by R. J. Blain
That got my attention. “Test drive?”
“My future wife obviously needs a car, one that is hers and hers alone. But until she’s able to face difficult things she does not like, it’s probably not safe to set her loose in a dealership to meet her next new car love.”
Bradley Hampton did not pull his punches. “You fiend.”
“Dad will be with us, so it’s not like we’ll be alone. We’re just going to drive by them unless we need to go crawl through some bushes for some reason.” Bradley smirked at me. “And I have a very extensive list of things I plan to do to my future wife upon our return from said trip.”
“I feel like the therapists have gotten to you. I haven’t even met the therapists, but I feel they are ruthlessly using you as part of some treatment plan. But you have the goods, and you’re not afraid to bar me from enjoying the goods.”
“We’ll both be armed, so it’s fine. We have our licenses, and we have approval to carry in California. The cell licensing comes with a fancy badge we get to show the cops. It tells them we’re allowed to carry our guns around. You can even carry your gun in your purse.”
The gun in question waited for me on the desk, and I read between the lines, got up, grabbed the gun cleaning kit, and went to work on doing a full check of my firearm. “I thought the cells only let us investigate things, not override state laws regarding firearms.”
“That was changed after you were kidnapped. We got the approval because we have demonstrated we have at-risk members in our cell. I think the FBI is really hoping our cell works out, because then we can augment their forces. Just go on a car ride to have a look, and then I’ll sacrifice my wallet to your car shopping ways. Any car you want, and it’s yours. We’ll even tag-team drive it back across the United States if you’d like. We can get back to New York in a few days rather than fly if we take turns driving.”
With that level of bribe on the table, I foresaw an uncomfortable few hours of looking for the last place I wanted to visit. “Chinese food. Spicy Chinese food.”
“It won’t be the same as what we get at home, but we can go look for Chinese tonight as a reward for doing something unpleasant, time allowing.”
“That better not be you saying I have to choose between Chinese food and you naked in bed,” I grumbled.
“You don’t have to choose,” he promised. “Can I text Dad that you’re ready to deal with our tyranny?”
“Fine, but if I cry, it’s your fault.”
“If you cry, I’ll give you tissues and offer my shoulder. It’s okay to be stressed and upset over having lost months of your life. I would probably be crying in your shoes, too. It’s a lot to miss. And there’s no getting any of it back.”
I appreciated he hadn’t tried to pretend otherwise. “I hate it.”
“Me, too. We lost a lot of time. I thought about cuffing us together, but I was told that would be a really bad idea.”
“Why?”
“It seems that a woman who was chained in some strange house is not to be subjected to any restraints of her person.”
I frowned, as I could think of many wonderful things we could do with a pair of handcuffs and a few hours. “There is a difference between unwilling restraining and willing restraining, and I’m not seeing me saying no to being cuffed while you cater to me. You’re good at that. Your magic is far more potent than I anticipated. I do not understand why you are an only child. After about ten minutes, my common sense flies right out a window, so it’s a good thing you’re the one in charge of the condoms.” If the condoms became my responsibility, I’d be investing in pregnancy tests every month. “You need a warning label, and I need to get a ring on your finger so all other women know you’re mine.”
“Now that I have some first-hand experience of what my father can do, I don’t understand, either. As we’re getting married, rings seems like a reasonable investment. If wearing a ring that states I’m yours makes you happy, we can go get engagement rings.”
“You might talk me into getting into a vehicle with you to look at these houses if we’re also looking for rings in the same trip. I am not brave enough to ask why you’re an only child. You were probably some form of demon infant. I can even accept we might not get to look at cars if we’re getting rings instead.”
“I think my parents don’t like helpless humans they’re responsible for. Honestly, I don’t actually know if my parents actually wanted kids. It was expected of them. While I’m a loved child, they prefer their humans capable of talking back. That takes a few years of careful training. They’d rather skip the first years, I think?”
I gasped. “No!”
