A Bad Day for Sunshine--A Novel

by Darynda Jones

  “But you’ve never seen them together?”

  “No. Never. He walks to the lake a lot and hangs out, but nobody talks to him.” Sun could see the pain that realization caused in her. “Not that I know of.”

  “Has he gone missing like this before?”

  She lowered her head. “He gets lost in the moment sometimes. Wanders too far. But we’ve always found him. He’s never been out all night.”

  One of the two proprietors, a.k.a. two of Sun’s best friends ever, stepped into the dark storeroom and spotted them. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was looking, then hurried to the pair and threw his arms around them both.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked into their hair. “What’s going on? Ricky and I have been worried sick.”

  Sun and Auri had lived above Richard and Ricky’s garage—a.k.a. remodeled loft of luxury—in Santa Fe for several years. She’d even officiated their wedding, both men decked out in killer tuxes with their own special brand of flair.

  But they weren’t just fashion savvy. They’d started the most successful coffee chain in the city. When they’d heard Sun was moving back to her hometown, they’d jumped at the idea of opening yet another coffee shop there. They loved the area, swearing artists were their people. They were certainly in the right place.

  “Is Jimmy okay?” Richard asked Hailey, his spiked black hair a glorious mess.

  Before she could answer, Ricky, an Asian god who knew eyeliner like nobody’s business, rushed into the storeroom, presumably between customers, and grabbed a hug from both women before hurrying back to the bar.

  It was sad that these were the only two people in the entire town Sun could completely trust with her and Hailey’s secret. There were plenty of people she trusted, but not when it came to her former nemesis’s life. Or her son’s.

  In a bizarre twist of fate, one that left Sun baffled to this day, she had been working with Hailey on an investigation for months, even before Sun won the election.

  The hot mess of a woman had reached out to her while she was still in Santa Fe, and they had become very close in the months since, a fact that boggled Sun’s mind even more than it had Hailey’s. Funny what the common ground of motherhood, and protecting one’s own, could do for a relationship.

  Sun would never forget the first time they met up in a dive halfway between Santa Fe and Del Sol. Hailey had walked in with her tail tucked between her legs, so to speak.

  “I’m sorry. For everything we did to you, but mostly for what happened. For the … accident.”

  Sun shook her head. “It was a long time ago. I hear you have a son.”

  Hailey beamed at her. “I do. He’s gorgeous, Sunshine. Just like your daughter.”

  The mention of Auri had surprised her at the time.

  “I’ve seen her,” Hailey explained. “When she stays with your parents over summer breaks.” She leaned in. “What a beauty.”

  And just like that, all was forgiven. As though the woman hadn’t been her worst nightmare for years. As though she hadn’t tried to kill her once and maim her twice. As though she hadn’t been part of the reason Sun left Del Sol in the first place.

  But Hailey had sought her out for a reason. Her uncle Clay had been trying to worm his way back into the Dixie Mafia. That wouldn’t be a big deal, but he wanted to use Levi’s business as a means to get back in.

  “My brother has worked his ass off for that business,” she’d told her on the first meeting. “And my dumbass uncle wants to use it to launder money for the DM.”

  Fury and indignation for Levi flooded every cell in Sun’s body. “Surely, Levi would never allow your uncle to do something like that.”

  “You don’t understand.” She leaned closer and took Sun’s hands into her own. “Even if Levi refuses, which he will, once the DM sees the potential gold mine of Dark River Shine, they’ll do everything in their power to take control.”

  The image sliced through Sun’s thoughts like a straight razor. “Would he ever give in to them?”

  “Levant Arun Ravinder? Hell no. He’d go to his grave first, and they will have no qualms about putting him there.”

  “What about your uncle?”

  “Please, he’d help them dig the grave.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Sun said, chewing on her fingernails. “Have you gone to the sheriff?”

