Sunny could only shake his head at the incongruity of Naira Sandhu in his living room, sitting on his couch with her purse in her lap, drinking chai with his parents while Harpreet and Ajit stared at her in open-mouthed wonder. She had her coat and boots off, and her hair was down. She was rather striking, not that Sunny would ever say it aloud. He could see why Jordan had fallen for this woman. She reminded him of a tiger at rest, beautiful but ready to pounce if cornered.
"Hello," he said, just to say something. He turned to Tej and said, "This is Naira."
"I gathered," Tej said stiffly. "I remember what she looked like in the picture Jordan sent us."
"Did you say Jordan?" Dad asked. "Not Jordan Trevelyan?"
"The very same." Sunny didn't think now was the right time to inform them that Jordan was dead. "He was seeing her until recently."
"Do you know this woman, Sunil?" Mom asked.
"I wouldn't go that far," he said. "We've met only once before."
She turned to Naira and said, "You said you were a friend of his."
"I apologize for exaggerating, Bibiji," Naira said, addressing her with the Punjabi word for a respected older woman. "I thought you would be more likely to invite me in if I told you he was my friend. He is a friend of Birinder Sandhu, who is my ex-husband, and I wished to talk to your son about him."
"Sandhuji married another Naira?" Ajit asked, probably in disbelief that his crush shared her name with another.
"Yes, what a coincidence," Naira said to him with a sly smile. Ajit arched his back like a cat, and Sunny suspected he had a new crush now. The two women couldn't have been any more different, but for the newly adolescent boy, any female attention was an unqualified blessing.
"You said 'they' have him," Sunny said. "What do you mean?"
"I think you know what I mean."
"Is Sandhuji in trouble?" Dad asked.
"I think that's a safe assumption. I would like to talk to Sunil alone, if I may."
"Nope, not this time," Tej said. "I'm in on this conversation or you can walk right back out that door."
"That's not the way we talk to a guest," Dad said.
"I agree with Tej," Sunny said, because he did, but also because it was the only safe thing to say. He looked to Naira and said, "Why don't the three of us sit in the office?"
Naira nodded and stood with her purse, giving his parents a little bow. "Thank you for your hospitality."
Parents and children stared after her as she followed them. Now that they were all standing, he saw that she was only a little shorter than he was. She must have looked formidable in a police uniform and utility belt. She looked like she could incapacitate him with barely any effort. Tej stared after her with a look that would have drawn blood if it had any solidity.
Once Sunny closed the door behind them, Naira put her purse on his desk and began pacing back and forth. Again the tiger imagery returned to his mind, only now she was a tiger in a cage.
"I didn't see your car parked in our driveway," Sunny said.
"I ditched it," she said. "I don't hold on to anything too long anymore."
"Are you really that worried you're being tracked?" Tej asked.
Naira stopped in her tracks and looked at Tej as if she'd never noticed her until now. "I'm sorry, we haven't been properly introduced." She offered her hand. "You're Tej?"
"That's right," Tej said uncertainly, taking it.
"You're stunning, you know. Sunny never told me that."
"Thank you." Tej's response couldn't have been more insincere.
"Your ex would certainly agree," Sunny said. "He wanted her to join his firm, and I don't think it was because she's a fantastic realtor."
"Bir loves the ladies," Naira said regretfully. "That's one of the reasons he's my ex."
"And yet," Sunny said, "the way Bir tells it, you two haven't entirely broken it off."
Naira's face fell. "Oh, fuck, what did he tell you?"
"That he was with you the night Jordan was murdered."
Naira closed her eyes and sighed in exasperation. "Jesus Christ."
"Is it true?"
Naira shrugged and said, "I guess there's no use denying it."
"So, why don't you tell the police and corroborate his statement? He's still under suspicion for his murder."
"That's the least of his worries, now. That's why I risked coming here, to tell you. Did you send him to my house to talk to me?"
"Yes. How do you know?" he asked her.
Naira gave him with an almost manic smile. "Why, I saw it all on my phone! His arrival at my door, his plea for me to talk to the police, and his subsequent kidnapping!"
Sunny's stomach dropped. Tej asked, "What do you mean?"
"Naira has a security system with a front door camera," he said. "Birinder told me. When a visitor rings the doorbell, she gets a call and can see who's at the door. She can also talk to the visitor and see what they want."
"I can also lock and unlock the door if I want," Naira said.