“Well, you do like babies. Right?” Bradley’s tone implied he knew damned well how much I loved having little babies around, but he meant to make me say it.
As lying wouldn’t do me a lick of good, I bobbed my head. “My mother told you I do. I love when patrons bring the babies to the library. Everybody will often toss me to the infant wolves, as I can keep them happy most of the time while the parent—or parents—do what they need in the library. Once, I got to limp around the library with a baby in a sling, and it was amazing. She was such a good little girl. Mr. Tawnlen often lets me help when we do programs for children. We don’t have a lot of that in our specific branch, since we usually cater to the politicians and have a more specialized stock, but we have a corner for kids, especially since we will get single parents who are job hunting. On those days, Meridian helps the parent while I keep an eye on the kids.”
“When you’re ready to have kids, simply take our stash of condoms and toss them into the garbage can. That is my cue to get to work.” Bradley snickered. “And I might even be extra generous and get some form of restraint just to celebrate my conquering of your person.”
“Hey! Why is it you’ll be conquering me?”
“We can take turns if you’d like.”
I checked my firearm, put her back together, slid her into her holster unloaded, put a prepped magazine in one of the inner pockets, and gathered everything I would need for a day out of the hotel room. Then, to make it clear we were leaving, I got changed, put on my shoes, and stood at the door to wait.
Laughing, Bradley put on a suit and fiddled with his tie while shooting sly smiles in my direction before he texted his father to notify him of my surrender. Five minutes later, Mr. Hampton knocked on the door. I let him in. “Bradley’s being mean.”
“Figured out how to get you on the move, did he?”
“Rudely. He did so rudely. And then he added some bribes, and it turns out when he’s rude and bribing me, I’m weak.”
Bradley’s father chuckled. “You’ll be fine. With luck, we won’t need to get out of the car. What’s the plan, son?”
“We’re going to drive through the entire neighborhood while Janette checks out the houses and the yards. I suspect the illusionist targeted her with magic, so it’ll look one way for us but entirely different for her, so I’ll ask her what she sees every house until we figure out where she was held. We’ll record the location on our phones, take some pictures, and then go about the rest of our day.”
“What else is on the agenda?”
“We’re going to a jewelry store. She seems to have an impression I’m being hunted by women and wants to establish that I’m her territory. After the jewelry store, if there’s time, we’ll hit up some car dealerships so she can look around.”
“You are her territory.”
“You know that, I know that, but while she knows that, she’s a little jealous.”
“A little?” Bradley’s father laughed. “If rings are what you want, rings are what you’ll have. If I let you two into a car dealership, you’ll have meltdowns. I have a test you must pass before either of you purchase anything other than family cars. I’ll make some calls. But you won’t be getting near any sports cars until I’m sure you won’t crash it having an episode. That goes for both of you.”
Damn. Bradley had obviously lear
ned how to be domineering from his father. “I surrender. Again.”
“Good girl,” his father praised. “Do you have everything you need in your purse?”
I read between the lines, although I wasn’t sure if he meant my firearm or the ridiculous variety of birth controls that’d been left for us. “I have everything important in my purse.”
“Your gun, Bradley?”
“I’ll carry mine in its case. She has hers in her purse.”
“Good. Hurry on up, then. I want an address so we can start pulling our own weight. The others are investigating without us, and I’m feeling outclassed. Of course, now that we know more, it’s easier to investigate. Mickey’s gotten some good leads about the various men and women who could have pulled off the operation, and it’s interesting.”
“Interesting how?” I asked.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Bradley’s father promised.
Within an hour of searching for where I’d been held, I understood what Bradley meant about the illusionist having targeted me.
The house didn’t exist, not in the way I remembered. The woods dividing the properties and leading towards the ocean was real, and without magic twisting my sight, I got my first real look at what had been my world. Instead of a three-storied house, I’d been held in a sprawling Mission-style manor. The window I’d escaped from hadn’t been a window at all, but a patio door leading to a rose garden and a path leading to the woods, where someone had set up a table with chairs to enjoy the shade.
