Sun nodded. “Rojas, get Quince here to cordon off the area and call Albuquerque. We need another forensics team to process the scene.”
“You got it, boss.”
Levi lifted the lovebug of Sun’s life into his arms. Auri wrapped herself around him as though he were a chocolate kiss and she was a piece of tinfoil.
Sun walked beside them, shining the light to help him maneuver the uneven ground.
“And wake up my parents!” she called over her shoulder.
Sun and Levi were watching the team from Albuquerque load the deceased man—naturally he had no ID on him—into the back of an ambulance to transport him to the OMI. They’d already been to urgent care with Auri, got her checked out, and sent her home, once again, with her grandparents. Maybe Sun was putting too much on them.
“Man,” she said to Levi, “when you set out to kill a guy, you really throw yourself into the job.”
“I try.”
Her phone dinged with a text from Carver. She didn’t even bother. It was almost three in the morning.
“That kid of yours is something else,” Levi said.
“If that’s your way of saying she’s a trouble magnet, I agree.”
“No more so than her mother.” He said it with a lopsided grin that had nothing to do with the battered state of his face.
“True.”
Auri had been beside herself at urgent care. “Grandma and Grandpa are going to be so mad.”
“You don’t think they have a right to be?” she asked as the nurse wrapped her sprained ankle.
She buried her face in her hands. “I keep screwing up. I just wanted to check on Cruz and—”
“Auri,” Sun said, steeling herself. Her daughter needed to understand sneaking out would not be tolerated. Not in today’s world. Hopefully the whole finding-a-dead-body thing would act as an extra layer of deterrent.
Auri’s distress was killing Levi. He stood beside the divider curtain, arms crossed over his chest and working his jaw hard. A bigger sucker than even herself. Somehow that made her feel better.
“You purposely waited for them to go to bed before sneaking out. What does that imply?”
“Intent?” she asked from behind her cupped hands.
“Exactly. So what’s going on?”
A ragged sob filtered through her fingers. “Cruz didn’t pick up. I thought he might be in serious trouble with his dad. I wanted to explain to him that it was my fault. Since I was grounded for breaking and entering, I snuck out to go see him and apologize.” She broke down into a fit of sobs. Getting her friends into trouble seemed to be the best punishment of all.
Still, there was more to it than that. It wasn’t that Sun didn’t believe her. She did. But there was something else going on. Now, however, was not the time to try to find out. Sun had to get back out to the crime scene. Her absence would give Auri some time to calm down. The fact that it would also give the inventive creature more time to come up with a better cover story did not escape her. But discipline could wait. Torment, however, could not.
“Auri, I’m just going to say this once.”
She lowered her hands and looked at Sun, the tears glistening in her eyes like vise grips around Sun’s heart.
Levi felt it, too. He shifted and dropped his gaze.
“When a young girl sneaks out to go see a boy in the middle of the night, no matter how noble the reason, sometimes the boy’s little friend—we’ll call him Mr. Penis—wants to meet the girl’s little friend—we’ll call her Ms. Vagina.”
“Oh, my God, Mom.” She covered her face again.
And therein began the lesson as the nurse, who’d first regarded Sun with a shocked expression, struggled to suppress a smile. Others in the urgent care center gathered ’round to hear the timeless tales of Mr. Penis and Ms. Vagina. Because who wouldn’t?
Well, besides Levi, who scrubbed his face and went for coffee.
When Sun finished with, “And that is why little girls never order nachos on a first date,” she received a round of applause worthy of the greatest of thespians. “Finally, someone appreciates my talent.”
“I’m filing for emaciation immediately.”
“You do that, hon.”
Sun turned and saw her parents standing in the doorway.
She stepped to them. “Do you think, and I know this is asking a lot, but do you think you could possibly keep your granddaughter from getting into any more trouble for the rest of the night?”
Her father shook his head. “I can’t make any promises, Sheriff. Look who her mother is.”
He had a point. They wheeled Auri out in a chair three times too big for her tiny body. Sun’s chest tightened as the image replayed in her mind.
“No sign of Elliot?” she asked Levi when they went back out to the scene.
He shook his head. “He hasn’t been back to the cabin.”
“I get that he can take care of himself,” she said, worry gnawing at her. She put a hand on his arm. “Levi, do you think they took him?”
He looked at her hand, then back at her. “No. He took off on his bike. And he had supplies. He was prepared. I’m sure Seabright had a contingency plan and Eli knew to go into hiding. I just don’t know where.”
“Can you find out?”
“I’ll go back out in the morning and try to pick up his trail.”
“Thank you. So, do you think the trauma of finding a dead body is enough of a punishment for the little vixen?” she asked, not sure why she was consulting Levi about parenting tactics.
“I do, but she doesn’t need to know that. A few threats might go a long way.”
“Oh, yeah? What kind of threats?”
“The usual. Cancel her cell service. Put a padlock on her bedroom door. Tell her the next dead body she’s going to find will be Cruz De los Santos’s.”
She nodded. “Look at you, being all dadlike.” She’d caught the tail end of a surprised expression a microsecond before he recovered. “You’re amazing with Jimmy,” she added, referring to how he was with his sister’s kid. A kid who happened to be on the spectrum. It didn’t stop Levi for a minute. “And with Auri.” Honestly, the way he was with her astonished Sun to no end. “You’ll make a great dad someday.”
He regarded her for a long moment before commenting with an inscrutable, “You don’t say.”
Her phone rang before she could think up a comeback, which was too bad. She was great at comebacks.
She didn’t recognize the number. “Sheriff Vicram.”
A female voice, small and reminiscent of Auri’s in the ravine, floated through the speaker. “Sunshine?”
“Speaking.”
“Sunshine, it’s Addison.”
Sun’s first thought was that Addison had Elliot with her. That he’d found his way home. But her voice was too thin. Too frightened, and alarm shot through her. “Addison, what’s wrong?”
“It’s Adam. My seven-year-old. He’s”—her voice cracked—“he’s missing.”
Thirty minutes later, Sun and Levi pulled up to the Kent house in Santa Fe. The local police had the place surrounded and had flooded the area with lights.