"And you saw someone kidnap Birinder while he was talking to you through your front door camera?" he asked.
"They must have been waiting outside my house, sitting in a car, maybe watching the front door through a telephoto lens. I haven't been back at my house since I first dropped off the map."
Sunny was stunned into silence by this scenario. Tej said, "If they've been sitting on your house since you went on the run, didn't it occur to you to warn Birinder? Just a heads up, hey, don't come to my house for a while?"
Naira glared at Tej. Tej stared back. The air in the room suddenly seemed to have petrified. Sunny needed to say something. "When you were with Birinder last, that had to be when Jordan was murdered," he said. "So, you weren't at your house then. Where did you meet?"
"A hotel. It doesn't matter which. He paid for the room so it couldn't be tracked to me."
"Do you think they might have followed you?"
"I never saw a tail."
"So, as far as you know, these people chasing you, they've never seen Birinder before."
Naira shrugged. "If they know me, they know I used to be married to him. They'd have been confirmed he was Birinder when they approached him and heard him talking to me, since we were in the middle of an argument about going to the police when they took him."
"Do you still have the footage on your phone?" Tej asked. "Maybe you can show it to the police."
Naira nodded. "It's in the cloud, attached to my account with the security company. No matter what phone I use, I just log in and it's there. But I can't go to the police with this."
"Right, right, because these guys are connected to a police force, and I bet the security company is also connected to them."
Naira crossed her arms and said, "You don't believe me."
"It's not that we don't believe you," Sunny said. "We just need more information. I think we're past the point where you can just refuse to tell us. Whether we wanted to be or not, we're in this as deep as you are, and I think if you risked your safety to come here, you've realized it too. Maybe we can help each other."
Naira said nothing for a moment, just stared at him in sullen defiance.
"What if someone on the street witnessed the kidnapping?" Tej said. "Maybe they already called the police."
"I don't know if I want to take that chance this time," Naira said. "It wasn't fast enough to help Jordan."
"Yeah, but we don't know Jordan was taken right from his front door, right?" Sunny said. "You said yourself you had to go there and mess the place up to bring attention to his disappearance."
Naira nodded and said, "They're getting bolder, because they're getting desperate. The fact that they showed their hand with you and your Mystery Gang only goes to show the lengths they'll go to to draw me out."
"But why?"
Naira sighed, and suddenly leaned against Sunny's desk as if she needed it to hold herself up. Sunny realized she was exhausted.
"If you've been on the run," Tej said, "where have you been staying?" It was as if his wife could read his mind, because he was going to ask the same question.
Naira shook her head and shrugged. "Sometimes with a friend I trust, but never more than a night because I don't want to put them in danger. Sometimes in my car, but that's no longer an option."
Sunny nodded and said, "I think that's another reason you've come, because you know you can trust us, or at least you don't care enough about our safety to stay away."
Naira's mouth dropped open. "I wouldn't knowingly jeopardize your family's safety. I've done everything I could to warn you off this, haven't I?"
"True. You even pulled a gun on me to get me out of your car."
"What?!" Tej squawked. "You never told me that, Sunny!" She glared at Naira with hands balled into fists. "What the fuck do you--"
"It's okay!" Sunny said, placing a gentle hand on her arm, because he knew Tej would rip her apart if he let her. His wife was a tiger herself, or maybe a smaller great cat. A leopard. "I knew she wasn't really going to use it." He turned to Naira and said, "Do you have it on you now?"
Naira nodded. "In my purse. It's my duty pistol, but I have no idea if I can ever go back on duty after this."
"Good. It's nice to have it around, just in case. Why don't you stay here, at least tonight. We can figure this out together."
Naira looked down at her feet, and suddenly her shoulders shook with sobs. Sunny should have realized she'd been just barely holding it together for days. As tough as Naira was, she must have been terrified, and it was only natural for her to finally let it all go as soon as she felt safe enough to do so.
He grabbed a tissue out of the box on the desk and offered it to her. She took it, and then threw her arms around him, clutching him to her as if he were a life raft in stormy seas. Surprised, he looked to Tej, whose face held portents of doom if he didn't unlock from this as quickly as possible.
He patted her back gently, refraining from uttering such platitudes as "it's okay," because clearly it wasn't. Neither did he squeeze her back any harder than was decent with his wife standing right there. He'd made that mistake once with Lauren at Harrison Hot Springs, and paid for it later.
