The tardy bell rang, and a few seconds later, a television powered up in class. A weekly student news program popped on.
“Good morning, Lions!” a peppy brunette said from behind an anchor desk. A desk that looked like it had been made from cardboard, but that fact only added to the charm. “Welcome back! This week, we have a special investigative report brought to you by the Journalism Club. Roll it, Aiden!”
The screen went black, then Lynelle Amaia popped into the frame holding a microphone and standing in front of the sheriff’s station.
Auri’s palms slickened instantly, and she fought the urge to reach for her inhaler.
Lynelle wore a million-dollar smile as she took over the spotlight. “Thanks, Callie. We have a special story for all of you Lions out there. If you didn’t already know it, we have a new sheriff.” She gestured to the lettering on the building.
Auri glanced around, becoming a little concerned. What was Lynelle doing? Besides being really, really perky?
“So, we decided to check her out—to dig into her past, so to speak—and see what we had to look forward to for the next four years. After all, we got a brand-new lioness in the deal. Aurora Dawn Vicram? Welcome to Del Sol High!”
Auri froze. This was not happening. Dig into her mother’s past? There was no way they could’ve found out the truth. It was buried along with the Ark of the Covenant, Jimmy Hoffa, and her pent-up emotions.
“Liam?”
The camera cut to Liam Eaton in front of the monument the town put up in Auri’s pretend dad’s honor, and the edges of her vision grew dark.
“Jimmy’s uncle found him!”
Sun practically jerked the radio out of Quincy’s hands, because whomever shouted that Jimmy had been found didn’t seem distressed.
“Did you find Jimmy?” she asked. “Or a body?”
She recognized Deputy Salazar’s feminine voice saying, “Um, both?”
“No,” Sun whispered. Quincy put a hand on her shoulder to steady her.
“We found Jimmy, but I guess they found a body, too?”
She slammed her eyes shut and braced herself. “Sybil?”
“Not a girl,” she said.
Sun almost dropped the radio. “Where are you? I need your location.”
“Okay, we are by the command center. Levi Ravinder just brought Jimmy down from the mountain. He’s half-frozen, so the EMTs are taking him now.”
Closing a hand over her mouth, Sun looked heavenward and let the light soak into her.
A male voice came over the radio then. Sun could hear dogs barking in the background. Cadaver dogs. “We have a body about half a mile north of Estrella Pond. Male. Decomposition would suggest it’s been here a long time. Possibly years.”
“What the hell?”
Sun shook out of it and nodded to Quincy. They sprinted back to the ATV, which, in the snow, was so much harder than it sounded. She had no signal, or she would have texted Auri that they’d found Jimmy. Then again, if he didn’t make it . . .
She decided to wait.
“Where to first?” Quincy asked.
“Let’s check on Jimmy first.” She gave orders to cordon off the area where the body was found, and they made it back to base camp in record time.
Sun spotted Levi accepting a blanket around his shoulders as an EMT checked his vitals. Or tried to. He was not being the most cooperative of patients. But he looked tired. His face raw from the elements. His lips cracked and bleeding. He’d been searching nonstop for almost forty-eight hours.
His cousin trudged down the mountain, gasping for air. Apparently, Levi had carried Jimmy down and left his cousin eating his dust. Or his snow flurries.
When Levi spotted her, he frowned, but that could have been because the EMT was trying to put an oxygen mask over his face. He looked like he’d lost ten pounds. In all honestly, he’d probably lost more than that.
Sun took a step toward him, but Quincy tapped her shoulder.
Outside of a second ambulance, Hailey had thrown her body over Jimmy’s as emergency personnel tried to load him into the vehicle. She wailed and kissed and hugged. He smiled back at her and tried to pat her face.
Sun almost cried. She walked over to them, very aware of the need to keep up appearances, but she had to question Jimmy. Time was running out.
She cleared her throat, then asked, “I’m glad you’re okay, Jimmy.”
