Booked for Kidnapping (Vigilante Magical Librarians Book 2)

by R. J. Blain

  I frowned, eyeing the pile of cards before raising a brow at Bradley. “Why?”

  “They’re stupid.”

  Right. Bradley’s dislike of politicians grew each day, not that I could blame him for it.

  The more we learned, the less I liked most politicians, too.

  “I don’t get it. Shouldn’t they ask me if I want to be bribed before bribing me?”

  “It’ll be in the guise of gifts thanking you for your patriotism and service, given in the hopes you might side with them later,” he informed me.

  Before I could ask if all politicians were insane, someone knocked at the door. After a brief juggle of bags, Bradley returned armed with our lunch. “I asked them to avoid dairy,” he admitted. “And I will use the fake butter stuff I don’t like as much as I do real butter, as long as you ignore me sprinkling on some extra salt to make it taste a little better.”

  “I think I can handle ignoring your salt habit to prevent any additional cataclysms from happening in my apartment today. Cleaning my foot was all the drama we need for one day.”

  “I think your tango with politicians was all the drama we needed for one day,” he muttered before sorting through the excessive amount of food he’d ordered and setting two boxes on the coffee table in front of me. “I got you ribs, chicken, and burnt ends. There’s enough cornbread to feed an entire country, and I am joining you in creating a mound of bones, licked clean of flesh.”

  “Going to gnaw out your frustrations today?”

  “Absolutely, eating food my mother disapproves of because she can’t eat it. The only vegetable here is the cornbread,” he announced with a great deal of pride in his voice.

  “Isn’t corn a grain?”

  Bradley shrugged. “I don’t know, nor do I care. Let’s indulge in an act of gluttony so severe we end up passed out on your couch. When we recover, we’ll work on organizing ourselves and laying this idiotic internal feuding to rest.”

  THREE

  Did you miss me?

  Bradley had ordered enough for five people, and we managed to shovel every bite into our stomachs, resulting in the predicted nap. Unfortunately for us, he wasn’t the only person with a copy of my apartment key, and I disapproved of the invasion of people taking up every inch of available space. Ajani ruled with an iron paw, and she’d suckered Bradley’s parents, my parents, and the cell into two cans of her food. She also worked her furry charms on Meridian, who worked the brush through her fur.

  Somehow, I’d slept through their chatter, as had Bradley.

  The evidence of our barbecue bender had vanished, something I would appreciate once I regained full coherency. “Did you miss me?”

  “No,” everyone replied.

  I snorted, as their immediate response informed me they’d planned on me asking some variant of that question. “I was not defeated, beaten, or even accosted by politicians. One did annoy me, but I was spared having to deal with him due to the intervention of a kindred spirit with a strong dislike of the creep. Despite your status as insufferable busybodies, I took pictures and general footage of the event.”

  Bradley cracked open an eye and said, “She got to meet with the President of the United States, and the creep was Representative Kennedys. We need to look into Senator Hanson, who seems to be at odds with our favorite representative.”

  Most of our friends and family snorted, and the chorused sound reminded me of a bunch of angry cows letting the world know they meant business. “I got a bunch of cards, but I haven’t looked through them yet.”

  Bradley’s mother glared at the pile. “We’d noticed them, but none of us are rude enough to shuffle through your mail without your consent, so we’re being eaten alive from curiosity. Once we saw what you two had for lunch, we were also eaten alive from general jealousy. I’m thinking you two planned this so you could gorge on barbecue without us.”

  If Bradley’s mother wanted to dodge the core of our problems through humor, I’d play along. “Yes, I absolutely suffered through meeting politicians so I could eat a lot of barbecue.”

  “I can’t help but notice my son doesn’t seem to be dying from dairy intake.”

  “He did the mature and responsible thing, using that crap alternative he pretends he doesn’t hate,” I reported. “Apparently, he does comprehend dairy is really bad for him. Honestly, I’m surprised the cornbread didn’t include any dairy. Does cornbread usually contain dairy?”

  “When it doesn’t contain cheese, it can be made without dairy,” Bradley’s mother replied, shaking her head. “I should be grateful he showed some restraint, except we found you both passed out after having eaten how much food?”

  “She packed away an entire rack of ribs.” Bradley grinned at me. “And she beat me on the cornbread, but only because she’s faster than I am and stole the last two pieces.”

  To dodge the insanity, I grabbed the envelope filled with cards from the politicians, going to work to open each one and read. As warned, the first ten contained bribes in the form of gift cards, ranging from clothing boutiques, jewelers, and restaurants. Of those ten, two included phone numbers with an invitation to call. The eleventh invited me to dinner, and to my shock, I recognized the name on the card.

  Senator Westonhaus wanted to talk, and I couldn’t imagine why. Like the others, he’d included a gift card, although he’d done a better job of anticipating the special reading needs of a librarian, picking a bookstore within reasonable distance of my apartment. He also made a point of congratulating me on my engagement with Bradley.

  I treated his card like all of the others, and on second thought, I dug my new phone out of my bag and input all the numbers I’d been given to hide that I’d received an invitation from one of the men we expected to be assassinated.

