by R. J. Blain
BOOKED FOR KIDNAPPING
Vigilante Magical Librarians Book Two
R.J. BLAIN
Booked for Kidnapping
Vigilante Magical Librarians Book Two
by R.J. Blain
Following the assassination of Senator Maybelle, widespread rioting and unrest transform the presidential campaign into a lethal circus. With protests raging over the new bill, the government scrambles to restore peace and order.
Armed with a probationary private investigation license, Janette and her friends race against time to prevent the next murder. On the surface, the motive for the killings seems simple enough: the senate bill, if passed, would transform the United States into a militant dictatorship.
As hostilities around the nation intensify and the pressure of the investigation strains Janette’s relationships with her family and friends, she learns loyalty only goes so far, friendships are as easily forged as they are broken, and justice means little to those determined to preserve their personal liberties.
But when a murder attempt turns into a kidnapping, she’s left with one choice:
Uncover the truth, or die trying.
Copyright © 2021 by R.J. Blain
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design by Rebecca Frank of Bewitching Book Covers.
Contents
1. Exactly nobody in my life wanted me to attend the memorial.
2. Somehow, you’ve become even more stubborn.
3. Did you miss me?
4. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to kill so many.
5. You’re not just an exsanguinator.
6. We had rules for everything.
7. I recognized the fog of sedatives.
8. I’d heard the lecture a few too many times.
9. A sign directed residents to the local library.
10. You got a reason to be hiding back there?
11. Uh oh. My mother had gone formal on Bradley’s father.
12. You just want to hoard her all to yourself.
13. I’d have to find a way to thank him for that.
14. I will make you pay for this.
15. Bradley, I made a mistake.
16. I worried the damage was already done.
17. Why are you looking at me like that?
18. I feel like we’re doing something incredibly stupid.
19. Who is a good kitty? Ajani is! Ajani is the best kitty.
20. I like this politician, and that makes me feel dirty.
About R.J. Blain
From Outfoxed
ONE
Exactly nobody in my life wanted me to attend the memorial.
Funerals for the rich and famous baffled me. In one final attempt to promote Senator Maybelle’s causes, her campaign hosted a memorial in the park where she’d been murdered. As the campaign wanted to draw as many eyes as possible to their final event while leaving the senator’s reputation intact, I’d been given an invitation to attend as a special guest—a guest who might be able to shake hands with the other potential victims and get a closer look at those who might have killed the woman.
As such, I couldn’t refuse, not if I wanted to bring her murderers to justice.
Exactly nobody in my life wanted me to attend the memorial, as in their opinion, I transformed myself from a good Samaritan into a target—a target trapped in a wheelchair and easy pickings for just about anyone. The argument, which had begun within five minutes of receiving the invitation and continued until the morning of the memorial, had accomplished one thing: nobody in my life was pleased with me.
The wheelchair part of things annoyed the hell out of me, as healing my labored lungs had come at a price involving an infection I battled with antibiotics rather than my magic. Until my lungs could operate without me constantly oxygenating my blood, I wore a bracelet meant to keep my magic from doing any more than the bare minimum required for survival. The treatments worked; in the weeks since I’d been shot at the rally, my lungs recovered ahead of schedule. If all continued to go well, they’d be close to functional within a month.
The infection in my foot plus the battered state of my lungs had become the foundation for my friends and family protesting my involvement with the funeral.
I understood their point. While they wanted to find the truth, my friends and family refused to pursue justice at the cost of my safety.
We disagreed, and as they refused to bend, I’d accepted the campaign’s offer of transportation to and from the event, refusing to speak to any of them until they understood I needed justice more than I needed my personal safety.
Most didn’t care about justice, and after the shock of her assassination wore off, the truth had begun to spread. The investigation into her murder brought the woman’s social sins and prejudices to the front page of most newspapers. With the public aware of her support of a bill meant to send people like me to our inevitable deaths, the lines between justice and self-preservation blurred.
While my on-going survival mattered, I couldn’t help but feel we had missed something critical about the murders and the killers’ motives.
All we knew was that the murderers favored mimicking how an exsanguinator might kill someone, although we’d cracked how the crimes had been committed thanks to Senator Maybelle’s death.
I loathed how complicated my life had become since Bradley Hampton’s return into my life. Gone were the days of struggling through on my crippled foot, just one librarian among many. Gone were the days of a set routine, conquering one trivial matter at a time. Gone were the days where I could treat the trivialities as though they held some great importance in the grand scheme of things.
