Levi turned and his gaze locked with Sun’s as though he knew what she’d been thinking. Either that or her guilty conscience was projecting again. It did that.
“She’s good, Mom. She hasn’t woken up yet, but—”
“Mom?” Auri’s tiny voice wafted to her.
Sun ran around the bed and took her other hand, carefully since that was the one with the IV.
Her bottom lip quivered. “Mom,” she said, a soft sob escaping her.
Maybe it was a sign of the last couple of days or her guilty conscience projecting again, but Sun knew exactly what her daughter was thinking. “He’s okay, Auri.”
The look Auri gave her dissolved every bone in her body.
“He fought him off, sweetheart. Cruz was admitted with wounds, but he survived the surgery and is in ICU right down the hall.”
Auri’s gaze bounced between Sun and Levi, tears welling between her lashes before she broke down. Sun leaned in and hugged her for a very long time before Levi took over. It was a hard job. They took it in shifts. Her parents chipping in to cover when Sun and Levi needed a break. Even Quincy came in to lend a hand, cradling her to him until they came to transfer her. Each of them careful not to disturb her turban-like bandages.
They wheeled her to her room a little while later, the family following as though they were in a parade.
Quincy leaned close to her. “We need to talk.”
She scowled at him. “I’ll say. You have a lot of explaining to do.”
“Me?” he asked, appalled.
She left it at that. All in all, it had been a very productive morning.
But it was about to get more productive. She had no choice. Now that Auri was out of the woods, for the most part, she had to get back to Del Sol, even for just a few hours, to get on top of everything. Her parents would stay with Auri, but she needed the story before she went.
By noon, Auri was up and eating, a very good sign. Her head barely hurt from the submissive hemogoblin—her words—on the side of her head.
“Okay, bug bite,” Sun said, sitting on the edge of her daughter’s bed. “I need the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
Elaine and Cyrus were in the room, too, as well as Levi and Quincy. They’d kicked the latter out of Cruz’s room to clean the kid’s wounds and change his bandages. Cruz had only awakened a couple of times but they were keeping him pretty medicated. According to the surgeon, the first forty-eight hours were crucial in the fight against sepsis, especially when the intestines had been punctured. The last thing they needed was Cruz fighting them again and ripping something inside.
Auri bit her lip. She wasn’t 100 percent by any means, but she was definitely almost bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
Levi sat on the other side of her bed. He took her hand. “I can leave, Red, if that will help.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I almost got Cruz and Mrs. Fairborn killed. You’ll find out eventually either way.”
“Auri,” Elaine said. “That’s not true.”
“It is, Grandma. I wish it weren’t more than anything in the world, but it is. I just—” She looked at Sun. “I just wanted to be like my mom so bad.” A wetness welled between her dark red lashes. “But I’m not. I never will be.”
“Sweetheart, why would you say that?”
“You save people’s lives. I just try to get them killed.”
Levi reached out and wiped a tear streaming down her face. “How about you tell your mom what happened and let her decide if you two are alike or not? You might be surprised.”
He was right. She did tend to put people in danger from time to time. But only if other people were in danger first. It was kind of her job.
“First, I was trying to prove that Mrs. Fairborn was a serial killer, then I was just trying to prove that the drifter accused of the crimes was innocent without getting Mrs. Fairborn sent to prison because she couldn’t make a shank out of her toothbrush, then I just wanted to get the necklace back to its rightful owner, and then everything spun out of control.”
No one spoke for a few minutes, so when Auri swallowed, it seemed really loud.
Sun came around first. “I thought we talked about how unlikely it was that Mrs. Fairborn was a serial killer.”
“I know. I just thought you were wrong.”
“And as far as proving the drifter innocent, that would be very difficult at this late stage.”
“But not impossible,” she argued. “Especially after you see all the things in Mrs. Fairborn’s house. I even thought about asking her to write a confession letter that I could magically find after her untimely death to prove that Hercules Holmes was innocent.”
“Wow,” Sun’s mom said, horrified. “You really thought this through.”
She nodded. “But at the same time, I wanted to get the necklace back to its rightful owners since they seemed really upset about it.”
“I read those articles, too, Auri,” Sun said. “From what I remember, the family cared more about that necklace than they did their missing family member.”
“I agree, but does that mean they don’t deserve to get their things back? I mean, they said she stole the necklace before she ran off.”
“And I’m guessing you told her cousin, Billy Press?”
Auri bit her lip as tears welled again. “I found him online and told him about the boardinghouse, but I didn’t give him the name! I would never put Mrs. Fairborn in danger like that.”
Sun squeezed her hand. “But you did, pumpkin. You almost got her killed. Not to mention Cruz.”
“Sunny,” Quincy said, admonishing her.
“Quince, she needs to hear the truth. She needs to realize there are consequences to her actions.”
“She’s right, Quincy,” Auri said, her little chin trembling. “This is all my fault.”
