much manpower they’d find Jimmy quickly, and hopefully Sybil. But there was just too much forestland for it to be that easy. Hundreds of square miles, and much of it mountainous. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains were the southern tip of the Rockies. Just as beautiful. Just as hazardous.
The meteorologist had been right. Thank goodness, because Sun didn’t want to think the woman was all beauty with no brains. The sun came out of hiding and warmed the place to a comfortable sting. Just enough to keep their cheeks cold but not frozen solid. Like a lettuce crisper with the temp set a little too low.
“Nothing like a brisk stroll through the forest,” Quincy said.
Every few feet, they stopped, yelled for Jimmy and Sybil, and then waited for a response before continuing. Quincy checked in with their location every half hour.
After a couple of hours of trudging through the snow, Sun began to worry that three days would not be enough.
The radio squawked, but the helicopter made a pass overhead, and they didn’t catch what the IC said.
Quincy pressed the Talk button on the radio. “Say again, command.”
His voice came back over the speaker. It had a somber tone, and Sun’s heart stopped beating to better hear his message.
He said quietly, “We have a body.”
“When did you write that?” Auri asked Cruz as they filed into the hall.
He made the smallest effort humanly possible to shrug, probably to conserve energy should the apocalypse happen. “Last night.”
“What? After I went home?”
Another energy-efficient shrug. “Mrs. Ontiveros wanted me to enter one more poem in some contest she helps coordinate, so I told her I’d write her one. I do it all the time.” He offered her an equally energy-efficient grin where only one side of his mouth tilted up. “She loves that shit.”
“I love that shit, too. That was stunning.”
He lowered his head, clearly unused to praise.
“How do you do it? How do you write such beautiful imagery?”
“My imagery is rarely called beautiful. Did you miss the part about the shredding of flesh?”
She laughed softly. “No, but it was still beautiful. So, you gonna tell me? How you do it? How you think like that?”
“I don’t know.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I don’t really think in English, if that makes any sense. I think in pictures. In signs. I signed way before I could talk, and I’ve thought in signs ever since.”
She gaped at him, but only a little. “Okay, I take back what I said last night. That is officially the coolest thing I’ve ever heard.”