A Bad Day for Sunshine

by Jones, Darynda

  When a mocking giggle hit her, she turned and saw one of the girls from her first period, one of Lynelle’s friends. At least they didn’t have this class together.

  Auri walked out of that classroom and into the next just as the bell rang. Once again, she handed her schedule to the teacher as the entire class looked on. The instructor, an older man with graying auburn hair and weathered skin, wore a red-and-gold hoodie and matching sweatpants.

  “Happy New Year, Coach,” a student said as he passed.

  “Marks. You’re late.”

  “Sorry.” The student hurried to his seat, probably hoping he wouldn’t get sent to the office for being tardy.

  The coach initialed her schedule and handed her a social studies book. “Welcome to Del Sol, Auri.”

  Surprised he knew her nickname, Auri glanced up.

  “Ah yes, I know your mom. She told me you’d be starting here. I promised to keep an eye on you. Not too close, though, eh?” He winked, and Auri couldn’t help but grin at him.

  Friendly faces had been hard to come by of late. At least, she’d thought so until she turned and saw the girl. The blonde who was startlingly happy to see her in first period. She waved again with the same amount of enthusiasm and wiggled in her seat. That was one exuberant girl.

  Auri gave a hesitant wave back and went to the only empty seat in the classroom, but not before noticing the poet, Cruz, in the back row. She groaned. Not aloud or anything, but in her mind.

  She let her gaze flit past him, because he was staring at her. A nervous energy prickled down her spine. At least he no longer looked angry. Small miracles.

  The coach took roll, then proceeded with the lesson. “Okay, we talked before break about the social implications of economy and class, but I want us to shift focus a bit.” The coach grabbed a stack of papers off his desk. “Before we left for break, I paired you up. Since you were gone, De los Santos, I’ll put you with Auri. How’s that sound?”

  The coach’s gaze landed on Auri, and she nodded. What else could she do? She had no idea who De los Santos was, so she hardly had an opinion.

  “That okay with you?” He looked past her toward the back row, where he stopped on the poet, and her heart tried to jump out of her chest when she realized who she’d been partnered with. Cruz De los Santos. This was not happening.

  He’d had his head down and didn’t bother to lift it when he looked up at the coach from underneath impossibly long lashes and gave a single nod.

  “Good deal. Here are your questions.” He handed a stack of papers to the first student in each row to pass back. “I’ll give you a few minutes at the end of class to partner up and figure out a time when you can meet outside the classroom.”

  “But, Coach,” the tardy kid, a stocky athlete with hazelnut hair, whined. “What about practice?”

  “Marks, no amount of practice is going to help your jump shot. I think you can squeeze this in.”

  The class erupted in laughter. Well, most of the class. Cruz De los Santos was busy eyeing Auri from underneath those killer lashes.

  Trying to ignore him, she took the paper and scanned the questions. The basic gist was to get a family history, a fact that caused the teensiest bristle to quake through her.

  “This will be due next week, so get on it.”

  The coach went into his lesson for the day while Auri fought the urge to look over her shoulder. She sank down in her seat and studied the dynamics of the room instead. And the more class went on, the more she saw a strange phenomenon.

  The other students seemed to partially ignore Cruz and partially revere him. When they cracked a joke, they’d look at him as though gauging his reaction. When they asked a question, they’d glance back to see if he would . . . what? Back them up?

  The girls, Auri could understand. There was no denying the fact that the guy was hot. But the boys? That she found odd.

  Then again, she had bigger worries than the student body’s fascination with the poet. She’d have to talk to him. Face-to-face. One-on-one. Mano a mano.

  Either way, every time she thought her day couldn’t get any worse, she’d been proven wrong. She decided to quit thinking altogether. To become a zombie. Zombies didn’t sweat the small stuff. She could do that.

  5

  Multiple complaints of a man covered in

  green paint running down Main Street

  throwing Lucky Charms at tourists.

  Suspect is not believed to actually be a leprechaun.

  —DEL SOL POLICE BLOTTER

  “He took my daughter!”

