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

Chapter Sixty-Four: Sunny, Saturday

The Anvil Centre was already booked tonight, by Mayor Rodney Maxwell's campaign, appropriately enough, otherwise Sunny would have considered it a perfect cap on his own campaign, since he'd begun it there. It was also the scene of his reunion with Jordan and the start of the case that resulted in a shoulder wound and his arm in a sling, so it would have made a fitting scene for the end of it, too. 

Since Tori couldn't book the Anvil Centre, she booked the ballroom of the Queensborough Community Centre, not knowing she couldn't have picked a better venue for the Lawrence Street Detective Club, minus one member, to gather and celebrate the end of Sunny's campaign, whether or not he won. This place had featured a lot in their childhood, being the place where they'd received their commendation for helping Danny Trybek; it was also where they'd reunited at the memorial for Mrs. Anderson, and where Sunny had decided to run in this election.

Since his many friends at the gurdwara lived in Queensborough, this ended up being a convenient location for them too, and since Birinder lived here, he and his parents had decided to show up for the occasion, and joined Sunny's parents in conversation at the other end of the room.

Birinder had been released from hospital without any lasting injuries, and visited Sunny in his room when he found out Sunny had basically saved his life by saving his wife's life, not that she would remain his wife much longer.

"I don't know what would have happened to me if you hadn't called Naira... I still can't think of her as Jasminder... that night," he said, taking Sunny's good hand in both of his and pumping it heartily. "They probably would have killed me and dumped my body just like they did with poor Jordan."

"It wasn't just me," Sunny said. "If Naira, your ex, hadn't come to me that night because she saw you being kidnapped on her door camera, and if Jasminder hadn't visited Burnaby Hospital to see my friends, and if my friend Lauren's partner hadn't recognized Jasminder from his police days, we never would have suspected she had anything to do with what happened to you, and we never would have gone to your house to find Jasminder and ask where you were."

Birinder shook his head in awe. "When we met online, I thought she was just a nice, normal woman looking for a relationship herself. How could I have known she had this whole other life?"

"I think deep down she was a nice, normal woman who'd made a few bad choices and paid a terrible price for them, and really was looking for a stable relationship with a man who wouldn't hurt her the way she'd been hurt in the past. Maybe if you hadn't cheated on her, she might never have cooperated with those men in torturing you."

"And you say those men were cops?" Birinder asked in amazement. "I never saw faces, they were wearing ski masks."

"They knew better than to be identified in case you got away. Maybe Jasminder can identify one or two of them now that she's in custody and talking to the police." Tracey and Goncalves had visited him earlier to see how he was holding up, and to inform him Crown prosecutors were making a deal with Jasminder to testify against key players in the conspiracy in return for a lighter sentence. 

"Naira, my ex, never told me she was on the run," Birinder said, "or that she was seeing this Jordan fellow, or that he was the one flying the drone at my house, or that he eventually came to my house to look for her, thinking she lived there. I can't help feeling Jordan would still be alive if she'd just done a couple of things differently."

"She was in fight or flight mode for the past few weeks. She had to think of her own well being first. I wouldn't judge her too harshly." Naira wasn't escaping this whole thing without any consequences, either. Once the Sun broke the story, the news had exploded nation-wide, and Naira had become an overnight sensation, either for being a champion against overreach by the security state, or a brown-skinned traitor to the nation and its dedicated constabulary, depending on where you fell on the political spectrum. Some of the comments on social media were horrible; Sunny thought he'd dealt with racism during his political campaign, but Naira had to go into hiding once the shit hit the fan. Her career in the RCMP was over, but Crown prosecutors had taken her in hand and, with the help of various government agencies, found her a place to live and a posting in a small Ontario town with the Ontario Provincial Police; it was probably the one place she could have gone without her beat being surrounded by municipalities served by the Mounties. Out of an abundance of caution, she'd also legally changed her name, just in case any of her new coworkers discovered who she was. Now both women who bore the name of Naira Sandhu had legally changed their names.