In the days following Senator Godrin’s demise on the steps of my library, I’d been charmed by the idea of seeking out the truth and securing justice for his brutal slaying. Proving I hadn’t been the killer had factored, but I hadn’t been able to turn away—I still couldn’t turn away from the chain of murders.
I also couldn’t turn away from the legislation that would transform the United States into a living nightmare for the majority of Americans. Our current system hurt too many as it was; I’d learned that truth living among the lowest of the low.
I’d also lived in the ivory tower.
We needed change, but not at the cost of the hundreds of thousands or millions of lives Maybelle and her fellow senators intended to sacrifice. Without the engagement to the man who’d once been my boss and a contract meant to ensnare me in the Hampton family affairs for life, I would be among the first of the thousands killed, likely in the front lines of some war.
The prospect of the United States declaring war bothered me even more than the idea a bunch of unsavory politicians intended to kill off twenty percent of the population. Or more.
Who did our government wish to fight? Why?
With the potential of half the country being deemed unfit and put to death or enslaved looming over me, I prepared to investigate alone.
As promised, the campaign sent a van capable of dealing with my wheelchair. The staff, from some service dedicated to handicapped transport, did their jobs with minimal chitchat. Had I been able to convince even Bradley to go along with attending the service, I would’ve enjoyed the trip in the front seat of his new little family car, a comfortable ride with enough trunk space to handle the folded wheelchair without problems.
Not even Mickey had been willing to get involved, meaning I went without wiring my wheelchair. Without his help, the best I could do was record what I could with my phone and hope I didn’t run out of space or battery when filming clips I thought might be important.
One day, I’d forgive them for their refusal to have anything to do with the service. I read between the lines, too.
Anything I learned would be a me problem and not a them problem. Thanks to my days of flying under the radar, I could cope with yet another me problem. I resented how I’d gone from valued to becoming the recipient of a rather cold shoulder, but I would make do.
I always did.
I regarded the boot on my foot with a scowl, the result of yet another surgery to repair the damage from the car crash that had almost killed me and the gunfire that had ended Senator Maybelle’s life. The infection had delayed even more surgeries, a relief despite the pain I battled every waking moment. The van’s driver pulled up to the designated space for the handicapped to be dropped off and left me on the sidewalk before heading off to their next job. I wheeled myself to the entrance, grateful my laboring lungs could handle the work. I appreciated the wait before one of the campaign staff pushed me to my designated space in the front row, where I served as a living reminder of what had happened weeks prior.
As Senator Maybelle’s body had already been buried during a private funeral for family and close friends, flowers and pictures took the place of where her casket would have been placed.
Senator Godrin, no matter how much I loathed him, needed justice, and so did Senator Maybelle. The other victims also deserved justice. It didn’t matter we held different beliefs. It didn’t matter I loathed their intention to regulate, control, and eliminate people like me.
Their lack of personal integrity and morality didn’t justify their murders, not to me.
In the days following Senator Maybelle’s death, I’d learned a bitter truth: few, even among my friends and family, agreed with me.
Two wrongs never made a right, and looking the other way didn’t magically make problems disappear.
I waited, counting the ridiculous number of bouquets decorating the stage, each one with their tag still on it. The organizers allowed people to come up to pay their respects to the senator’s framed photo and unlit candles, although few bit on the bait. Most, like me, took their assigned seat and waited, murmuring to one another.
The skeptical, jaded side of me wondered how much the campaign had charged per ticket to attend the memorial, what goals everyone had in showcasing their grief, and who would become players in the bigger game, one with rules I didn’t understand and wouldn’t until I got closer to solving the mystery of the murders.
No, assassinations.
Too many possibilities lurked at the horizon. The killers could support their cause, martyring them for a better chance of passing the bill through a sympathetic congress. The congress knew the dead—and liked them. The killers could also be against their cause, hoping the bill would head to the grave along with the bodies of the fallen.
I wrinkled my nose at my poor foot, annoyed at its insistence on making a mess of my life. Worse, the damage from the bullet would one day allow me to walk again without enduring agony. As soon as the infection eased and I could undergo one more procedure, I might be able to learn to walk again without my cane, although I’d lug it around when at the library to avoid setbacks.
I wouldn’t be without pain, but I would be able to walk.
Benefiting from the woman’s death bothered me; her campaign’s money paid for my treatments and would for years to come. I still didn’t understand why Bradley’s mother insisted on allowing the campaign to fund my surgeries.
While under the guise of fiddling with my phone, I took pictures of the crowd, wondering if my efforts would offer any clues needed to make some form of progress on identifying and capturing the killers. No, not just on identifying and capturing the killers, but everyone involved with their activities.