  A brunette in her midforties stumbled out of the Mercedes that had run Sunshine down just as a trio of deputies swarmed around their new boss.

  Looking up from the ground, Sun watched from beside the car as the woman fell to her knees in slow motion. The world had slowed, and she felt like she had that time she’d played quarters as a teen: as though she’d been part of the lunar landing and no one explained to her how to get her balance in the low gravity.

  Salazar helped the woman up, but she’d cut her hands on the shattered glass when she’d fallen. Seeing the blood sent Sun into overdrive. Everything hit her at once, much like the car had.

  An alarm sounded around them. A deputy was yelling for Anita to get an ambulance there ay-sap. Quincy hovered over her, his face upside down as he spoke, but she couldn’t focus on his words just yet. Everything was a blur. Every movement either too fast or too slow. Every sound either too loud or too soft.

  When Sun tried to get up, Quincy held her to the ground with a hand on her shoulder. She looked from side to side, trying to orient herself. That was when she saw the tire, which sat about three inches from her face. She could smell the rubber, it was so close. And the engine was still running.

  Adrenaline shot through her, and she tried to scramble away from the wheel, worried the car would inch forward.

  Quincy caught on and slid her away from the car as though she were a rag doll, heedless of the glass, but he kept her pinned to the ground with a hand on her shoulder.

  “Take it easy,” he said, his familiar voice finally penetrating her panic bubble. “Let’s make sure nothing is broken, okay?”

  “I’m okay,” she said. The world was only spinning a little. How bad could it be?

  She looked for the woman again and found her sitting on a chair the lobby, yelling at sweet Deputy Salazar as Deputy Price jumped in the car and turned off the engine.

  “The ambulance is coming,” Quincy said, and Sun’s annoyance finally took root.

  “I’m fine, Quince, really. Can someone turn off that alarm?” She rolled onto her side, and Salazar helped her up despite a warning glare from her BFF.

  They steadied her when she swayed, but Quincy took over, wrapping an arm around her for support as she hobbled toward Mrs. Mercedes. The alarm finally stopped screeching.

  “Ma’am, do you need an ambulance?” she asked her.

  The woman’s eyes rounded when she saw her. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean . . .” She looked at the damage she’d caused and put a hand over her mouth. “Oh, my god.”

  “Thank you, Deputy,” Sun said to the dark-haired tech geek, Lonnie Price, who’d been trying to keep the woman calm. Price had only been with the Del Sol office about six months, and he was the only deputy not originally from the area. But he came with stellar recommendations, and according to all reports, he adjusted quickly.

  Price nodded and took a step back to give her room.

  With Quincy’s help, Sun knelt in front of the woman. “Ma’am, can you tell me what happened?”

  The woman seemed to slip into a state of shock. Her expression went blank even as tears slid past her lashes. “He took her. He took my daughter.” She blinked and focused on Sun, folding her hands into her own. “You have to find her.”

  Sun squeezed. “What’s your name?”

  “Mari. Marianna St. Aubin.”

  Ah yes. The St. Aubins were transplants as well. They’d bee
n the talk of the town last summer when they moved to Del Sol from the Midwest to start a winery. And they had money. The root of all evil and many abductions.

  Sun gestured for Salazar to grab a pen and memo pad. A memo pad that Sun smudged with blood. Her hands were covered in tiny cuts. She wiped one on her pants, winced at the glass shards still lodged in her skin, and continued.

  “Okay, who took your daughter? Did you see him?”

  “No. He took her last night. I was asleep. I fell asleep.”

  Someone brought Sun a chair, and she sat in front of Mrs. St. Aubin. The splinters of glass digging into her back stung every time she moved, but she could see to that later. The siren from an ambulance wailed as it neared, which seemed ridiculous to her since the fire station was only two blocks away.

  “Mrs. St. Aubin, how old is your daughter?”

  “Fourteen.”

  Same age as Auri. For some reason, that knowledge startled her.

  Mrs. St. Aubin spoke between sobs, her voice strained. “She’ll be fifteen in three days. Three days.” Her eyes rounded again, and she clawed at Sun’s hands. “You have to find her. We don’t have much time.”

