A Bad Day for Sunshine (Sunshine Vicram #1)(74)
Levi worked his scruffy, dark auburn jaw before saying, “I can take you there.”
17
She believed she could, so she did.
Now she needs bail money.
We are here to help!
—SIGN AT DEL SOL BAIL BONDS
He was so tired. Sun could tell. The emotional drain as well as the physical exertion of searching a mountain range for two days had to have taken its toll on him, but Levi stepped up and took them out to the incident site.
He rode his ATV in front of Quincy and Sun’s, almost losing them in the thick, snow-covered brush on numerous occasions.
“I think he’s enjoying this,” Quincy said over the roar of the motor.
Sun couldn’t take her eyes off Levi. He had stripped down to a lighter jacket and ski cap. His wide shoulders and long arms crossed the terrain with effortless ease, whereas she and Quincy struggled with every bump.
That being said, she could see the appeal. These things were probably a blast if the riders weren’t searching for missing persons or hunting dead bodies.
They crested a large hill and looked down upon a small iced-over pond in the valley where three mountains converged. The winter scene was breathtaking. Levi pulled to a stop and pointed. Sure enough, the team had already set up a tent to preserve what they could.
Sun got off the ATV and took in the surroundings. She turned to Levi. “Thanks. You have to be exhausted.”
He kept his gaze on her, but with the ski cap, the scarf covering his mouth, and the dark glasses, she couldn’t gauge what he was thinking.
“I’m so glad you found Jimmy,” she added.
“Me, too, man,” Quincy said. “That was kind of amazing.”
Levi didn’t even acknowledge their compliments. Instead, he turned back to the investigative scene, and Sun could see why he and Quincy didn’t get along. Quincy was a social genius. He could charm the skin off a snake.
Levi didn’t care enough to be charming. If someone didn’t like him, he would find the strength to carry on.
If someone didn’t like Quincy, he would do everything in his power to find out why. It would drive him crazy. Which was way more fun than it might seem on the surface.
Sun glanced at Levi, wanting so very much to pull down the scarf and run her fingertips over his shapely mouth. “You can go home if you’d like to.”
“I’m good here.”
“Here?” she asked, surprised. “You’re not going home? The EMT said—”
“This is my land.”
“Well, technically—” Quincy began, but Levi interrupted again.
“This is my land.”
She understood. While the mountain range butted up against his land, he’d spent his life exploring it. Of course he would consider it his.
Quincy started the ATV, and they headed down while Levi stayed up top. She looked back at him. He sat like a cowboy on a horse surveying the landscape. Or, possibly more accurate, like a Native American. An Apache, to be exact, though according to her mother, he was only about one-quarter Apache. The rest was all South. Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama. A culture all its own.
“Sheriff,” Jack, the medical investigator from the OMI in Albuquerque, said when they walked into the cordoned-off area.
Sun was taken aback. “Jacqueline, wow. What—? How—?”
“Oh,” she said with a light chuckle, “I volunteer with the SAR team when I can. Gets me off the slab, if you know what I mean.”
“I do.”
Jacqueline Baumann performed many of the autopsies Sun had to go to. She’d helped Sun get over the nausea and gave her some tips for future reference that Sun had used ever since.
“How’re the puppies?” she asked.
The young woman’s face morphed into that of a proud mom. “So wonderful. The little one, Sheila, is ball of fire. She’s discovered her tail, but she’s just too round to get to it.”
“Awww.” Sun melted, but reanimated herself when a state police officer, who’d been in the search party, walked up. “Officer,” she said in her best sheriff voice.
“Sheriff. We have one DB. Medium height. Dark blond hair. Forty-four years of age.”
She looked at the shriveled, mostly skeletal body wearing a plaid shirt and denim jacket, both of which had seen better days. “You can tell his age?”
“We can when we have his ID.” He presented an evidence bag holding a driver’s license, a key, and some cash. “One Mr. Kubrick Ravinder.”
A soft gasp escaped her before she could contain it.
“Did you know him?” the officer asked her.
“Uncle Brick. That’s what they called him. He left years ago and never came back. So I’ve been told.”
“Well, judging by the decomposition,” Jack said, “he didn’t get far.”
“How long ago was this?” Quincy asked her.
Sun shrugged. “Fifteen, sixteen years ago. I’m not sure. I just found out. The family didn’t consider him missing so much as up-and-left.”
“So, no missing persons report?” the officer asked.
“None that I know of. What are we thinking?” she asked Jack. “Natural causes? Exposure? Worse?”
“I’ll know more when I get him back to the lab in Albuquerque. For now, all I can say is it looks like his larynx may have been crushed. But he’s been out here a long time. An animal could have done that postmortem.”