Hailey looked up at her wearing the face of a banshee ready to attack.
Sun held up her hands. “I just have a couple of questions.”
“He almost died,” she said, her voice a hiss of emotion, and Sun knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was not acting this time. She was a pissed-off mama bear, and Sun was on the verge of taking one step too close to her cub, but she had no choice.
Making sure no one could see her face but Hailey, Sun offered the woman the best apology she could muster, infusing her expression with sympathy and remorse.
Hailey seemed to snap out of it. She turned away, but kept herself wrapped over him while the EMT got an IV started.
Sun stepped closer, gaining the interest of Jimmy’s uncle Levi, and not in a good way. “You are the bravest boy I’ve ever met,” she said to him.
He smiled from behind the mask and gave her a thumbs-up. The sixteen-year-old had blond hair like his mother, but darker. It was wet and plastered to his head, and his cheeks were bright red. That, along with the glassy eyes, had Sun worried he had a fever.
She could hardly blame Hailey. She wanted to throw herself over him, too. But for now, she needed to hurry.
“Jimmy, how on earth did you survive?”
With that, he flashed her a nuclear smile, and she finally saw a little of Levi in him. He pulled down the oxygen mask and said, “I made a snow cave. Like the rabbits.”
“Oh, my god, aren’t you the clever one? Can I ask you how you wandered so far out?”
“A deer,” Hailey said, shaking her head.
“It was hurt. I was trying to help it.”
“You were following an injured deer?”
Pride practically burst out of him when he nodded, but then he caught sight of the needle headed his way.
She could tell it scared him, and she almost laughed. “Let me get this straight,” she said, eyeing him with disbelief, “you just survived two days alone in the mountains with snow and blizzards and wild animals, and you’re scared of a needle?”
He nodded.
She leaned down. “Me, too. You know what helps?”
He shook his head.
“Panting.” When his expression turned dubious, she demonstrated. “Like a puppy.” She showed her tongue and breathed in and out in rapid successions. In other words, she panted.
He laughed softly.
“Don’t knock it until you try it, Daniel Boone. Come on. Stick out your tongue.”
He stuck it out but kept smiling.
“And now pant. Breathe in and out really fast.”
Hailey laughed as her son panted like a dog, but the needle had gone in before he’d even started. He never felt a thing.
“Guess what?” she said, leaning closer. “It’s done.”
He looked down wide-eyed at the IV in his hand and then back at her.
“Told ya,” she said, blowing on her nails and polishing them on her coveralls.
When he smiled like he’d single-handedly won the state championship, she took his other hand in hers. He was on fire. She needed to wrap this up.
“Jimmy, can I ask you a question?”
“We need to go,” the EMT said.
“Just one more. Jimmy, do you know Sybil? A girl a little younger than you with red hair and freckles? Did you . . . did you see her?”
He frowned. “No. Not Sybil. She’s not my friend. Only Auri’s. But everyone likes Auri, so it just makes good sense.”
“But wait, you know her?”
“No. Auri told me she’s her friend. I’m Auri’s friend, too, but mostly Sybil is
her friend because she’s a girl and Auri’s a girl and they talk about girl stuff. It’s gross.”
Sun snorted, as did Hailey.
The driver climbed into the ambulance and started it up.
“We’re going,” the EMT said.
Hailey followed the stretcher in and sat beside her son as the EMT shut the doors, and Sun prayed that he would be okay. She turned to Levi, worried for him, too.
“How is he?” she asked his EMT. She would’ve done it when Levi wasn’t looking, but he hadn’t stopped. He was annoyed with her, probably for questioning Jimmy.
“Dehydrated.” After another minute, he added, “And cantankerous.”
Levi leveled a scowl on the guy that could remove automotive paint.
“No fever?” she asked as Levi shifted the scowl to her. That was okay, though. She didn’t exfoliate that morning.
“No fever. He should be fine, but he definitely needs to rest for a few days.”