Finally, Naira broke away and wiped her eyes with the tissue. "Sorry," she said. "I think it's just finally hitting me. Jordan's gone. He's gone," she squeaked, and broke down again, only this time she just cried into her tissue.
To Sunny's surprise, Tej's face softened, and she placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.
"I'm so sorry," Sunny said, relieved that Naira was finally acknowledging her loss. She wasn't as cold and callous as he'd feared. "He was an odd man, but when he loved, he loved fully and completely."
Naira laugh-cried. "You're right on both counts." Something about what she'd just said made her cry harder, though. "And I didn't deserve him, because I kept going back to my ex!"
"How did the two of you meet?" Tej asked. "I only remember him from the days when he dated Bishan. I don't know what he's been doing in the eight years or so since we last saw him."
Sunny could have kissed Tej for that question, because it worked like the opening of a floodgate.
Naira wiped her eyes, smiled wistfully and said, "We met at Chimeronics. We were both in IT together. At first he was all business, just coworkers, you know, and it's not like I was looking for anything, either. The last thing I ever expected when I started there was to fall in love, because I was there undercover, and I had a job to do."
"So, it's true, then," Sunny said. "You were undercover there."
She nodded and said, "A special assignment for Cybercrimes. I'd already gotten a degree in Computer Science before I got recruited to the RCMP. I wanted to do my part to stop criminal enterprises on the Dark Web. I had to go through the years of patrol in far off corners of the country like everyone else, but eventually I impressed the right people."
"What is it about Chimeronics that drew the attention of the RCMP?" Tej asked.
"Not them necessarily. They were a legitimate corporation doing valuable research and developing technology that could bridge the mind-body gap, especially where prostheses are concerned. But they were also developing nanotechnology that could help the body regulate itself internally. Imagine eradicating diabetes by helping the pancreas with tiny little robots."
"Are you serious?" Sunny asked incredulously. "My father has diabetes. That would be miraculous if they could do what you say."
"Not only miraculous, it would save the healthcare system millions every year in preventing hospital visits for complications from the disease. That's just one disease. This company is getting a lot of attention. That's the problem."
"Attention from the government because of the strides it's making in healthcare, but also attention from criminals who want to use the technology for ill purposes?"
Naira nodded. "The thing about this technology is it generates a shit-ton of data. Data about the individuals using it. Data is the hottest commodity out there, because it can be used for all sorts of purposes, and there's very little overhead. The trick is to know how to analyze and shape it. Jordan was one of the guys in IT doing that analyzing and shaping." She blinked as she realized she'd referred to her boyfriend in the past tense. "Anyway, I first came in when the company reported that it was being hacked and was worried its data and proprietary technology was being stolen. The company executives knew I was there undercover, but no one else, just in case it was someone on the inside doing the hacking. I got placed in the IT department, and that's where I met Jordan."
"So, for all Jordan knew, you were the new employee in the IT department," Tej said.
"Yeah."
"So, when did everything go to shit and you had to go on the run?" Sunny asked.
"Everything sort of happened at once," Naira said, shrugging. "We had a whirlwind romance, and we increased security on our end while I covertly passed on information on the hackers for my handlers to track down and arrest. What I didn't know was that my own handlers were taking advantage of the data the company generated; with me on the inside they were able to act like the house guest from hell, feasting on everything I was sending them."
"They were viewing data on users, their biological data, without the knowledge or consent of Chimeronics or, worse, the users?"
Naira nodded. "Are you shocked?"
"I shouldn't be, but the Charter of Rights and Freedoms idealist in me just can't get over the overreach."
"Well, buckle up, because that's not the worst of it. You remember the device Jordan and I worked on?"
"That really was you who worked on it?"
Naira threw up her hands in exasperation. "Yes! Why is that so hard for you to believe?"
"I don't know, you were so cagey in the car that time, I felt disinclined to believe anything you said."
"It was really just a prototype, you know. We were fully into the mission Chimeronics was fulfilling, melding tech at the cellular level. We saw a lot of potential for the communication between the body and the servers we had on site, but, just as the hacking showed us, the danger lies in the data from those servers going off site. As soon as it hit the Internet, it would never be private again. We understood that peril, except we had a vision for the device where we thought the benefits outweighed the risks: finding children."
Sunny blinked in surprise. "The GPS in your device. The drones."