  Before Sun could ask what she meant, the woman disintegrated into a fit of sobs, her shoulders shaking violently. Sun sent one of the deputies for water as the EMTs rushed in. She showed a palm to stop them and continued her interrogation.

  She put a hand on the woman’s shoulder to get her attention. “Mrs. St. Aubin, start from the beginning. How long has your daughter been missing?”

  The woman blinked, trying to make sense of her surroundings, and said in a hushed tone, “Forever.”

  Sun called Quincy and one of the EMTs to her office while the other tech checked on Mrs. St. Aubin. She glanced at the new station décor as she passed. A white Mercedes sedan that probably cost more than Canada now graced the foyer. They could do worse, she figured. They could have a statue of the town’s founder, a man who looked alarmingly like Lurch from The Addams Family.

  She thought back, trying to remember exactly what hit where when the car came at her as though laser guided. She remembered ducking, because that made so much more sense than jumping out of the way. Sadly, her reflexes weren’t so much catlike as rolypolylike.

  The car’s bumper must have hit her shoulder. It was enough to send her sprawling back, a fact that probably saved her life if the placement of the tire was any indication. Three inches closer and she’d be in dire need of a face-lift. As in her face lifted off the floor.

  Her phone beeped with a text from Auri. The very Auri she’d just left at school not an hour earlier. She prayed the kid hadn’t actually cut a bitch this early in the semester. She checked the message and breathed a sigh of relief. It was only their standard check-in.

  “Knock-knock,” she’d texted.

  Sun smiled. “Who’s there?”

  “Your mama.”

  A bubble of laughter surfaced. “Sweetheart, I know you’re lying. Your grandmother never knocks.”

  She received a GIF of a dog on its back in a fit of laughter for her efforts. A breathy sigh of relief slid past her lips. She’d genuinely been worried this last week. Not about Auri cutting a bitch. For the girl’s well-being.

  The tribulations of being a parent, she supposed.

  She sent her a row of hearts before restarting the journey to her office.

  With no time to spare, she began unbuttoning her shirt before she made it there, but something else drew her attention. She looked across the street to see Levi observing from the gas pumps.

  She paused, not because she wanted a better look. Well, yes, because she wanted a better look, but it was his expression that stopped her in her tracks.

  When his powerful gaze met hers, he lowered his head and stared a solid minute, his fists tightening around a worn cap.

  Concern lined his face. And something akin to knowing, as though the crash didn’t surprise him. As though Sun’s presence didn’t surprise him. Then again, why would it? He’d had to have known she’d won the bid for county sheriff.

  He wet his lips, the movement so sexy Sun could hardly see straight. Before she could wrench her gaze away, he turned, climbed back into his truck, and took off, heading north toward his family’s land.

  “Nope,” Quincy said from beside her. “He hasn’t changed at all.” His tone was teasing, and Sun wanted to punch him in the arm like she had on numerous occasions in high school. “You think maybe we ought to find a missing kid now?”

  Sun straightened her shoulders and winced as the fabric of her uniform scraped over the glass in her back. Death by a thousand paper cuts suddenly seemed much worse than she’d previously imagined.

  “After we deglass you, that is,” Quincy added.

  They started toward her office again, the EMT right behind them, when Anita stepped out of the restroom, her hands pressed against her abdomen.

  “Mrs. Escobar, are you okay?”

  “Please, Sheriff, call me Anita, and I’m sorry about this.” She gestured toward the bathroom. “I have stomach issues. Every time I get upset or excited or nervous, I have to, you know, find a restroom.”

  “That’s . . . unfortunate,” she said, surprised the woman worked at a sheriff’s station. “And you can call me Sun. Or Sunny. Or Sunshine.” She rolled her eyes. She really needed to choose one and stick to it. “I need you to get all the info you can on Mrs. St. Aubin. Her daughter is missing.”

  “Again?” Anita asked. Shaking her head, she started for her desk, but Sun stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

  “What do you mean? Has she gone missing before?”

