Sun laughed softly. Good times.
“I’ll make you a deal.”
That perked her up. “Okay, but I’m keeping my clothes on this time.”
“You get me the names of the Dangerous Daughters, and I’ll let the whole thing slide.”
That time, Sun didn’t even try to suppress her snort. She let it rip and then gaped at the woman in front of her. “The Dangerous Daughters? Would you like Santa’s address while I’m at it?”
Donna stood unfazed. Her temerity was sobering.
“You can’t honestly believe they exist.”
“I do,” she said. “How else do you explain your win?”
Sun’s brows inched together. “I’ve heard they prefer being called the Diabolical Daughters.”
“I’ve heard that, too. I’ve also heard them called the Devil’s Daughters. The Damnable Daughters. Even the Despicable Daughters. Take your pick. I just want their names.”
The Dangerous Daughters were supposedly the members of a group of women who’d, according to rumor, secretly run the town since it went from being a bankrupt mining town to a hippie commune in the 1930s. The Dangerous Daughters were the wizards behind the curtain, so to speak. If it were true, they’d be really old right now. How hard could they be to find?
“And how do you propose I get the names of the members of a group that doesn’t exist?”
“You’ll think of something.”
“Or?”
Her shapely lips formed the smallest, most confident of smiles. “Or I’ll go through your past with a razor-sharp machete and rip it apart, thread by fragile thread.” She leaned in as though sharing a secret. “No one wants that, now do we?”
When she turned and exited the office, Sun realized she’d been holding her breath with that last threat. She most definitely did not want anyone sifting through her past. She had something to hide. Something she’d give her life to keep hidden. Something Auri could never, under any circumstances, find out.
Thus, she had a choice to make. Did she cut a bitch, set a bitch on fire, or eviscerate a bitch’s online presence and get her sent to prison for kiddie porn?
If only her mother had named her Lisbeth Salander. That woman never thinks ahead.
4
Skinny people are easier to kidnap.
Stay safe.
Eat cake.
—SIGN AT THE SUGAR SHACK
After a ten-minute pep talk in which Sun convinced herself Mayor Lomas would find nothing, no matter how razor-sharp the machete she wielded, the shiny new sheriff stepped out of her office to find the whole gang standing stock-still around Anita’s desk.
Sun cleared her throat, expecting the deputies to give her their full attention.
They did not.
She cleared her throat again, louder this time.
Still nothing.
She cleared her throat a third time, loud enough to pull a larynx.
No reaction whatsoever.
Giving in, she wove through the obstacle course that was the heart of the sheriff’s station and walked up behind her team of deputies, rising onto her toes to see what they were looking at.
She’d taken the previous week to meet one-on-one at a local coffee shop with each of her deputies and her office manager, and had almost succeeded save one. The four deputies she had met with and the one administrative staff member were all present and accounted for, ready to celebrate Sun’s first day on the job.
At the moment, however, they were all gathered around a basket of muffins, gazing at it as though it were a basket of tarantulas. Or rattlesnakes. Or claymores. She wondered if they feared all pastries or just muffins in general.
“What’s up, guys?”
Two of the deputies started and turned around to her.
“Nothing, Sheriff,” Deputy Salazar said, worry lining her face.
The other two ignored the intrusion and continued to stare. Sun looked closer at the muffins, growing wary herself.
She pinned Quincy with her best authoritative glare. “What’s going on?”
He offered her one word. “Muffins.”
“Yes. I can see that. They look delish.”
At that moment, she wedged between Anita and Deputy Price and went in. They were homemade. The muffins, not Anita and Price, who may or may not have been homemade. They could have been conceived in a hot air balloon for all she knew. And the deputies smelled nowhere near as nice as the muffins that, even wrapped in plastic, filled the area with a blueberry kind of heaven.
A microsecond before her fingertips made contact, however, a loud unified gasp echoed around her. Every single person drew back in horror.
She paused and glanced around at each panic-stricken face. The deputies were all taller than she was, so it took a bit of effort.
“What?” she asked, growing annoyed.
Anita glared at Quincy. “She doesn’t know?”
Quincy’s gaze dropped, along with his chin, the act demonstrative of the guilt he clearly felt.
“You didn’t tell her?” Deputy Salazar asked. Apparently, Quincy had been appointed to tell Sun about the muffins and had shirked his duties.
“Tell her what?” another female deputy asked.
Sun turned to the only other person in the room as confused as she was, a new recruit named Azaria Bell. Much like Sun herself, Zee had no idea why every law enforcement officer at the Del Sol County Sheriff’s Office was scared of a basket of muffins.
It did boggle the mind.
“Okay,” Sun said, growing exasperated, “why are you guys scared of muffins, and who needs therapy because of it? Show of hands.”
“These aren’t just muffins,” Quincy said, his tone hushed as though they were listening. The muffins. The inanimate baked goods just sitting there, begging to be eaten.
“They look like muffins to me,” she whispered back.
“Me, too,” Zee agreed, not bothering to whisper.
Now Sun just felt silly.
“And they smell like muffins,” Zee continued.
“Right?” Sun reached for one again, and Quincy almost dislocated her shoulder when he grabbed her arm and jerked her back.
Sun slapped his hands off her as though they were in a girl fight. Petty but effective. Then she turned to face her posse, her gaze landing on Anita, her office manager and the one person Sun least expected to be afraid of muffins. But her eyes were just as wide as her deputies’.
“That’s it.” She wielded an index finger like a weapon. “Someone explain what is going on. Are they poisoned? Because if someone is trying to kill us, shouldn’t we be investigating?”
“They aren’t poisoned,” Deputy Salazar said. She was a curvy girl with big brown eyes and a smile that could light up a mental ward. “They were made by Ruby Moore.”
“Oh, my gosh.” Sun brightened and thought back. “I remember Mrs. Moore. She’s so cute, and she was always so nice. Why is she trying to kill us?”
Quincy finally broke the tension with a surrendering sigh. “She’s not trying to kill us, boss. It’s just every time she sends muffins, strange things happen.”
Deputy Price concurred with a nod. “And the bigger the basket, the stranger the events.”
Sun squinted in doubt. “What kind of strange things?”