She nodded. "Our idea was that if, say, a child was abducted, the device would alert a centralized service, which would then send a drone to the child using GPS tracking, where then it would alert the authorities, make a lot of noise, even put the parents in communication with both the child and the abductor, creating such exposure that the abductor would rather abort the abduction than continue on."
"But with what you had, the kid had to have the device on them, right?" Tej said. "What if the abductor just threw it away?"
"Well, obviously, the prototype had its limitations. For one thing, much of the technology wasn't even new. I mean, they've been radio collaring animals for decades to get data on their migration patterns and their territory size. What we developed is really just a variation on that, with one difference. Kept on the body, tiny pores in the device collect DNA from fluids and skin cells. It makes a kind of signature that identifies you as you. This will still be useless, though, if the device is given away or stolen but, again, it was just a prototype, a larger version of something that will eventually be microscopic."
"So, when Jordan said you kept it up your vagina--" Tej began.
"I didn't keep it up my vagina," Naira loudly interrupted.
"Why does it look like a tampon applicator then? That's what Jordan told us."
"It's just how it's shaped. I may have mentioned once, in passing, that it resembled one, and maybe I told Jordan I could keep it in my purse and Birinder wouldn't suspect what it was because it looked like one, and he must have assumed I was putting it up there while I was with Birinder."
"Okay, now you need to tell us why you let Jordan believe you were still married to him and feared for your safety with him," Sunny said.
Naira sighed and looked ashamed. "If he believed I was still married to him, my seeing him on the side would seem perfectly natural to him."
"Well, Jordan certainly never had a problem with seeing married women," Sunny granted. "Still, why have him track you with the drone? That's something we still can't wrap our heads around."
"Especially me," Tej said. "That's creepy stalkerish behaviour right there."
"It was my suggestion," Naira admitted. "I played it up as wanting to feel safe knowing Jordan was keeping an eye on me, but the real objective was to provide data to my handlers."
"What?!" Sunny and Tej squawked at the same time.
Naira nodded sadly. "Okay, so you know there's GPS on the device, and you know directly the dangers of having someone be able to track a GPS signal to you. But Jordan and I were still in the idealistic stage of our product development, and we were going to take the concept to Chimeronics as a way to track children with their own biological signature, so that if they ever went missing or, worse, got kidnapped, they could be found by the GPS signal they emitted, pinging any time they were near a cellular tower, which is almost anywhere nowadays. The problem is our prototype was still far too large, but we wanted to illustrate how it could eventually, with the right materials, shrink down to something that could either be implanted under the skin, or even flow through the bloodstream; remember when I talked about nanotechnology? If we're already getting data from it already from close contact readers, why not use our nanobots to make the body into a transponder that can ping at a distance?"
Now Sunny saw the full horror of the potential offered by that tampon applicator-shaped device. "How close are they to making it small enough?"
"For intracutaneous injection, not long at all. Maybe they already have it. For nanotechnology small enough to circulate in the bloodstream, a little longer. The thing about injection under the skin is there needs to be consent because it's invasive. But imagine if, with every inoculation kids get, they're injected without their knowing with something that would make them traceable throughout their lives, their health monitored every second of the day. We thought we were doing this for the kids, but my handlers saw much more desirable uses. Imagine knowing where a criminal is at any time, and whether they're committing a crime; imagine alerts going to local constabularies that these criminals are in the vicinity of people who took out restraining orders against them, or of schools or places where children congregate, if they're sex offenders. Imagine how much crime could be prevented if this technology was in the hands of law enforcement."
Sunny stared, dumbfounded, at her. She shrank a little under his gaze, maybe misinterpreting his dismay as disapproval of her and the technology she and Jordan had developed.
"Did you think," he asked, slowly, to contain his anger, "that your superiors in the police were not going to use this technology to make their jobs easier, regardless of the Charter protections we enjoy?"
"I was following orders," she said, then grimaced at how lame that sounded, maybe remembering another time in history when men in uniforms said those very same words. "Once I knew what their intentions were, though, I knew I had to stop. I had to leave Chimeronics and blow the whistle on the whole operation. Of course, you know the rest."
"When you went on the run," Tej said, "you didn't bother to give Jordan a heads up. He thought Birinder did something to you because he went through that once before."
"He didn't know I was undercover," Naira said, shrugging. "He didn't know what I was doing. I feel terrible that he didn't know what happened to me, but I couldn't risk telling him and putting him in danger."
"They must have known he was close to you anyway, because they killed him."