  The memorial service had stressed everyone out enough.

  A dinner meeting with a potential target would drive them up a wall and make certain they’d do everything in their power to prevent me from going. After everyone left, I would give the senator a call, and I’d selfishly use the library renovations as a good reason to meet with him.

  Nobody would think twice about me talking with a potential donor, and it would make certain nobody tagged along.

  I added the gift card to the pile, put the card back in its envelope, and resumed checking through the envelopes. Everyone offered some bribe or another, with the sensible people giving me excuses to go to the bookstore. One would forever earn the love and appreciation of Ajani, offering my fluffy goddess a shopping spree.

  “You were right, Bradley. I’m being bribed. My cat is also being bribed.” I showed him the card for the pet store. “A better person would refuse all of these gift cards, but I am not a better person, and I fully intend to enjoy every moment spent indulging on their dime. That said, the gift card for the jeweler terrifies me. There isn’t an amount listed.”

  Most of the cards didn’t have an amount listed.

  Bradley’s mother swooped in, snagged the card in question, and whipped out her phone. Then, after a moment of reflection, she snatched all my gift cards, stole a pad of paper and a pen, and ran away to my bedroom.

  I should have known better.

  Bradley’s mother enjoyed fixing problems as much as she enjoyed creating them.

  “Good going, Janette,” my fiancé stated, and he grinned at me. “In your shoes, I wouldn’t be turning down those gift cards, either. How many phone numbers did you get?”

  “About half of them felt I might want to discuss my status as a true American hero, apparently.” I rolled my eyes. “One wants to talk about a donation to the library, so I’m going to call that one.” Senator Westonhaus would learn about his new interest in donating to the library soon enough, so I didn’t feel I lied. “I’ll probably return all calls just to be polite, but the only ones getting the time of day beyond that will be those wise enough to donate to the library.”

  My boss laughed. “You have my blessing to take these politicians for all th
ey’re worth for the library’s sake. Feel free to solicit for donations while you’re at it. They might as well use their money on something good for a change.”

  Mr. Tawnlen made no effort to hide his opinion on how some public servants existed to earn money while others, librarians included, struggled to get by.

  “I’ll sing about the renovations to our building, and I’ll try to guilt them into doing the right thing,” I promised.

  “Good. Did you see anything unusual while at the service?”

  “The President and a bunch of politicians,” I reported. “It was terrifying. Absolutely life-threatening. I was concerned they might talk me to death.”

  Bradley snickered, yawned, and stretched out. “If we’d been thinking, we would have realized the President would attend, which would make it a pretty safe place.”

  “They didn’t give me a whole lot of scrutiny,” I complained. “For an event hosting the President, they should have at least looked in my bag. I could have been armed!”

  Everyone stared at me, and Bradley engaged me in a staring contest, which he won after several minutes. Huffing, I reached for a spare brush and tried to lure my fluffy goddess away from Meridian.

  My fluffy goddess ignored my overtures.

  Damned cat.

  “Janette, why would they care if you were armed?” my mother asked, and I could feel her gaze boring into me.

  “I’m just as good of a shot as I am an exsanguinator. I could have done a very good job of shooting people, thank you very much.”

  Everyone snorted at me, with Bradley snorting the hardest and loudest. Then, he said, “Anyone who knows you also knows you wouldn’t shoot or exsanguinate anyone without a damned good reason, and the security people probably viewed you as extra protection for the service.”

  “You’re biased.”

  “I’m supposed to be biased in your favor.”

  At some point, roughly five minutes after we’d signed the five-year marriage license to start the process of our engagement, he’d opted to ignore why we’d signed the papers, embracing the sentimental reasons for a marriage rather than the practical, legal reasons. I’d betrayed myself to his magic more times than I cared to think about, which gave him all the foundation he needed to work on the sentiments rather than the legalities.

  I could handle the legalities.

  The sentiments would test me in every way possible.

  “I came away with a better idea of some of the political rivalries, which might be useful. People from both sides of the aisle attended, although I suspect there were absences, at least judging from the fact that they sent one senator to give me all of those cards. Wouldn’t a bunch of politicians want to claim the glory for themselves?”

  “The service was invitation only,” Bradley replied. “Not everyone was invited. Now, what interests me is that the campaign invited those who weren’t Senator Maybelle’s staunch allies. We’ll have to go through your pictures to see who attended, though. The campaign didn’t make the guest list public, although your name was dropped as someone paying respects. That was probably a media stunt.”

  According to Bradley’s expression, there was nothing he loathed more than media stunts.

  “At least someone is making exsanguinators look good for a change. While I don’t like the someone being me, I’ll take a few hits for the team. We usually get treated like we’re plagued.” I shot a glare at Bradley. “And not a word from you.”

  My mother snickered. “I see you have learned he does not have pure intentions.”

  I kept glaring at Bradley, well aware he could snitch about my less-than-pure intentions.

  He smirked, but he otherwise settled with a shrug.

