“You think this is bullshit?”
“It’s starting to look that way, but first, what does he want? And second, if he’s dying, why aren’t we in the medical ward?”
“Well, fuck,” Quincy whispered. “He played us.”
“Maybe. Let’s see what he has to say and try to get a peek at his jacket.”
“Until then …” Quincy looked at the guard. “I want a stab vest for the sheriff.”
“What?” she said. “Don’t be ridiculous, Quince. It’s not like we’re going out into the yard.”
He bent closer. “Sunny, maybe he’s called you here to find out what you know about your abduction. Not the other way around. Do you know how easily a shot caller can get to you in here? He’ll have hundreds below him. Possibly thousands if he truly is top dog. All waiting to do his bidding just to get noticed.”
She looked at the guard and held up two fingers as though ordering drinks at a pub. “We’ll take two.”
Ten minutes after they’d strapped into the hard body armor, a single guard led a handcuffed man into the room. If he were truly violent, he would have had two escorts. The fact that he only had one eased her mind, though just barely. Still, when they started to uncuff him, Sun held up her hand. “He’s fine just like he is.”
The guard looked at Wynn as though gauging his reaction. When Wynn only smiled at Sun, the guard nodded and left the room. That exchange depleted what little confidence she had that they’d make it out alive.
Wynn Ravinder, a startlingly handsome muddy blond in his late forties, watched her like a hawk watches its prey. He was tall and slim, rock hard, and covered in tattoos from the looks of his forearms and neck, though thankfully she saw no Aryan tattoos.
He was attractive in the same way Levi was, as though chiseled by the gods, yet they looked nothing alike. Besides the lean, solid bodies and razor-sharp jawlines, the resemblance ended there. Since Levi was most likely not blood related to Wynn—rumors abounded that Levi’s mother had strayed and that his real father was part Native American—their lack of resemblance was no surprise.
But like Levi, Wynn looked as though he would be equally as comfortable in Armani gray as prison orange. His striking features and obsidian-sharp gaze answered her questions as to how he became such an elevated shot caller.
Unfazed about the cuffs, he lifted the pant legs of his orange uniform and folded himself into the chair across from them. Sun took out a pen and notepad and waited. After studying her a solid minute, he eased back in the chair and eyed her from underneath his lashes.
“You came,” he said at last.
“You called,” she countered. “I doubt we have much time, what with you dying and all.”
“You worried about me?” He gestured toward the rigid stab vests they both wore, which only looked like Kevlar. They were a hard, almost impenetrable plastic. Kind of like wearing a cutting board.
“They insisted we wear these,” she lied.
He nodded. “They do that. You look like your mother.”
Sun felt Quincy tense.
“Mr. Ravinder,” she said, ready to get out of there, “you said you had information about my abduction.”
“I do.”
“You also said you were dying, yet you look like the healthiest person in this place. Guards included.”
He lifted a shoulder. “I work out.”
“You aren’t dying.”
“No.”
“Okay, let’s go,” she said to Quince, even though the disappointment crushed her.
She started to rise, when Wynn stayed her with, “But I do have information.”
She leveled a dubious look on him.
“I didn’t lie about that.”
After weighing the pros and cons, she sat back down and gave him a slow once-over to establish some semblance of dominance. She doubted it worked. “What information?”
“First, you should probably know, I killed my brother Kubrick fifteen years ago.”
Auri sat in the same spot for two hours, scouring the newspaper clippings her grandparents had saved about a series of old missing persons cases in Del Sol. They had clippings on several other cases as well, but this one spoke to her.
Multiple people went missing over the span of a decade in the late fifties and early sixties, and the cases were never solved. A steelworker. A businessman. A young woman whose relations seemed more worried about a necklace she was wearing at the time of her disappearance than the girl herself. And more. Then one day the disappearances suddenly stopped.
“Did you see this?” Sybil asked, leaning toward her with a police report.
Sybil St. Aubin had been Auri’s best friend since moving to Del Sol. Maybe that was why the missing persons cases spoke to her so loudly. Just over four months ago, Sybil was one of them. She’d gone missing and her captor held her for days, waiting until her birthday to kill her. He’d wanted revenge on Sybil’s mother, which was just messed up.
Thankfully, Auri’s mom was on the case. As well as the best tracker in the state, Levi Ravinder. They found Sybil but lost her again when the kidnapper tried a second time. If not for Zee and her remarkable sharpshooting abilities, both Sybil and Auri’s mom would be dead.
The thought crushed Auri. Her mom was one thing. She didn’t know if she would survive losing her. But the thought of losing Sybil was almost as bad. She glanced up at her friend and marveled once again at their similarities. Red hair and, well, red hair. That was pretty much their only similarity other than their interests and hobbies and general outlook on life. And boys. Mostly boys.
Sybil’s hair was a light auburn while Auri’s was an embarrassingly bright copper. People stopped her in the street and asked if they could touch it. Not creepy at all. And Sybil had a light sprinkling of freckles that Auri envied. They were so cute. Auri had a darker complexion and no freckles to speak of. Also, no round-rimmed glasses like the ones that made Sybil look book-nerd adorable.
When she’d met Sybil at the lake on New Year’s Eve, Auri’s first thought was that she looked like an American Girl doll she’d had when she was little. The one her grandparents bought her because it had red hair, and who looked more like a schoolmarm than a little girl.
Her opinion had yet to change.
They sat cross-legged on the attic floor.
“They may have caught the killer, after all,” Sybil said, referencing the police report, “but it never went to trial, so they never knew for certain.”
Auri took the report but held it so Sybil could read with her. A musty police blotter with faded ink on yellowed paper described an incident at the county jail that happened on August 12, 1965. “Oh, my God,” Auri said. “They killed him.”
“Yes.” Sybil flipped to the second page. “A drifter named Hercules Holmes. He escaped and disappeared, but they found his body a couple of weeks later. Someone killed him before he could go to trial.”
“That’s awful,” Auri said.
Her grandmother weaved toward them through boxes and furniture. “The Holmes case?”
They looked up and nodded.
“What do you know about it, Grandma?”
She sat in a dusty rocking chair and put her elbows on her knees. “Just what’s in that box, I’m afraid.”