“That is not what I am saying,” Sun said, enunciating each word. “You tried to do the right thing.” She took hold of her quivering chin, softly guiding Auri’s gaze back to her. “I am so proud of you for that. You said we aren’t alike, but you’re wrong. I have to make these kinds of decisions every day of my life. Is the risk worth the reward? Is whatever I’m trying to accomplish, whatever crime I’m trying to solve, worth the danger to me or my deputies? To the people who might get caught in the crossfire?”
“So then if it’s too risky, you don’t solve the crime?”
“No, honey. If it’s too risky, I find another way. Take a different route. You had no way of knowing what Emily Press’s cousin would do, but that’s the problem. Why do you think people in law enforcement never give out any details during an active investigation?”
“Because it could hurt their case?”
“Often, yes, but also because others could use that information to their advantage. Again, the family was more upset about the necklace than they were about Emily. Something didn’t add up and you knew that. In your gut.”
Auri dropped her gaze as a pink hue blossomed across her cheeks. “I did.”
“Okay, then. First, I’m putting alarms on your windows with a high-security surveillance system. No more sneaking out.”
She shook her head. “You don’t need to do that. It won’t happen again.
“Regardless. And I’m putting an ankle bracelet on you with GPS and electroshock capabilities.”
She swallowed hard. “Okay.”
Sun wouldn’t, of course. She didn’t even know where to find an ankle bracelet with electroshock capabilities. “And that’s just the beginning, hon.”
“I know,” she said with a sob, and Sun had to steel her heart. There had to be consequences. “For now, I want you to think about it and tell me what punishment you think you deserve.”
“What if I can’t?”
“I have faith.” Sun knew that no one would be harder on Auri than she would herself. Maybe even a little too hard, but maybe that was what she needed. A harsh dose of reality.
After a fresh round o
f tears, Auri nodded in agreement.
It took a while but they finally got the whole story from her. It demolished Sun’s heart to hear her daughter try to explain what it was like to find Mrs. Fairborn tied up. How she rushed in without even thinking, putting everyone in even greater danger. How she watched as the knife sank into Cruz’s abdomen.
Sun decided right then and there the fiery minx learned her lesson in the hardest way possible. She would’ve given anything to protect her from it, too. Still, what she did could not go unpunished. Sun saw several thousand hours of community service in her future.
Possibly worse, for Sun anyway, she had to tell Auri about Cruz’s father. Levi held the pixie for a long time while Sun stroked her hair, worried she’d broken her. They cried together and waited as they brought Cruz, barely conscious, to his room across the hall.
“What do I say to him, Mom?” she asked between sobs.
“Just be there for him, honey. That’s all you can do.”
Sun checked on her other stabbing victim, Keith Seabright. They’d downgraded his prognosis from critical to serious but stable. With that bit of good news, Sun had to get back to the office.
She took her parents aside before she left. “Okay, guys. She is connected to an IV. Her ass will show if she tries to make a run for it and that will mortify her. And she literally had brain surgery. Do you think you can keep her from sneaking out?” She had to ask.
The guilt on their faces was priceless.
“And I’m teasing you because you have to stop, too. This was not your fault. Any of it.”
Her mom’s expression told Sun she was not convinced. “We showed her the articles.”
“No, she found those articles all on her own because she’s a true-crime aficionado. You have no idea how many times I’ve had to drag her away from the Investigation Discovery channel. She knows more about hiding a body than I do.”
“We’re sorry either way, Sunny,” her dad said. “If we could change what happened—”
“I would do it, too. And as many times as I’ve plotted your deaths for something that actually was your fault, this is not one of those times.”
“You’ve plotted our deaths?” her mom asked.
“So many times.”
“Like, how recently?”
“Remember Carver?” she asked, giving attitude.
“Oh, yeah.” Her dad scratched his chin. “Our bad.”
“Your bad?” she asked. “You set me up with a hitman and it’s your bad?”
Her mom shrugged. “He seemed okay at the time.”
She leaned in and kissed her cheek, then gave her dad a bear hug. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
She had to get to Del Sol to check on the progress of the Kent and the Fairborn cases. Billy Press’s family was on the way from Amarillo, and they apparently wanted that damned necklace. They were about to be sorely disappointed. Sun decided right then and there to hold that thing in evidence as long as humanly possible. As soon as she could find it.
She promised to be back by nightfall and left Quincy in charge, only because he refused to leave. She took Levi with her. He had a business to run, after all, and he needed to get some rest that did not involve a plastic lounger that reclined about as much as a seat on a jetliner.
On the drive home, her mind spiraled in a thousand different directions. The irony was not lost on her. Kubrick Ravinder stabbed her rescuer fifteen years ago before her rescuer won control of the knife and slid it into Kubrick’s chest.
And now Cruz. The saying that truth was stranger than fiction had never been more accurate.
Her thoughts, as they always did, eventually circled back to the man sitting beside her. The way he cared for Auri. The way he held Sun in the shower, completely unfazed by the fact that she was soaking him through. And the way he looked in the red T-shirt she bought one size too small, swearing it was all they had. It showed every muscle. Every dip and every curve. Every ounce of perfection.
Rojas called and snapped her out of her musings. The Bluetooth in her cruiser automatically picked it up and blasted the ringtone throughout the speakers. Levi had been just as lost in his thoughts as she was hers, but it was impossible for him not to hear the conversation.
