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

Chapter Fourteen: Sunny, Monday

Tori gasped and grabbed his arm, pulling him into his own office and shutting the door.

Sunny saw her fighting tears and losing. "Tori," he soothed. "Please, don't cry... it's okay..."

"No it's not!" she cried, furiously wiping tears from her eyes. "You fucking asshole, why didn't you ever tell me? I thought we were--"

"I'm sorry, Tori, it's not something I can talk about all the time."

"You can trust me," she said. "I'm your friend, aren't I, not just your employee, hell, I'm your campaign manager."

"You're right, you're right," he said. "I should have trusted you. I just... I don't know..." Now he felt tears in his eyes, and he was mortified. He discretely wiped them away and said, "It's hard to talk about it without doing what I'm doing now..."

She rushed forward and threw her arms around him, squeezing hard. "You can cry around me, I don't mind," she said. "I'm a hot blooded Latina, I'm used to displays of emotion."

He tentatively put his arms around her, and then, to his horror, he broke down completely, hanging on to his paralegal for dear life.

"Oh, that's it," she cooed. "Tell mama all about it."

"Fucking Jordan!" he sobbed. "Why didn't he leave her alone after she got married?"

"Oh," she breathed. "You mean the two of them kept seeing each other?"

He sniffed and got himself together. "Yeah, at least in the days leading up to her murder. I know it's not anyone's fault but the man who killed her, but, goddamn it, Jordan's still out there, dicking around, and he might have been responsible for another woman going missing, maybe murdered."

Tori held him at arm's length and looked up at him. "Are you serious?"

"I don't know," Sunny said. "It might be more complicated now. Something's off. Yesterday I went to an Open House hosted by Birinder Sandhu, and there was a woman with him who claimed to be Naira."

She blinked in surprise. "What?"

"Yeah. This is why I'm going to the police station, to see if in fact there was a missing persons report, or if Jordan's had the wrong end of the stick all along."

"I see." 

She looked pensive, though, and Sunny said, "What is it?"

"I think I'd like to check the CanLII databank and see if there've been any cases involving this Birinder Sandhu," she said. CanLII was the Canadian Legal Information Institute, a non-profit organization managed by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada. "Something about his name sounds familiar."

"Hey, that's a good idea," Sunny said. "Also check Court Services Online to see if he's ever been involved in divorce proceedings specifically. We might as well use the resources at our own disposal."

"Yes! I'll do that right away."

"Well, hold on, maybe we should actually do what we're being paid to do right now, and work on our own projects while on our break. I haven't even turned on my computer yet, who knows what fires I'll have to put out today."

She gave him the stink eye and said, "You're no fun."

"I know, I'm a task master."

She sighed and said, "Fine, I'll go back to work, but now you have me intrigued, and I won't let this go."

"Don't. I'm happy to have a sidekick on this, I didn't expect you'd be so interested."

She smiled brilliantly and said, "Batman and Robin, huh? Oh, by the way, we need to talk at some point about next steps in your campaign."