  “Our first mistake was not taking advantage of the opportunity we were given,” my boss announced. “While I understand why we were all against taking advantage of the opportunity, we need to remember she’s not someone with a middling talent who can’t take care of herself or others. We could have lost good information, including a better understanding of the existing political rivalries.”

  My co-workers either sighed, grimaced, or scowled. I understood why Beatrice scowled. When we weren’t bickering, she took defending me to extremes. Mickey grimaced since Mickey disliked conflict almost as much as he couldn’t tolerate the sight of blood. Most of the others went the sighing route, as they understood Mr. Tawnlen wouldn’t rest until certain the issue wouldn’t come up again soon.

  I expected somebody to make a fuss the instant trouble came calling again. As accepting a dinner meeting with one of the potential targets counted, I would hold the truth close to my chest until after the dinner, armed with the intel required to make progress on finding the murderers.

  Until then, we’d have to continue flying blind until one of us discovered the important little detail that would help us piece the rest of the mystery together.

  As usual, we needed to start at the very beginning. “We know Representative Kennedys began this with the introduction of the original bill. We all agree it’s a human rights nightmare. The refined version, introduced by a collection of senators, some of whom have already been murdered, is no better. The writers of the second bill all have abilities, wealth, or other criteria exempting them from being drafted—and their children are safeguarded from their bill. Correct?”

  “Correct,” my boss replied. “What we don’t know is who unofficially supported the bill, working on it without having their names on the documentation. A lot of bills that make their way through legislation end up having additional support in the background from those who want to see it pass but don’t have the time or willingness to be a public sponsor. I think that’s where we really need to start. Who supports this bill? Who is against the bill? Motive matters, and we have reasons for both sides to want these senators to disappear. Also, from my time watching politicians at our branch, it’s also possible someone is taking advantage of the situation to draw attention away from something else. The killings have drawn a great deal of attention.”

  No kidding, and to my dismay, an unfortunate amount of the attention was landing on me. “There’s also speculation they were attempting to pin the murder on me, but they hadn’t followed my movements or methods closely enough, operating outside of my general abilities. The first murder happened shortly after the crash.”

  Somehow, I’d gotten to the point I could talk about the accident that had almost claimed my life—and the one that had left Bradley incapable of handling beeping machinery when attached to me.

  “And you were still in the hospital for the second,” Bradley added. “Even after you were recovering out of the hospital, there’s a mountain of evidence confirming you were incapable of committing any of the murders. There’s a mountain of evidence showing you only had been able to do as you’d done for the other victims because you’d been contaminated with Senator Maybelle’s blood.”

  The drug in the senator’s system bothered me. “Mr. Tawnlen, do we have any chance of being able to find out if the other senators were also on that drug? That drug bothers me,” I confessed. “If they have to be of a certain talent rating to dodge the draft, is it possible the use of this drug is connected to their murder? As in they weren’t killed because of the bill but rather due to their involvement with that sort of narcotic?”

  “Now that we’ve gotten authorization to work as a cell, I might be able to get a copy of the autopsy reports. I don’t know if they did any toxicology reports, although a good coroner would under the circumstances. I’ll do what I can, but expect that to take a few weeks. It’ll take a lot of digging around and paperwork to get the authorization, and it depends on if the family has taken steps to bar the public from having access to those records.”

  Organizing data was something I could do, and I relaxed at having a job that made sense to me and fit nicely into my skill set. “So, I guess that’s our next real step. We try to get as much information about the killings as we can, gathered and organized in a
sensible fashion. We should go back through all of the recordings from the killings and draw up a report going through everything step by step. Then we want to go back at least six months before the first killing, tracking down as much information as we can on who might want to kill these people and why.”

  “Murky waters,” Beatrice muttered. “Murky political waters.”

  No kidding. “Trust me, it’s better to read about politicians than it is to have to get up close and personal with them.” I hesitated at admitting I’d met one of the targets at the service, but I decided as he hadn’t been one of the people to send a card, it would be safe enough. “I had an unfortunate brush with Senator Smithhall, and he hates exsanguinators almost as much as I loathe and abhor having to use a wheelchair.”

  Bradley raised a brow. “You had neglected to mention Smithhall.”

  “The President rescued me from having to actually talk to him, and honestly, at that point, I was pretty freaked out I had to talk to the President.”

  My parents exchanged glances, as did my co-workers. After everyone got their fill of sending silent messages, they focused on Bradley.

  I wanted to know what the hell had them all joining forces against Bradley without having to say a single word.

  Bradley sighed. “I didn’t do anything nefarious.”

  “You could have called and told us she’d made it home rather than falling asleep on her couch after going on a bender,” Beatrice complained.

  I gave up trying to understand my friends and family. “Mom, please hand me my cane. I’m going to go to the bathroom, and by the time I’m back, I want you all to be sane again.”

  While my mother fetched my cane and handed it to me, she shook her head at my request. “My sweet summer child, you can’t restore what they never had.”

  Wow. My mother had taken aim at the entire cell, and I’d missed what had spurred her into joining in the snarky commentary and attempting to take over the world. “Dad? What did you do to my mom?”