“This will be due next week, so get on it.”
The coach went into his lesson for the day while Auri fought the urge to look over her shoulder. She sank down in her seat and studied the dynamics of the room instead. And the more class went on, the more she saw a strange phenomenon.
The other students seemed to partially ignore Cruz and partially revere him. When they cracked a joke, they’d look at him as though gauging his reaction. When they asked a question, they’d glance back to see if he would . . . what? Back them up?
The girls, Auri could understand. There was no denying the fact that the guy was hot. But the boys? That she found odd.
Then again, she had bigger worries than the student body’s fascination with the poet. She’d have to talk to him. Face-to-face. One-on-one. Mano a mano.
Either way, every time she thought her day couldn’t get any worse, she’d been proven wrong. She decided to quit thinking altogether. To become a zombie. Zombies didn’t sweat the small stuff. She could do that.
5
Multiple complaints of a man covered in
green paint running down Main Street
throwing Lucky Charms at tourists.
Suspect is not believed to actually be a leprechaun.
—DEL SOL POLICE BLOTTER
“He took my daughter!”
A brunette in her midforties stumbled out of the Mercedes that had run Sunshine down just as a trio of deputies swarmed around their new boss.
Looking up from the ground, Sun watched from beside the car as the woman fell to her knees in slow motion. The world had slowed, and she felt like she had that time she’d played quarters as a teen: as though she’d been part of the lunar landing and no one explained to her how to get her balance in the low gravity.
Salazar helped the woman up, but she’d cut her hands on the shattered glass when she’d fallen. Seeing the blood sent Sun into overdrive. Everything hit her at once, much like the car had.
An alarm sounded around them. A deputy was yelling for Anita to get an ambulance there ay-sap. Quincy hovered over her, his face upside down as he spoke, but she couldn’t focus on his words just yet. Everything was a blur. Every movement either too fast or too slow. Every sound either too loud or too soft.
When Sun tried to get up, Quincy held her to the ground with a hand on her shoulder. She looked from side to side, trying to orient herself. That was when she saw the tire, which sat about three inches from her face. She could smell the rubber, it was so close. And the engine was still running.
Adrenaline shot through her, and she tried to scramble away from the wheel, worried the car would inch forward.
Quincy caught on and slid her away from the car as though she were a rag doll, heedless of the glass, but he kept her pinned to the ground with a hand on her shoulder.
“Take it easy,” he said, his familiar voice finally penetrating her panic bubble. “Let’s make sure nothing is broken, okay?”
“I’m okay,” she said. The world was only spinning a little. How bad could it be?
She looked for the woman again and found her sitting on a chair the lobby, yelling at sweet Deputy Salazar as Deputy Price jumped in the car and turned off the engine.
“The ambulance is coming,” Quincy said, and Sun’s annoyance finally took root.
“I’m fine, Quince, really. Can someone turn off that alarm?” She rolled onto her side, and Salazar helped her up despite a warning glare from her BFF.
They steadied her when she swayed, but Quincy took over, wrapping an arm around her for support as she hobbled toward Mrs. Mercedes. The alarm finally stopped screeching.
“Ma’am, do you need an ambulance?” she asked her.
The woman’s eyes rounded when she saw her. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean . . .” She looked at the damage she’d caused and put a hand over her mouth. “Oh, my god.”
“Thank you, Deputy,” Sun said to the dark-haired tech geek, Lonnie Price, who’d been trying to keep the woman calm. Price had only been with the Del Sol office about six months, and he was the only deputy not originally from the area. But he came with stellar recommendations, and according to all reports, he adjusted quickly.
Price nodded and took a step back to give her room.
With Quincy’s help, Sun knelt in front of the woman. “Ma’am, can you tell me what happened?”
The woman seemed to slip into a state of shock. Her expression went blank even as tears slid past her lashes. “He took her. He took my daughter.” She blinked and focused on Sun, folding her hands into her own. “You have to find her.”
Sun squeezed. “What’s your name?”
“Mari. Marianna St. Aubin.”
Ah yes. The St. Aubins were transplants as well. They’d been the talk of the town last summer when they moved to Del Sol from the Midwest to start a winery. And they had money. The root of all evil and many abductions.
Sun gestured for Salazar to grab a pen and memo pad. A memo pad that Sun smudged with blood. Her hands were covered in tiny cuts. She wiped one on her pants, winced at the glass shards still lodged in her skin, and continued.
“Okay, who took your daughter? Did you see him?”
“No. He took her last night. I was asleep. I fell asleep.”
Someone brought Sun a chair, and she sat in front of Mrs. St. Aubin. The splinters of glass digging into her back stung every time she moved, but she could see to that later. The siren from an ambulance wailed as it neared, which seemed ridiculous to her since the fire station was only two blocks away.
“Mrs. St. Aubin, how old is your daughter?”
“Fourteen.”
Same age as Auri. For some reason, that knowledge startled her.
Mrs. St. Aubin spoke between sobs, her voice strained. “She’ll be fifteen in three days. Three days.” Her eyes rounded again, and she clawed at Sun’s hands. “You have to find her. We don’t have much time.”
Before Sun could ask what she meant, the woman disintegrated into a fit of sobs, her shoulders shaking violently. Sun sent one of the deputies for water as the EMTs rushed in. She showed a palm to stop them and continued her interrogation.
She put a hand on the woman’s shoulder to get her attention. “Mrs. St. Aubin, start from the beginning. How long has your daughter been missing?”
The woman blinked, trying to make sense of her surroundings, and said in a hushed tone, “Forever.”
Sun called Quincy and one of the EMTs to her office while the other tech checked on Mrs. St. Aubin. She glanced at the new station décor as she passed. A white Mercedes sedan that probably cost more than Canada now graced the foyer. They could do worse, she figured. They could have a statue of the town’s founder, a man who looked alarmingly like Lurch from The Addams Family.
She thought back, trying to remember exactly what hit where when the car came at her as though laser guided. She remembered ducking, because that made so much more sense than jumping out of the way. Sadly, her reflexes weren’t so much catlike as rolypolylike.
The car’s bumper must have hit her shoulder. It was enough to send her sprawling back, a fact that probably saved her life if the placement of the tire was any indication. Three inches closer and she’d be in dire need of a face-lift. As in her face lifted off the floor.