The Hero Next Time: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 4)

Chapter Five: Sunny, Saturday

Sunny was in a quandary. Here was a situation in which he'd found himself before. As an officer of the court, it was his duty to report criminal wrongdoing whenever he witnessed it, at least theoretically. It was why criminal defence lawyers didn't want their clients to tell them if they'd committed the crime in question. It was why he advised clients not to tell him anything incriminating, not that it came up much in his area of law, but sometimes his clients played dirty pool with their assets to hide them from their estranged spouses. It was the kind of thing he hired Lauren's firm to find out about his client's opponent, with Rachel the forensic accountant performing the work more often than not; three members of the newly reunited Lawrence Street Detective Club often worked together on a single case, and though it wasn't like the days of finding lost dogs and saving abused boys, it was the closest they came on a day to day basis to reliving those days.

The inconvenient nature of his duty, he was sure, had prevented him from being involved in at least one case the LSDC had taken on back in 2009, when he might have otherwise experienced that same thrill of doing something important and making a real difference. Something had happened to Martin Heath, the CEO of the development company that had used Rachel as its accountant when she'd worked for Henderson Peters, the firm that had fired her when it had discovered, first, that she and Martin had been involved in an inappropriate romantic relationship, and then that money had been discovered in a secret account as a result of embezzlement for which Martin had framed Rachel by stealing her login credentials and moving the money under her name. A few weeks after Rachel and Al had come back into Sunny's life, when they'd attended the memorial for Mrs. Anderson and Rachel had taken on the duties of executor of her estate, Martin Heath had sued to have Rachel removed as executor because he'd wanted Mrs. Anderson's house as part of a land assembly for a new development in Queensborough, and Mrs. Anderson's will had stipulated the house was meant for the New Westminster Historical Society. Sunny had fought for her to stay on in court, and the judge had allowed it until the other side could provide evidence of sale of the house prior to Mrs. Anderson's death. That evidence had never appeared and, soon after, Martin had seemed to disappear off the face of the Earth. 

His friends had never let on that they'd known anything about Martin's disappearance, but he suspected something had happened the night Lauren and Joe had showed up with their kids, asking Sunny and Tej to look after them in the guise of a play date with Harpreet and Ajit. A rather late play date in Sunny's opinion; his kids would have been getting ready to go to bed within a couple of hours of their arrival, so he'd been rather irritated by the request, but something in Lauren's eyes had hinted at the urgency of the situation that had forced them to ask in the first place, so he'd acquiesced. All she would say was that Rachel's friend needed help, and when she'd returned long after bedtime, looking exhausted and emotional, he'd suspected something terrible had happened. He'd feared they'd done something bad, and when nobody had mentioned Martin Heath anymore, and the company had dropped the lawsuit against Rachel, he'd known they'd done the bad thing to Martin. What he didn't know, even now, was what exactly they'd done, nor did he have proof, and for that he was grateful, because the last thing he would have wanted to do as an officer of the court was turn in his friends.

He was also hurt, though, that his friends hadn't thought to involve him in their plan. He understood why they hadn't and was grateful they'd respected him enough not to put him in legal peril and threaten his career. Still, he felt like he'd missed out on an opportunity to help his friends and act like they were the LSDC again.

Now here he was with one of his friends, listening to the words of a man Sunny never thought he would ever hear from again, and he was afraid he was going to have to back away again, because something about the evidence Jordan had obtained was illegal.

He didn't want to back away, that was the problem.

Nothing obligated him to get involved. It wasn't like he wasn't already busy enough with work, family, and now a political campaign. Something about Jordan's story tugged at his conscience, though. Here was an opportunity to help, to make amends for his failure to save Bishan. Hadn't he once lamented to his friends, while they'd all been gathered around Rachel's hospital bed back in August, that he'd never been there when the rest of them had gotten into sticky situations? Hadn't he used Martin Heath as an example, not saying his name because he hadn't wanted to make his friends admit they'd done something illegal, and hadn't he admitted he wished he'd been involved in their illegal activity, regardless of the potential consequences to his career and family? And hadn't Emma said, without any hint of guile because she was the sweetest and most genuine creature on the planet, "You'll get to be the hero next time"?