Some killers worked alone, but our fledgling investigative cell had found the evidence I needed to understand that even small groups required a lot of support. Maybe four to six people could have done the hit, but it took a lot of money, effort, knowledge, and equipment to successfully assassinate a senator in public and escape without a trace.
Well, mostly without a trace. I’d witnessed a critical error on their part in the form of the illusionist failing to cover the headshot so investigators wouldn’t be able to identify the true cause of death.
Exsanguinators like me could no longer be blamed for a bullet’s work.
Aware Senator Maybelle’s allies likely lurked in the crowd, I researched the news, hoping for pictures or some insight we may have missed. Their shared beliefs bothered me.
Those beliefs made them targets, and while I wanted their bill to die, the idea of letting them be murdered left me with a sour stomach and a headache.
No matter how long or hard I thought about it, I couldn’t understand how my fellow librarians, my fiancé, and everyone else in my life could turn their backs and refuse to view the problem with open eyes instead of closed minds. Perhaps my brush with death had changed me more than I wanted to admit.
Or, perhaps, my willingness to lay down my life for Bradley’s sake had changed me.
The certainty of making the same choice for another, even a politician who wanted to see people like me dead and gone, grew into an insurmountable wall dividing me from my family and friends. They clung to their need to protect me.
I refused to bend, maintaining my need to put others over myself.
To my disgust, the news focused solely on Senator Maybelle’s assassination. Rather than chase after the truth, the media had opted to focus on the good the woman had done for the community, painting her as a martyr who wanted the best for the people. Hints of the bitter truth lurked within the articles, as they focused on the ideal people, the ones who wouldn’t be sent to the front lines should the bill pass without modification.
Old, white men would benefit the most, if they had the right aptitude to pass through the system. Here and there, vague promises offered hope to the lower castes. In the wrong hands, hope became a dangerous weapon, one capable of twisting an entire society into voting for their demise.
In the end, unless something changed, lies and greed would result in the entire downfall of our system, with thousands upon thousands of lives lost in some future war for the sake of purging society of the unwanted elements—unwanted elements like me.
I could almost understand why those lacking power would want to make people like me disappear under the guise of fighting for a good cause. The news articles I read offered no insights on the nature of that future war. Outside of Senator Maybelle’s death, all seemed well on the global stage, with minor hiccups as the United States interfered in the bickering of other nations. None of the conflicts seemed major enough to spark a large-scale war to me, and the actions the United States took part in were sanctioned by the global powers that be.
I could only wonder what would tip the scales and transform questionable peace into a war capable of killing millions.
When I returned to my apartment, I would need to look back at history to better understand the circumstances sparking off the worst of the wars, including the Holocaust, which had cost so many innocent lives. When I framed the bill in the light of the United States preparing to create its own Holocaust, I worried.
I worried, and I feared.
Chairs filled, and the murmur of conversation intensified. I recognized few faces. The old, white men who would benefit most from the insidious bill working its way through the government made up the vast majority of the attendees. Some of them were accompanied by disturbingly young women who dangled off their arms, trophies of the w
orst sort.
I wondered what they hoped to gain from attaching themselves to the chaff of society, those who sought to profit from the demise of their fellow Americans.
An old, white man took the seat next to me, dressed in a suit I suspected cost more than one of my medical bills. While I peeked at him out of the corner of my eye, careful to keep scrolling through the latest news at what appeared to be a slow, thorough reading speed, he stared at me through narrowed, dark eyes.
“You’re the exsanguinator,” he stated, and I admired the neutrality of his tone.
Most couldn’t manage to keep their disgust hidden.
As the man, likely some politician, expected me to give him the attention he was owed and deserved founded solely on his gender and position, I turned off my phone’s display, lifted my head, and met his gaze. “My name is Janette,” I informed him, and I matched his neutral tone. With luck, he would perceive my response as an utter lack of care or concern of who he was.
“The exsanguinator,” he pressed.
I shrugged, and as he couldn’t be bothered to be polite to me, I responded in kind, returning my attention back to my phone, turning on the display, and resuming my perusal of the media’s lackluster offerings.
“Janette Asurella, soon to be wed into the Hampton family,” a sickeningly familiar voice stated from behind me. “You’re picking a poor enemy for yourself, Senator Smithhall.”
A chill ran through me, and I understood how deer trapped in the beams of an oncoming car felt. Nothing in anything I had read about the memorial service had implied the President of the United States would be in attendance. In retrospect, I should have assumed he would show. After all, the woman had been assassinated during her campaign to take his place.