  “Sheriff Redding? I would, but since he’s in on it…”

  “Sheriff Redding?” she asked, stunned. She knew the guy was an asshat, but …

  Hailey nodded. “They’re involved in several business ventures together. And there’s a deputy, too, but I can’t tell which one. I’ve never seen his face.”

  “Would you recognize him from his build?”

  “Maybe. He looked big. Wide shoulders. But that could’ve been the jacket he wore.”

  The blood drained from Sun’s face. Quincy was the tallest deputy Del Sol had at the moment. And he had the widest shoulders by a mile.

  “Ever since Levi legitimized the family business, my uncles have been trying to come up with a way to knock him off his pedestal.”

  “Of course. He can’t do better than they did.”

  “Never.”

  Never underestimate the devious nature of a family drenched in crime and blood. “The only thing I can suggest is that we go to the FBI.”

  Hailey jerked back as though Sun had slapped her. “I can’t do that. If they find out … No, it has to be you. Once we gather enough evidence against my uncle, then you can go to them.”

  “Hailey—”

  “No. No, Sunshine. I can’t risk my son’s life. Or Levi’s.”

  Sun understood more than Hailey could ever know. “If your uncle finds out you’re doing this, he’ll kill you, Hailey.”

  She raised her chin a notch and pasted on her brave face. “Let’s make sure he doesn’t find out.”

  That was months ago, and she still worried about Hailey’s uncle finding out she’d been gathering intel for her. And she worried about the Dixie Mafia taking over Levi’s operation.

  Since then, Sun had been investigating each and every one of her deputies. Well, before they were hers, that is. Even Quincy. Her face-to-face meetings with them served two purposes: to get to know them and to get an initial impression.

  None set off any alarms for her, so maybe the elusive Lieutenant Bo Britton was the deputy in cahoots with former Sheriff Redding. He’d been with him the longest. If one of her deputies was corrupt, he or she was an excellent actor. Then again, they’d have to be.

  “Okay, enough.” Richard was tearing up even though he had no idea what was going on. “I have to get back. You girls just be safe. Promise me.”

  “We promise,” they said in unison.

  He got to the door when Sun remembered another promise, one the couple had made to her.

  “You still have to teach me that trick with the eyeliner!” she whispered.

  “And you still have to teach me how to get away with murder!” he whispered back. “I got people to kill, damn it.”

  It worked. Hailey laughed softly.

  “Do you know where they’re searching? Where Levi found Jimmy’s prints?”

  “It’s over by Dover Pass.”

  While Sun knew a few of the names for places in the mountains—like Dover Pass and Strawser’s Holler—she had no idea where any of them actually were. It wasn’t like they were on a map. Not most of them, anyway. But leave it to a family of bootleggers to come up with names and landmarks to navigate the mountain range, because no native New Mexican would ever name anything a holler.

  She wrote it into her notepad, anyway. Quincy might know.

  “Hailey, what happened to the rest of your uncles?” Sun only knew that Hailey’s mother had died when she was young, and her death was rumored to be about Levi. Their father never believed Levi was his, and Levi’s coloring, so unlike the rest of the Ravinders’, would seem to support that.

  If her parents were to be be
lieved, Levi’s father was a Native American. A Mescalero Apache, to be exact, which was why he spent much of his summers on the reservation with a man believed to be Levi’s paternal grandfather.

  But then Hailey’s father died about a year later in a car accident, and Levi and his sister were raised by a slew of aunts and uncles. None of them were what anyone would call upstanding.

  “I mean, you had four, and now you’re down to the one?”

  “Two, actually. Uncle Clay is here, as you know. And Uncle Wynn is in prison in Arizona.”

  Right. Sun did know about that one.

  “Uncle Wes died. Cancer.”

  She did not know about that one.

  “And Uncle Brick ran off to California. Nobody’s heard from him in years.”

  “Really?” she asked, surprised. She also had no idea why they’d called him Brick.

  Hailey nodded, and if she hadn’t bitten her cheek and looked away, Sun may have believed her. As it stood, she knew more about that uncle than she was letting on.