“We got this, boss,” Rojas said. “You do what you need to do. We have everything covered. Also, Randy set fire to the station.”
“Damn it,” she said, only half paying attention to him and more paying attention to the way Levi’s biceps stretched the hem of the sleeve. “He didn’t set off the suppression system, did he?”
“Only in the locker room.”
“Okay, good. Who’s Randy again?” She loved saying that. It was too bad Carver turned out to be an assassin and not a pest control technician. And that he was dead. She could’ve used him to trap the little guy.
Not thirty seconds after she ended her call with Rojas, her phone rang again.
“Hey, Sunny Girl,” Royce Womack said.
“Hey yourself. What do you got?”
“So, you were right. My contact looked into one Mr. Carver Zuckerman. He wasn’t so much a famous hitman as a wannabe famous hitman.”
“Which, who doesn’t want to be the top in their field?” she asked. “Goals, Womack. We all need them.”
“We do at that. I did look into his Russian hit. It really happened, but it was by one of the most famous snipers in Russian history. Your guy has never even been out of the country.”
“Ah, but maybe that was his genius. He was a hitman, after all. Surely he had multiple identities.”
“Yeah, no. He was on absolutely no one’s radar. How’s the kid?”
“Better. Thank God. Thanks for looking into this, Royce.”
“Any time. It looks like Matthew Kent is going away for a much longer stay than he’d planned now that his ties to the Delmars have been exposed and the money he had hidden all these years has been found.”
“Good,” she said, hoping Addison filed for divorce first thing that morning.
“How ’bout I buy you coffee again soon. We can watch the sunrise together.”
She couldn’t help but notice Levi tense just ever so slightly. “What’s with this again crap? You haven’t bought me coffee yet. I seem to remember someone forgetting his wallet last time.”
He laughed and hung up.
“I thought he was retired,” Levi said.
“He is. He just helps out when I need him.”
“I know the feeling.”
She couldn’t argue that, but the way he said it, like she only called him when she needed help with a case. Not that he was wrong. She did only call him when she needed help with a case, but to call otherwise would imply they had a relationship of some kind. And the phone worked both ways. If he wanted to see her more often, he damned well knew where to find her. By the time she’d worked up the nerve to tell him that very thing, they were back at the station and thus Levi’s truck.
He got out of the cruiser and turned toward her. The analytical once-over he gave her piqued her curiosity, especially when he said, “You can do better than Womack.”
He closed the door before she could question him.
25
Reason You Need Coffee #247:
It’s difficult to work with your eyes closed.
—SIGN AT CAFFEINE-WAH
Levi’s words threw her. Did he honestly think she and Womack were a thing? She loved the older man. Had for years. But not like she loved Levi. Because she did. She loved Levi.
The truth hit her hard. It was more than a schoolgirl crush and had been for years. Decades, probably.
Sun dwelled on that fact as she showered and changed into fresh clothes. The fact that her longtime affection for the man had turned into a deep and fervent love, almost desperate in its depth. Painful in its scope. It would be impossible to pinpoint an exact place or time it happened. Maybe it had always been the vibrant thing that it was today. Maybe she’d been in denial.
Nah.
>
After driving to her office, she suffered through an afternoon of briefings and interviews and paperwork, all punctuated with a constant barrage of texts to her parents to check up on the kids.
When she got back to the hospital room, she found her mom reading in a chair, her dad snoring on a built-in love seat, and her daughter gone.
“She snuck out?” she asked, appalled. She gaped at her mom. “Didn’t we just talk about this?”
Her mom jumped to her feet, shushed her with an index finger over her mouth—Sun’s, not hers—and led her across the hall. “We keep finding her like this,” she whispered when Sun saw Auri curled up beside Cruz, careful not to put any weight on his wounds. Their arms were interlaced. Her face centimeters from his.
Sun felt like the Grinch when his heart started swelling painfully in his chest. “How is she?”
“A little dizzy, but no pain. She ate well, too, considering.”
“Has it sunk in that they had to shave part of her head yet?”
“No. We’re going to let her stay in denial as long as possible.”
“And Cruz?”
“He only wakes up when the nurses come in and make Auri go to her own bed. He’s delirious, starts fighting them until they finally let her come back just to calm him down.”
Sun shook her head. “I never wanted this for her,” she told her mom. “This intense of a relationship at so young an age.”
“You can hardly blame her. You were the same way.”
“What? I was never this intense when I dated. I don’t think I ever fell in love. Not really.”
“Because your love, your intensity, was focused elsewhere.”
They’d known how she felt about Levi almost before she knew it herself.
“I got this, Mom. You two go home and get some rest.”
“I’m only going to agree to this because your dad will pay for it dearly if he sleeps like that all night. But we’ll be back in a few hours.”
After they left, she sat on the recliner beside Auri. Cruz opened his eyes and looked at her over the girl in his arms.
She stood. “Hey, handsome. Do you need anything?”
His lids drifted shut as though he couldn’t hold them open, but he fought and won, if only for a few minutes. He shook his head.
A Good Day for Chardonnay Page 31