A Bad Day for Sunshine (Sunshine Vicram #1)(71)

“Sounds good to me.” She greeted the Book Babes as they handed out coffee, her deputies that were on-site, and the marshals before getting onto the ATV.

“What did Melody want?” he asked, shouting over the sound of the motor.

Sun explained about the possibility that the escaped fugitive, Ramses Rojas, may have saved her daughter’s life. Not just saved it, but risked his own life, his legs, and his freedom to do so.

They bounced over the hard-packed snow, grateful for the snow tires someone had thoughtfully provided, and searched as deep into the forest as they could before they had to get off and walk. She could hear other searchers, including many of the townsfolk, calling out Jimmy’s and Sybil’s names, and she wondered where Levi was. She’d heard he’d closed the distillery and now had several of his cousins and employees searching as well.

One would think with that much manpower they’d find Jimmy quickly, and hopefully Sybil. But there was just too much forestland for it to be that easy. Hundreds of square miles, and much of it mountainous. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains were the southern tip of the Rockies. Just as beautiful. Just as hazardous.

The meteorologist had been right. Thank goodness, because Sun didn’t want to think the woman was all beauty with no brains. The sun came out of hiding and warmed the place to a comfortable sting. Just enough to keep their cheeks cold but not frozen solid. Like a lettuce crisper with the temp set a little too low.

“Nothing like a brisk stroll through the forest,” Quincy said.

Every few feet, they stopped, yelled for Jimmy and Sybil, and then waited for a response before continuing. Quincy checked in with their location every half hour.

After a couple of hours of trudging through the snow, Sun began to worry that three days would not be enough.

The radio squawked, but the helicopter made a pass overhead, and they didn’t catch what the IC said.

Quincy pressed the Talk button on the radio. “Say again, command.”

His voice came back over the speaker. It had a somber tone, and Sun’s heart stopped beating to better hear his message.

He said quietly, “We have a body.”


“When did you write that?” Auri asked Cruz as they filed into the hall.

He made the smallest effort humanly possible to shrug, probably to conserve energy should the apocalypse happen. “Last night.”

“What? After I went home?”

Another energy-efficient shrug. “Mrs. Ontiveros wanted me to enter one more poem in some contest she helps coordinate, so I told her I’d write her one. I do it all the time.” He offered her an equally energy-efficient grin where only one side of his mouth tilted up. “She loves that shit.”

“I love that shit, too. That was stunning.”

He lowered his head, clearly unused to praise.

“How do you do it? How do you write such beautiful imagery?”

“My imagery is rarely called beautiful. Did you miss the part about the shredding of flesh?”

She laughed softly. “No, but it was still beautiful. So, you gonna tell me? How you do it? How you think like that?”

“I don’t know.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I don’t really think in English, if that makes any sense. I think in pictures. In signs. I signed way before I could talk, and I’ve thought in signs ever since.”

She gaped at him, but only a little. “Okay, I take back what I said last night. That is officially the coolest thing I’ve ever heard.”

He flashed a set of blindingly white teeth. “See ya later.”

Before she could say goodbye, he took off.

Auri watched him walk away, then she looked around, astonished that the students had pretty much accepted her. She wasn’t getting nearly the number of glares as she was yesterday, and nobody had spray painted her locker or tried to frame her for theft. The day was definitely looking up.

She turned a corner to get to her next class and saw the L&Ls, Lynelle and Liam with Aiden Huang, the kid she’d interrogated. Liam had Aiden Huang by the collar while Lynelle read him the riot act, poking his chest with a razor-sharp fingernail.

The kid looked more annoyed than scared at first, but then Lynelle said something, and he paled before her eyes.

He held up a hand in surrender and took the USB she handed him.

She fired off one more threat before Liam shoved him away and they walked off into the sunset together. Or the glare from the plate-glass windows at the front of the school. Either way.

It was a classic love story. One that would be repeated for generations to come.

Girl asks first boy for a favor. First boy refuses. Second boy grabs first boy by the collar. Girl threatens first boy while second boy shakes him like a rag doll. First boy finally agrees to said favor, and girl and second boy fall in love.

A tad dysfunctional? Yes.

Would it last? Not unless they found themselves riddled with bullets like Bonnie and Clyde did before they could realize they weren’t as compatible as they’d originally assumed and spent the next ten years breaking up and getting back together and breaking up again, bringing strife and misery to everyone they came into contact with.

Fingers crossed.

Auri sat in her second-period class, Lynelle and Liam completely forgotten as her thoughts traveled once again to Jimmy Ravinder and Sybil St. Aubin.

Her mom had a good point. They both went missing around the same time. It would be a hard stretch to convince anyone it was a coincidence, but it had to be. Or at the very least, there had to be a good a reason for it.