  But she also knew Hailey was a good person. Motherhood had changed her. Jimmy was all she cared about, and she was clearly willing to go to great lengths to keep him safe.

  “Hailey, don’t you think it’s strange that all of this is happening my first day on the job? Do you think your uncle knows we’re onto him? Do you think he had anything to do with any of the disappearances? Whoever took the St. Aubin girl knew how to get past their security system. Knew how to sneak her out without anyone hearing. Had a solid plan and executed it with laser-like precision.”

  “A solid plan? Laser-like precision?”

  “Yes.”

  She chuckled, the sound void of humor. “Yeah, my uncle had nothing to do with it. Trust me.”

  “What about Redding?”

  Her mouth thinned. “He’s definitely smart enough. And more than capable.”

  Sun nodded and took Hailey’s hands into hers. “I have to get back. Please keep me updated.”

  “You’ll do the same?”

  Sun nodded. Before she left, she turned back to Hailey and asked, “How is he?”

  “Oh, hell no.” The blonde crossed her arms over her chest, adamant. “I’m not doing that.”

  “What?”

  “If you want to know how my brother is, you’ll have to ask him yourself.”

  Sun scoffed. “Like that’ll happen. Like he would answer me, anyway. That man hates my guts.”

  That time, Hailey scoffed. “Right. That’s why he named the distillery after you.”

  Sun gaped at her, then shook her head. “Dark River Shine?”

  “Shine,” she said, heading for the front for a coffee. “He’s always called you Shine.”

  * * *

  Shine, as in Dark River. The thought boggled Sun’s already rattled little mind.

  She checked in with the marshals, who were traipsing about her town in search of escaped fugitive Ramses Rojas. They had two possible sightings thus far, both promising, but they couldn’t zero in on a location or figure out who Rojas would be staying with.

  With Auri taken care of for the evening, Sun set Anita on the task of communications with the mission coordinator, the person who organized the search party starting at 7:00 a.m., then she took Zee and headed to the trailhead to meet up with Quincy and Fields.

  “So,” Sun said to Zee as they drove back through the mountain pass toward Ravinder land.

  Zee’s hair had been pulled back into a tight bun, emphasizing her wide eyes and shapely cheekbones.

  “We’ve known each other for a while, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said, her tone wary.

  “So, don’t take this the wrong way, and I apologize if this sounds sexist, but with your looks and your body, why did you become a sniper for the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office when you could have been a supermodel?”

  Zee laughed out loud. “I could ask you the same thing, Blondie.”

  “Please.”

  “I don’t know. It was just something I’d always wanted to do.”

  “Kill people from a safe distance?”

  Another chuckle. “Keep people safe from a safe distance. I wanted to be the one they called in when all else failed, you know? I’m not sure you would have hired me had you known this, but when I started, I wanted to be a hero.”

  Sun understood that all too well. She pulled down her visor when they turned into a low-hanging sun, only a couple of hours away from dipping under the horizon. “What happened?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everyone in law enforcement has their reasons for signing up. For many, it’s a desire for control. For power. For some, it’s a desire to solve a puzzle. To bring bad guys to justice.”

  “And for you?” she asked.

  Sun cracked a sly smile. “I wanted to keep people safe, too.”

  “Okay, then what happened to you to make you want to keep people safe?”

  “Hmmm, that would be a story for another day.”

  They pulled in behind the Yellow Jacket, which was an ancient pickup the size of a remote-control car.

  “Are we going up?” Zee asked, wondering if she should change into her hiking boots and parka.

  “It doesn’t look promising.” She stepped out of the cruiser.

  “Hey, sis,” Quincy said. He’d been leaning against the Tonka truck.

  Zee waved, and Fields just stared.

  “Did Levi see you?” Sun asked Quincy.

  Fields shoved him. “Like he was a lighthouse on a clear night.”

  Quincy raked a hand down his face. “That man is not normal. He spotted a deer mouse under a patch of leaves at ten yards. Then went on to tell us it was too small and what that meant for the area and how it was responding to its environment and the deforestation happening a few hundred miles to the north and how it was all tied together.”