"We kept our relationship secret!" Naira said in desperation. "No one at the office knew. I never told my superiors."
"Somebody must have known," Sunny said. "You must have slipped somewhere. An overheard conversation, a text viewed without your knowledge."
Naira's face crumpled, but she pulled herself together before she started crying again. "I should have just taken him with me," she said, so quietly it was almost a whisper. "I should have grabbed him and ran, and explained everything while we were on the run."
Sunny and Tej said nothing. There really was nothing they could say to absolve her, and they didn't want to make her feel worse.
"Okay, what about the other Naira?" Sunny said after a minute of silence. "How did she get her hands on the device to get on Jordan's footage?"
Naira sighed in resignation and said, "I planted it on her."
"What?" Tej asked. "Why?"
"Like I told Sunny, I was suspicious of her from the start. I looked into her and couldn't find a thing. She's like a ghost."
Tej raised an eyebrow and said, "Now who's the stalker?"
Naira gasped in indignation. "Come on! Look, okay, Birinder and I divorced, and we both agreed it was for the best. Sex was all we were good at together, and the relationship we had after our marriage was better for both of us than the marriage itself." She noticed Tej's poorly hidden disgust and said, "Judge me all you want, but it worked for us both; when he started dating someone new, I wouldn't have minded so much, I could have even let him go and wished him well, if the woman didn't have my name. It's almost like... like she specifically chose that name, for the very purpose of replacing me, usurping me. I had to wonder if she knew me."
"I can't believe that was the case," Sunny said. "Sure, it's a weird coincidence, but I can't see evidence of any design in this."
"The very fact that there was nothing to find about her origins left me thinking there was something about her that was fishy. So, I planted the device in her purse one night while they were out at dinner."
"You went to the restaurant where they were eating to put the device in her purse?"
Naira shrugged.
"And you thought, what?" Tej asked. "You'd track her for a while, see what she was doing when not at home or with her husband?"
"Exactly."
"And did you find anything out of the ordinary?"
Naira sighed in frustration. "No. She was the perfect wife and business partner. Mind you, I didn't track her for very long, because for all Jordan knew, I still had the device, and before I could get it back, everything went to shit and I went on the run."
"Thus leading to the footage of Naira nee Bains that confused Jordan so much," Sunny said. "Do you think she might have found out her husband was cheating with you?"
"I don't know. If she did, it would have been because of a mistake on Bir's part. She never saw me, ever. As far as she knew, we'd divorced and only met once in a while with the lawyers for alimony adjustments."
"Okay." Sunny sighed and couldn't think of any other questions to ask her. "So, we'll make up the guest bedroom for you, and you'll sleep here tonight."
"Thank you," Naira said. "I really do appreciate it."
"All I ask is that you keep that gun of yours in your room, but have it ready in case we need you to use it."
Naira nodded. "I really don't think they know I'm here, but I'll do my best to defend this house while I'm here."
"What's your end game here, Naira?" Tej asked suddenly.
Naira blinked in surprise. "Sorry?"
"Nobody can stay on the run forever. I don't think that's your plan, either. You haven't even left town."
Naira nodded. "You're right. I have a contact at the Vancouver Sun. I gave her my story when I first went on the run, before I knew Jordan was missing. I gave her everything I had, including those schematics you gave to the police. When I tossed Jordan's house after he went missing, I took his laptop, which had all the footage from the drone runs we did. I met again with her to give her this footage, to make the connection between the device and how the drone was able to follow it." She smiled. "His laptop also, coincidentally, had his email conversation with you, which is how I knew to contact you."
"I get it now," Sunny said. "You're waiting for the big story to break. You think the exposure will lead to heads rolling in the upper ranks."
"This isn't coming from the top," Naira said. "It's my direct superiors, and maybe theirs. It's a race against time, really. If they can develop the technology quickly enough, they can bring it to the top brass, secretly, and request funding for a pilot to do more research. I'm hoping to expose them before it even gets a chance to get off the ground; if the top brass don't know this is going on, a story like this will embarrass them into killing it before it has a chance to start, and then starting an inquiry into how this all came about."
"And you'll be the top witness in such an inquiry. That's why they want you, isn't it? To stop you from testifying. It's why they killed Jordan, because he might have also given testimony."
"Yeah," she croaked, furiously wiping a tear from her eye.
