A Good Day for Chardonnay

by Darynda Jones

  She laughed nervously. “I only had two sips.”

  “Keith Seabright is former special ops. He’s a survivalist and the best hand-to-hand combat fighter I’ve ever met.”

  “Good for him,” she said with an appreciative nod. “I always hoped he’d do well. Who’s Keith again?”

  One scythe-shaped brow inched up. “The man who was almost stabbed to death?”

  She snapped back to attention, struggling to get a grip. She hadn’t seen him for months, so Levi Ravinder up close and personal was like a hit of heroin.

  “Right. Right.” She grabbed a confused Rojas’s pen and notepad and started taking notes. Notes that her deputies probably already had. “Keith Seabright. Where do you know him from?”

  “Here and there.”

  Great. She was going to get cryptic Levi. Out of all of his personalities, cryptic was not her favorite. She much preferred flirty Levi. Or lusty Levi, though she’d only seen it once in her life. Twice if one were to count their last encounter in his bedroom, but he’d been beyond exhausted. Hardly in his right mind.

  Then again, the first time he’d been drunk, so …

  She pretended to write down his statement. “Here and there. Okay, how long have you known him?”

  “Longer than most. Not as long as others.”

  “Right. Longer than most. Not as long as—”

  “Are we done?”

  She looked up at him. “In a hurry?”

  “I need to find those men.”

  She lowered the pen. “This is an investigation, Mr. Ravinder. You need to go to the hospital and let us do our jobs. Why do you want me to run a tox screen on your friend?”

  He huffed out a breath and looked away, annoyed at being detained. “Because he was stabbed. Multiple times.”

  “From what I understand, three men with knives will do that.”

  He stepped closer. “You don’t get it. There could’ve been ten and he would’ve taken them without breaking a sweat. He’s what they call an elite. No way in hell three scrawny punks can take him down. They had to have drugged him. Put something in his beer or tranqed him somehow.”

  “Levi,” Sun began, but he stopped her with another scowl.

  “He wasn’t moving right when he came out of the bar. And he was fighting back but it was like he was drunk.”

  “Hence his exit from a bar.”

  “Where he drank one beer. Seabright doesn’t drink enough to become inebriated. Not when he’s on a job. He’s a soldier through-and-through.”

  “He was on a job?”

  He raked his free hand through his hair and turned away from her. “I don’t know. He seemed edgy. Hypervigilant. Like when he’s working.”

  While that was interesting as hell—how would Levi know what Keith Seabright looked like while he was working and what exactly did the man do for a living?—it could wait until he was looked after. If Levi was right, however, this wasn’t just a random bar fight. This was a premeditated attempted murder.

  Quincy walked up then. “I might be able to explain your friend’s behavior.”

  Levi turned back, tightening his grip on the cap impatiently.

  “According to a couple of witnesses, he got into an argument with a man at the Quick-Mart this afternoon. They said it got pretty heated.”

  Levi frowned. “He didn’t say anything about that.”

  “Why did he come outside?” Sun asked. “Was he leaving?”

  “I need to go,” Levi said.

  Quincy stayed him by showing a palm. “Mr. Walden was working the Quick-Mart, if that’s where you’re wanting to go. We’ve already contacted him. He didn’t see anything.”

  Levi looked toward the heavens as though begging for patience. “Then who were the witnesses at the store?” He scanned the small crowd. “I’ll talk to them.”

  Sun had enough. “Give me your wrists,” she said, her voice razor-sharp.

  He spun around to her. “What?”

  “Your wrists.” She demonstrated by pointing to one of her own. “I’m placing you under arrest.”

  If rage had a name at that exact moment in time, it was Levi Ravinder.

  3

  Do we serve drunken, sarcastic assholes?

  Find out next week on We Think the Fuck Not.

  —SIGN AT THE ROADHOUSE BAR AND GRILL

  “I mean it.” She unclipped a pair of plastic wrist cuffs off Quincy’s belt. It was either arrest him and force him to go to the hospital or release the floodgates and beg him to go, hoping her tears would sway him. First, they would not. Second, no one needed to see that. By officially arresting him, the sheriff’s office would be obligated to take him to urgent care whether he wanted to go or not.

