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 from 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.”
“You got it.”
“Thank you, Deputy,” she said, before yelling over her shoulder at Quincy.
He was just climbing into his cruiser.
“Make sure he stays there, Quince! I want at least five X-rays, three blood tests, and a sonogram!”
“You got it, boss!” He closed his door and eased onto Main toward the Del Sol Urgent Care Center.
Sun was busy fighting the urge to glance at Levi as Quince drove past when she heard gravel crunching behind her followed by a feminine voice. “Sheriff,” the woman said, trying to get Sun’s attention. “Sheriff Vicram?”
Sun turned to her. A disheveled brunette with a skintight miniskirt and a puffy pink jacket hurried up to her, which was a feat in those heels. And here Sun thought she’d had it bad.