“Yeah. I’m sure he’s on top of that.”
“I’m right here,” Levi said.
“I’m very aware,” Sun answered. She took out a notebook and started writing.
“What are you doing?”
“Giving you a citation for littering. I saw what you did to the note.”
“The wind got it.”
“Mmm-hmmm, tell it to the judge.”
Quincy walked up, rubbing his hands together. “Okay, we should get out to that body. They’ve cordoned off the area, and we should be able to take the ATV all the way out to the site.”
“Great,” she said, folding her notebook without actually giving Levi a citation. Mostly because it was the wrong book. “I take it you know where we’re going?”
Quincy winced. “I was hoping you’d know the way out there. I haven’t been to Estrella Pond since I was a kid.”
“Me neither.”
“Why go to a pond when you have a lake?”
“Exactly. So . . .”
They turned in unison to Levi. When people said he was known for his skills in tracking, they weren’t talking about a racetrack. The guy new the land better than anyone in the area. He may have spent his summers on the Apache reservation, but when he came back, he put what he learned to use here.
Levi worked his scruffy, dark auburn jaw before saying, “I can take you there.”
17
She believed she could, so she did.
Now she needs bail money.
We are here to help!
—SIGN AT DEL SOL BAIL BONDS
He was so tired. Sun could tell. The emotional drain as well as the physical exertion of searching a mountain range for two days had to have taken its toll on him, but Levi stepped up and took them out to the incident site.
He rode his ATV in front of Quincy and Sun’s, almost losing them in the thick, snow-covered brush on numerous occasions.
“I think he’s enjoying this,” Quincy said over the roar of the motor.
Sun couldn’t take her eyes off Levi. He had stripped down to a lighter jacket and ski cap. His wide shoulders and long arms crossed the terrain with effortless ease, whereas she and Quincy struggled with every bump.
That being said, she could see the appeal. These things were probably a blast if the riders weren’t searching for missing persons or hunting dead bodies.
They crested a large hill and looked down upon a small iced-over pond in the valley where three mountains converged. The winter scene was breathtaking. Levi pulled to a stop and pointed. Sure enough, the team had already set up a tent to preserve what they could.
Sun got off the ATV and took in the surroundings. She turned to Levi. “Thanks. You have to be exhausted.”
He kept his gaze on her, but with the ski cap, the scarf covering his mouth, and the dark glasses, she couldn’t gauge what he was thinking.
“I’m so glad you found Jimmy,” she added.
“Me, too, man,” Quincy said. “That was kind of amazing.”
Levi didn’t even acknowledge their compliments. Instead, he turned back to the investigative scene, and Sun could see why he and Quincy didn’t get along. Quincy was a social genius. He could charm the skin off a snake.
Levi didn’t care enough to be charming. If someone didn’t like him, he would find the strength to carry on.
If someone didn’t like Quincy, he would do everything in his power to find out why. It would drive him crazy. Which was way more fun than it might seem on the surface.
Sun glanced at Levi, wanting so very much to pull down the scarf and run her fingertips over his shapely mouth. “You can go home if you’d like to.”
“I’m good here.”
“Here?” she asked, surprised. “You’re not going home? The EMT said—”
“This is my land.”
“Well, technically—” Quincy began, but Levi interrupted again.
“This is my land.”
She understood. While the mountain range butted up against his land, he’d spent his life exploring it. Of course he would consider it his.
Quincy started the ATV, and they headed down while Levi stayed up top. She looked back at him. He sat like a cowboy on a horse surveying the landscape. Or, possibly more accurate, like a Native American. An Apache, to be exact, though according to her mother, he was only about one-quarter Apache. The rest was all South. Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama. A culture all its own.
“Sheriff,” Jack, the medical investigator from the OMI in Albuquerque, said when they walked into the cordoned-off area.
Sun was taken aback. “Jacqueline, wow. What—? How—?”
“Oh,” she said with a light chuckle, “I volunteer with the SAR team when I can. Gets me off the slab, if you know what I mean.”