  He bent closer and spoke through clenched teeth. “You can’t be serious.”

  She wanted nothing more than to cup her hands around his jaw. To pull him to her. To place tiny kisses on his sculpted mouth and whisper promises of an inappropriate nature if he would just go to the medical center. But they had a crowd of onlookers, not to mention the fact that her deputies might lose the teensiest amount of respect for her if she tried to seduce an injured victim in the middle of a criminal investigation.

  Then again …

  She leaned closer, breathed in the hint of subtle cologne he wore, and whispered, “I couldn’t be more serious if you paid me.”

  Careful not to hurt him, not that he would feel it on his current adrenaline high, she slipped the cuffs over his battered hands, baseball cap and all, and tightened them just enough so they wouldn’t fall off.

  “Don’t do this, Vicram.”

  Her chest tightened around her heart. “You were defending a friend in battle and then got hit by a truck, Levi. Just get a couple of X-rays and then Quincy will release you.”

  “Me?” Quince asked, surprised.

  Levi let out a frustrated sigh. “They’ll be out of the state by then.”

  “We don’t know that. Zee called it in. Every trooper in New Mexico is looking for that truck.” She took his arm and led him toward Quincy’s cruiser, a little surprised he didn’t resist. “You do this and I’ll go talk to Mr. Walden.” Mr. Walden, the owner of the Quick-Mart, would not appreciate her late-night invasion, but at that point, she really didn’t care.

  “Walden saw something,” Levi said. “He’s just too much of a weasel to get involved.”

  “I can handle Walden.” Levi wasn’t wrong. The man was a bit of a weasel.

  He stopped and the look on his face told her more than any words could have. Whoever Keith Seabright was, he meant more to Levi than most of his family members did. Not that that was saying much.

  “Let me come with you.” It wasn’t a request. “I’ve been deputized. It would be legit.”

  How could she forget? “We can discuss it after the X-rays.” The hemorrhage in his eye was getting worse. The entire white was now blood red and the swelling around his orbital socket was darkening to a startling array of purples and burgundies and blacks.

  He bit down in frustration. As though a last resort, he said, “One of them is already dead.”

  “What?”

  He pressed his mouth together, clearly reluctant to say anything. After a moment, he repeated, “One of the assailants is already dead. I wrested his knife away and severed his femoral artery. He will have bled out in minutes, so they’ll have to dump his body. They headed north on 25, so odds are they’ll pull off the highway and dump it, then get back on. That gives us time to find them.”

  The fact that everything he said shocked her to the core had to show on her face. She stood speechless a solid minute as Rojas and Zee moved closer, flanking Quincy. They must have overheard.

  “It’s what Seabright would have done had he not been drugged. They’d all be dead. Not just one. They’ll have to burn the truck, too, but that can wait until they get to Denver.”

  Sun held up a hand to slow him down, then said, “First, are you sure you got his femoral?” When he
only deadpanned her, she asked, “Okay, how do you know they went north? They could have gone either way once they got to the on-ramps.”

  “They went north,” he insisted.

  “How do you know?”

  He bit down, his jaw flexing, before repeating himself. “They went north.”

  Sun wanted to curse. Or arrest him for real for obstruction, which was well within her rights. He was the most stubborn … “We’re on the same side, Levi.”

  He lowered his head and studied her from beneath a set of impossibly thick lashes. “These cuffs say otherwise.”

  She didn’t argue.

  “Uncuff me and let me go get them.”

  Frustration ripped through her gut, but she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of that knowledge. “Call it in, Quince. Make sure the state troopers know one of them is seriously injured. We need to call all the hospitals within a hundred-mile radius.”

  “They won’t go to a hospital. He was dead before they hit the interstate.”

  She opened the back door of Quincy’s cruiser, but he stood his ground. “Uncuff me, Vicram.”

  She looked past him, and asked Quincy, “You still have that dart gun?”