  “His family cooked hooch in these mountains for decades,” Sun said. “They had to know that kind of thing.”

  “Well, he’s up there with that cracked cousin of his. I don’t know how, though. It’s slick and steep.” He lifted his boots and checked the tread as though that were the problem.

  Fields scanned the area, craning his neck to check out the clouds overhead. “We’re going to have to wait until tomorrow. We tried to get a helicopter in here, but the storm’s coming in. It’s supposed to clear out by midnight, though, and warm up in the morning. Might melt some of this snow.”

  Sun agreed reluctantly. “In the meantime, there’s a teenage boy wandering around lost.” It broke her heart.

  “Not to mention a teenage girl,” Zee said, “possibly kidnapped and being held in these woods.”

  “We can look if you’d like, boss,” Quincy said. “I’m game.”

  “No. You go home. Get some rest. We have a couple of dozen volunteers showing up first thing tomorrow morning. I need you fresh and warm and”—she stepped closer to her near-frozen chief deputy—“less blue.”

  Zee laughed and punched him on the arm. They would make beautiful babies someday if Quincy didn’t fuck it up.

  “I’ll get back in time to pick up Auri from school, drop her off at the empty nesters’, then head over to the Quick-Mart.”

  Quincy gave her a thumbs-up. “Fingers crossed their security cameras actually work.”

  She grabbed a pen and paper out of her cruiser and walked to Levi’s truck. It was locked, of course, and the storm would probably make the ink run, but she left a note on the windshield, telling him about the search party and to let her know if they found Jimmy.

  After walking back to the cruiser, she turned to look at the mountain. She should have found the snow-covered trees beautiful, the sun glistening through them stunning, but today, she found the scene treacherous. Deadly. An obstacle she didn’t want to take on.

  12

  One shot of our espresso, and you’ll

  be able to thread a sewing machine.

  While it’s running.


  —SIGN AT CAFFEINE-WAH

  Sun pulled into the parking lot later than she’d hoped. Most of the kids had already gone home. Those that hadn’t were standing around, waiting for their rides or bus, shivering. A fresh helping of snow had been promised, but it was getting colder. Almost too cold to snow.

  She put the cruiser in park, then looked across the smattering of students for a head of bright copper. Having no luck, she texted her offspring. “I’m in the parking lot. I got back earlier than I thought I would, so I’m here instead of Grandma. Did she pick you up, anyway? After I texted her that I’d be here? Because I wouldn’t put it past her.”

  When she didn’t get a response, she started to worry. Not bad. Just a faint uneasiness in the back of her mind.

  She grabbed her phone to text again when a knock sounded on her window.

  She lowered it to a pretty blonde with a round face. “Are you Auri’s mom?”

  The faint uneasiness catapulted into near panic. “Yes,” she said, making sure her interior turmoil did not leech to her exterior.

  “Hi!”

  Sun flinched at the girl’s enthusiasm but kept her cool.

  “I’m Auri’s friend Chastity. We have athletics together. But there were some girls teasing her in class.”

  Sun’s calm exterior evaporated. “Teasing her?”

  “Yeah. Just being jerks. You know the kind.”

  “Unfortunately, I do.”

  “She took off down the street.” Chastity pointed past the school and toward the center of the village, which was the opposite direction of their apartment.

  Then it hit her. Damn. It meant Auri had had a worse day than she’d expected.

  “Thank you, Chastity.”

  The girl beamed at her. “No, ma’am. Thank you.”

  Having no idea what the blonde was thanking her for, Sun threw her cruiser into drive and headed toward Town Square.

  She pulled into the parking lot and up to the memorial that sat in front of city hall. Auri sat on the side of a memorial fountain. A fountain dedicated to Samson Elio Vicram, Auri’s father for all intents and purposes, as well as other soldiers the town had lost in military combat, some going all the way back to World War I.