  Anita closed her mouth as though she’d said something she shouldn’t have. “Nope. Nuh-uh. Forget I mentioned it.” She started for her desk again. “Carry on.”

  When Sun’s questioning expression elicited only a shrug from Quincy, she walked back to Mrs. St. Aubin. An EMT was checking her vitals while she cradled a cup of coffee.

  Sun knelt in front of her again. “Mrs. St. Aubin, has your daughter ever run away?”

  “What? No. She didn’t run away. She just, she was scared. But it doesn’t matter now. We don’t have much time.”

  A terrified parent was one thing, but Marianna St. Aubin seemed awfully sure of her daughter’s potential fate. Sun’s suspicious mind began to work overtime. Maybe that little statement about forever meant something, after all.

  “Why?” she asked, her voice taking on a harder edge. “Why don’t we have much time?”

  Mrs. St. Aubin blinked in surprise, then stumbled through an explanation. “Well, isn’t that what they say? The first forty-eight hours are the most vital?”

  She had her there. But still. “You said he.”

  “What?” The woman was shaking so badly that hot coffee sloshed over the side of her cup. She gasped and almost dropped it.

  “You said, ‘He took her.’ Who is he?”

  “No one.” She handed the cup to Zee and brought her scalded hand to her mouth. “I don’t know. It was just a guess. Isn’t it usually a male?” Then she turned, her sense of entitlement taking over. “I don’t see what any of that has to do with my missing daughter, Sheriff. Are you going to do your job or not?”

  Mrs. St. Aubin’s words were just as much defense mechanism as entitlement, so Sun didn’t take them too personally. She let the events of the day turn over in her mind before standing and heading back to her office. The deputies were easing the car down the stairs and out of the station as a tow truck waited nearby.

  “What are you thinking?” Quincy asked.

  “I’m thinking Mrs. St. Aubin isn’t being completely honest with us.”

  “What gave it away?” he asked, his tone dripping with sarcasm.

  “But right now, there’s a fourteen-year-old girl out there somewhere, and we need to find her.”

  “Agreed. Are you sure you’re up for this? What with it being your first day and all?”

  “Up for it? This is why I b
ecame a law enforcement officer.”

  “To save abducted girls?” he asked.

  She eyed him a long moment, then said, “To catch criminals.”

  After an excruciating session in which the EMT begged Sun repeatedly to go the urgent care facility, claiming a couple of her cuts needed stitches, he dressed them the best he could so Sun could don a fresh shirt and she and Quincy could drive Mrs. St. Aubin to her house to investigate the possible abduction site.

  She set the deputies on various tasks like calling the school to see if the girl showed up there and getting her phone records, with her mother’s blessing.

  Mrs. St. Aubin questioned Sun the entire way to her house. “Why aren’t you calling in the FBI or the CIA or whatever other organization needs to be notified? Shouldn’t you be calling for backup?”

  At that moment, Sun just wanted to keep the woman calm. “We need to inspect the site before we call anyone in.”

  “But we don’t have much time.” The woman was in a state of near panic, but Sun knew one thing Mrs. St. Aubin didn’t. They don’t always kill them in the first forty-eight hours. Sometimes they hold them for days.

  The site was not what she’d expected. The St. Aubins owned a large vineyard, and their house—scratch that—their mansion was proof that it was doing well. They pulled up to a stunning rock-and-glass three-story contemporary with a stone entrance.

  Mrs. St. Aubin hurried them upstairs to her daughter’s room, where nary a Beauty and the Beast figurine nor a Harry Potter book was out of place.

  “This is it. Sybil’s room.”

  Sun studied a collection of snapshots that haphazardly lined the mirror of an otherwise impeccable bedroom. Sybil St. Aubin was adorable. She had auburn hair, not quite as coppery as Auri’s, that she wore in braids. A smattering of freckles peppered her nose, on top of which sat a pair of round glasses that screamed book nerd.

  Sun liked her instantly.

  But the room hadn’t been disturbed in the least. If this was a teen’s room, Sun wanted one: a teen that kept her room clean. Auri’s room looked like a tornado tore through it on a weekly basis.