  An evil grin spread across his face. He was about to answer when a tiny voice drifted toward them. “Levi?”

  They all turned to see the very fruit of Sun’s loins planted smack-dab in the middle of their crime scene. The auburn-haired beauty stood panting with round eyes and wet cheeks.

  “Auri,” Sun said, rushing to her. “What are you doing here?” She spotted the abandoned bike Auri had ridden over and cupped the girl’s face in her hands. “Sweetheart, what is it?”

  Auri had yet to tear her gaze off Levi, her lashes spiked with wetness, her bottom lip trembling. “I heard on the scanner.”

  Behind her Cyrus Freyr’s SUV skidded to a halt and both he and his wife Elaine, aka Sun’s parents, bolted out and hurried over, their journey coming to a sudden stop thanks to the crime scene tape. They waited on the other side of it.

  “I’m sorry, Sun,” her dad said, out of breath. “We heard that a male had been stabbed multiple times, and then Ravinder’s name came up and she was out the door before we could stop her.” He looked at Levi with a grin. “It seems the rumors of your demise have been greatly exaggerated.” He gave him a once-over and corrected his statement. “Or at least mildly exaggerated.”

  Levi offered him a cursory nod before returning his attention to Auri. “I’m okay, Red.”

  “I thought…” Her voice broke and she swallowed hard.

  With the gentlest of nods, he beckoned her toward him.

  Auri ran and threw her arms around him. Sun didn’t miss the wince. Despite being in obvious pain, he lifted his cuffed hands over her head and hugged her to him.

  “I’m okay.”

  “I thought you were stabbed,” she said between sobs.

  Once again, the strong connection between her daughter and the man Sun had been in love with since the beginning of time hit her square in the chest. Even the fact that he was covered in the blood of, quite possibly, three men didn’t convince her to separate them.

  Her chest tightened again, this time for a different reason. Levi Ravinder seemed to grow more enigmatic by the hour. The fact that he’d saved her daughter’s life when she was seven only added to his thundering appeal.

  Sun’s parents stood watching, as well, with the most endearing expressions on their sweet faces. For reasons unknown to Sun, they seemed to love Levi. Sun had figured that out a while ago. But even after everything, there were still so many questions Sun had about his past. Or, more to the point, her past and his involvement in it.

  She’d been abducted when she was seventeen. Held for five days. Violated, or so the evidence would suggest since nine months later she gave birth to a squalling copper-headed ball of fire appropriately named Aurora Dawn.

  Fifteen years after that, on Sun’s second day on the job, they found the decomposed body of one of Levi’s uncles near where Sun had been held. He’d been stabbed once through the chest and left there for over a decade. The timing fit perfectly with Sun’s abduction, and after Levi’s sister confessed to killing their uncle, Levi confessed as well. Then one of Levi’s cousins confessed. His plant manager. His barber. Hell, even Doug, the town flasher, confessed.

  Thus far, eleven people had confessed to killing Kubrick “The Brick” Ravinder.

  But the man’s denim jacket had been soaked with blood that was not his own. He’d hurt his opponent. Bad. And Sun had Levi’s DNA. She’d sent it in and was still waiting, four months later, for the results.

  She understood. A cold case was hardly high priority, but she knew people. She could’ve rushed the job. So why hadn’t she?

  She walked over to Levi and Auri.

  “Why is he in handcuffs?” her daughter asked, then looked at Levi. “Why are you in handcuffs?”

  “You’ll have to ask your mother.”

  “Mom!” she said in that spitfire way of hers. She stepped toward Sun and asked under her breath, “Why do you have Levi in handcuffs?”

  “Because I’m arresting him,” Sun whispered back.

  “What?” She jammed her fists on her narrow hips. “Why?”

  “Because he won’t go to the hospital.”

  “So you’re arresting him?” she asked, her voice rising an octave.

  Sun smiled inwardly with the knowledge that she was about to win this particular argument. It didn’t happen often and she took her victories where she could get them.