"Is your contact at the Sun confident her editors will let her run the story?" Tej asked. "What if they don't? On the surface, it sounds pretty outrageous, and your evidence might not be enough to induce them to make an enemy of the RCMP."
"If they don't run it, there's no point in my sticking around, but leaving the country might prove to be a problem, since they'd need to run my passport, and that would alert them too."
"I think you're going to need to put your trust in at least one more agency," Sunny said. "I'll call Detective Tracey of the New West police tomorrow. I have his card. I trust him. He can meet you here; I can just tell him I have new evidence to give him in Jordan's murder, but he won't know he's meeting you. You can corroborate Birinder's story about where he was when Jordan was killed, and we can tell him Birinder's been kidnapped, and then you can show him the footage on your phone. Maybe he can arrange protection for you, and they can go looking for him."
Naira sighed in frustration. "Let me think about it. I'll give you an answer tomorrow."
Sunny nodded. "Coincidentally, when we were at the hospital, visiting my friends who were in an accident as a result of being chased by these guys, we ran into Goncalves and tried to connect the dots for her. She wasn't convinced."
Naira rolled her eyes. "She's my friend, and I love her, but she's not the sharpest tool in the shed. Even still, anyone would have a hard time connecting Jordan's murder with the accident your friends were in; for one thing, they're in two different jurisdictions. The only reason I know they're connected is because my contact told me so, and you found the device at the scene. If Tracey meets me, she might be with him, right? That's one reason I'm hesitant to okay this."
"Because you think she has loose lips, right?"
"Well, she told you I was a police officer, didn't she?"
Suddenly Sunny's phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the screen. It was Rachel. He answered, suddenly afraid she had terrible news about Al. "Rachel? Is everything okay?"
"Nothing's changed, if that's what you mean," Rachel said. "But that's not why I called."
"Oh? What is it?"
"You'll never guess who Lauren found in Al's room at the ICU."
"Lauren?" Sunny asked, confused. "How did she get herself to his room?"
"Her partner Gary Somers showed up to visit her, and she charmed him into wheeling her over there."
Sunny chuckled and shook his head. "When that woman wants something, she finds a way to get it, doesn't she."
"You're telling me."
Sunny knew they were both alluding to their mixed up relationship and neither of them needed to say it. "So, who was in Al's room? I thought only family was allowed in there."
"I thought so too, and after tonight I gave the nurses a list of approved people to go into that room."
"You're scaring me, Rachel. Who was in that room?"
"Naira Sandhu."
"What the fuck? What we was she doing there?"
"When Lauren asked her, she said you told Birinder about the accident, and that it was her duty as a Sikh to visit the sick."
Sunny stood there for a moment with his phone to his ear, confused. Then he said, "There is a duty of service to the community, but I think she'd have to be an absolute saint to visit someone she met only once. All of that's moot, anyway, because I never told Birinder about the accident."
"Goddamn! We knew it! That means she's involved in this."
Sunny looked at Naira, who was looking expectantly at him. "I can't see any other explanation for her being there."
"Yeah, and get this. Gary Somers recognized her, and he thinks that's not her real name."
"You're shitting me."
"I'm not. He's going to do some checking of his old files at home, but he thinks he might have arrested this woman years ago as part of a raid on an apartment downtown whose tenants were running high-end prostitutes. He doesn't remember the role she played, but it's interesting, isn't it?"
"Very. Thanks for letting me know, Rachel. Stay safe."
"Will do."
He hung up and looked at Tej and Naira, who both now looked like they were going to spring at the slightest touch. "Naira nee Bains was in Al's hospital room tonight."
"That bitch!" Naira exclaimed. She turned and grabbed her purse. "I knew she was involved in this, I knew it! Why else would she be there?"
"Are you going somewhere?" he asked in surprise, because she looked like she was making ready to leave.
"Yeah. To her house. I'm going to make her tell me where Birinder is." She stopped halfway out the door and looked at him. "I need a ride. If you say you're in this now, you can drive me there."
Thanks for reading this far! Finally, some answers, and events are hurrying to a climax. If you liked what you just read, hit "Vote" to send this title up the ranks. If anything doesn't ring true about the conspiracy Naira posited, or the technology that would enable it, leave a comment and let me know; I strive for authenticity.
Before we get back to the action, let's go back to the infamous party that first started the mess that had ended with Joe moving out in the last novel, and began Tej's exploration of her own feelings for her friends, by clicking on, "Continue reading."