“I do.”
Jacqueline Baumann performed many of the autopsies Sun had to go to. She’d helped Sun get over the nausea and gave her some tips for future reference that Sun had used ever since.
“How’re the puppies?” she asked.
The young woman’s face morphed into that of a proud mom. “So wonderful. The little one, Sheila, is ball of fire. She’s discovered her tail, but she’s just too round to get to it.”
“Awww.” Sun melted, but reanimated herself when a state police officer, who’d been in the search party, walked up. “Officer,” she said in her best sheriff voice.
“Sheriff. We have one DB. Medium height. Dark blond hair. Forty-four years of age.”
She looked at the shriveled, mostly skeletal body wearing a plaid shirt and denim jacket, both of which had seen better days. “You can tell his age?”
“We can when we have his ID.” He presented an evidence bag holding a driver’s license, a key, and some cash. “One Mr. Kubrick Ravinder.”
A soft gasp escaped her before she could contain it.
“Did you know him?” the officer asked her.
“Uncle Brick. That’s what they called him. He left years ago and never came back. So I’ve been told.”
“Well, judging by the decomposition,” Jack said, “he didn’t get far.”
“How long ago was this?” Quincy asked her.
Sun shrugged. “Fifteen, sixteen years ago. I’m not sure. I just found out. The family didn’t consider him missing so much as up-and-left.”
“So, no missing persons report?” the officer asked.
“None that I know of. What are we thinking?” she asked Jack. “Natural causes? Exposure? Worse?”
“I’ll know more when I get him back to the lab in Albuquerque. For now, all I can say is it looks like his larynx may have been crushed. But he’s been out here a long time. An animal could have done that postmortem.”
Sun leaned over to look at it.
“It looks like he was dragged here from another location. See all that dirt?”
Sun nodded.
“He may have been buried at some point. If so, he was dug up. He’s missing several bones. I will, of course, do the usual workup. But as an initial point of note, there’s an a
wful lot of blood on his clothing for all of it be postmortem, which would be the case if he did die of natural causes or exposure.”
“Homicide?”
“Wouldn’t rule it out just yet. I’ll let you know my findings, unless you want to be notified when I’m starting.”
“Maybe. We’re working a missing persons case.”
“Another one?” she asked.
“The girl. Sybil St. Aubin.”
“Oh yes. Okay, well, keep me updated, and I’ll text you either way.”
“Thanks, Jack. Brick,” she said softly. “What more can this family take?” she asked Quincy, who was standing back, not particularly interested in the particulars, but the minute she did so, she noticed a bolo around Brick’s neck with a silver slide.
Quincy scoffed, though, and when she questioned him with quick glance, he said, “I’d bet my last dollar the same family you are worried about is the one who put him out here.”
She couldn’t argue that. Levi’s uncles were ruthless.
The bolo, made of dark braided leather and a slide with matching metal tips, looked handmade. And expensive. The fact that he still had both it and the cash in his pocket could rule out robbery, unless he’d been carrying something else more valuable.
The day grew brighter and warmer with each passing moment. The snow started melting off. The warmth felt good against her face.
Sun looked past Quincy to see if Levi was still on the hill. He was, and she shook her head. He had to be almost falling over.
Search and rescue was probably already packed up and heading out. She needed to check on the Book Babes, make sure they’d made it down the mountain okay, and get back on Sybil’s case.
She had her deputies canvassing the entire town, asking questions and showing Sybil’s picture. They were running the images on the news every hour as well. And they were still waiting on the partial print. Unlike in the movies or on TV, that kind of thing took time. Time she didn’t have.
Before she could get to the ATV, she caught sight of a small building sitting even farther down in the valley, just past the next hill.
“What is that?” she asked Quince.
He cupped a hand across his brow. “Huh. No idea. I’ve only been up here once, and that was a long time ago.”
A Bad Day for Sunshine Page 22