  “First, he thwarted an attempted murder. Then he fought off the three knife-wielding assailants unarmed. And then he got hit by a Toyota Tundra when he tried to stop the knife-wielding assailants from getting away because, apparently, he thinks he can stop a half-ton truck with his two-hundred-pound body. So now we know two things.” Sun raised an index finger. “One, he’s bad at math.” Her middle finger joined the first one to form a V. “And two, he most likely has internal injuries and is bleeding to death on the inside.”

  Auri dropped her jaw and shifted her outrage to the man standing beside her.

  Sun fought the urge to pump her fist in triumph. “I just want some X-rays to be safe,” she said instead. “And Levi is not only refusing to go to the hospital, he is insisting on going after the assailants. Alone.”

  “You are so under arrest,” Auri said, pointing to the inside of Quincy’s cruiser.

  A sly grin spread across his face. “Traitor.”

  She pointed harder. “In.”

  He leaned down, kissed her cheek, then did as he was told.

  It was Sun’s turn to drop her jaw. If she’d known that was all it would take, she would have called Auri to the crime scene half an hour ago.

  He climbed inside the SUV and sat back, but Auri wasn’t finished. She jumped onto the step and kissed his stubbled cheek. “Thank you.”

  The look he gave her, the adoration in his eyes, took Sun’s breath away.

  Auri stepped down and offered her mom an apologetic hug. “I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to contaminate your crime scene.”

  “It’s okay, bug,” she said, even though in some places she could lose her job for such an indiscretion. She looked at her parents. “You have my permission to duct tape her to a chair and lock her in the basement.”

  Her dad chuckled, but her mom was still looking on dreamily, so enamored with Levi Ravinder, Sun fought a knee-jerk reaction to stake her claim. Mostly because she had none.

  They’d certainly never been a couple. The one time they almost hooked up, they were just kids and he was half-drunk on his family’s moonshine, a recipe he’d legitimized and grown into a very successful business. He owned one of the most famous corn whiskey distilleries in the world, Dark River Shine.

  But she’d been back four months and, apart from her first week on the job in which he helped with a missing persons case, she’d only seen him a handful of times. And most of those were fro
m a distance. Auri visited his nephew, Jimmy, but even when Jimmy came over to their house, Levi was never the one to pick him up.

  Sun helped her dad put Auri’s bike in the back of his SUV, then watched as they drove off. Quincy was talking to one of the onlookers, so Sun turned back to the cruiser and walked over to Levi.

  He’d laid his head back and closed his lids, but he still sensed her presence. “You’re not forgiven,” he said without opening his eyes.

  She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the door. “I didn’t ask to be.”

  His face, so impossibly handsome, looked tired. He was three years older than her, but he somehow looked younger at that moment. More vulnerable.

  She watched him a while, reveling in just being so close, then said, “I saw the wince.”

  Confusion flashed across his face but he caught on quickly. “What wince?”

  “When Auri hugged you.”

  “Wince is a strong word.”

  “What would you call it?”

  “Flinch.”

  “And how is flinch better than wince?”

  “A wince is a facial expression. I’ve spent years perfecting my poker face. I don’t wince.”

  “Fine. Why’d you flinch?”

  “I’m sore.”

  “Because you have internal injuries.”

  “Mm, I don’t think so.”

  “You were hit by a truck.”

  “You hit harder.”

  That stopped her. She paused a moment to take him in, then asked, “Do I?”

  “And it hurts worse.”

  “If you two are finished,” Quince said from behind her, “I’ll get him to the medical center. You know, since he could die from massive internal bleeding any second now.”

  Sun took one more lingering look at his powerful profile, then stepped back. “Thanks, Quincy. I’m going to talk to Walden. Surely, he saw something if that argument at his store was as bad as everyone said.” She looked around, spotted her target, and called out to Salazar.

  Salazar excused herself from questioning the fan club and hurried over. “Yeah, boss?”

  “If you have everyone’s names and contact info, you can let them go. The forensic team from Albuquerque will be here soon. Hang out and make sure they go wide. I want every speck of trash collected and photos of everything, no matter how small. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”