I pointed at the home with its neighboring woods with their odd trees, at least odd compared to the more common palms and coastal scrub. “That’s the place. I remember those trees.”
“That’s some pretty damned impressive mental manipulations, Dad. That’s not a brick and stone house. They flat-out erased her ability to perceive anything outside of what they wanted her to perceive.”
Mr. Hampton grunted and kept driving while Bradley snapped pictures of the place with his phone. “She probably wasn’t even kept in a spare room, she might not have even been chained at all, and it’s even likely she was treated well and let loose when her depression became more than they could readily cope with. The books were probably real, and they would have kept her somewhere comfortable while she read, and the illusionist—possibly some other talent—would have overrode any of her natural inclinations. The operation wouldn’t have been covered under much of an illusion, because it would have been too dangerous. They would have needed to be able to monitor her health, so they would have only done minor illusions to trick her into cooperating. The trauma would have done most of the work, since Janette’s already known to suffer from trauma-induced amnesia. That’s Mickey’s theory at any rate. And since the illusionist was overriding her perceptions and taking control that way, I won’t be able to get any information from her even if I tried.”
“How did you get such a clear reading on the operation, then?” I asked, a little annoyed over Bradley’s father talking about me like I wasn’t there.
“It’s the same reason I can’t really read you when you are in a calmer environment. Unlike Bradley, who is predominantly attuned to positive feelings and emotions, my talent shines on the other end of the spectrum. I can identify major sources of trauma and get readings from them. I don’t quite get a front-seat view, but it’s close enough. Think of my ability like having a surround camera or snapshot of what was going on at the time of a traumatic event. I can peek into what happened there. Bradley can, too. He really shines at reading inorganic objects, since he has a better view of them than I do. But his organic reading is rather useless unless you happen to be his future wife, in which case, I think you will find his abilities much to your liking. He can get organic readings like I can, but his general nature and inclinations makes it far more traumatic for him.”
No kidding. “That is the understatement of the year, Mr. Hampton.”
“He’s just too sensitive, and he gets emotional feedback. I don’t get the same emotional feedback he does. So, I can view what happened to you rather like watching a movie, where Bradley experiences it more as feelings to go along with the movie. If he had tried to read that operation, he would have ended up screaming or crying.”
I grimaced. “He can get feedback like that?”
“He has to deliberately make the attempt, and he knows better than to try to peek on traumatic events unless absolutely necessary. That’s why he tends to stick to inorganic objects. The feedback is limited.”
“I hadn’t realized that was how it worked,” I admitted.
“He thinks of it like a dirty little secret,” Bradley’s father admitted with amusement in his tone. “It’s also part of why he pushed so hard for your contract. He knew you were interested in him from the start, and he’s always been interested in you. He’s just a little shit who isn’t good at leaving the nest without a swift and hard kick to the ass.”
“I didn’t want to scare you off,” Bradley stated, and he glared at his father, leaned back in his seat, and crossed his arms. “If you scare her off, I’m not going to forgive you.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”
I snorted. “That’s not going to be a problem.” I doubted I’d be willing to let him leave my sight, outside of going to the bathroom on his own, anytime soon. “Can I leash him?”
“I don’t care what you do to him as long as you bring his still-living body home for visits.”
Yep. Bradley was a loved child. “I have a question.”
“What is it?”
“Why did you only have Bradley?”
Bradley’s father sighed. “There were complications with his delivery, and we were advised to avoid having future children. As I love my wife as much as I do my son, we took that seriously. I had a vasectomy a few weeks after his birth, and she underwent treatments herself. After she finished breastfeeding him, she had a partial hysterectomy to make certain there would be no risk of pregnancy. We were told in no uncertain terms a second pregnancy would likely become lethal for her and the baby. So, we plan to adopt again now that Jez is heading out the door with her attorney. We’re thinking we’ll pick up some siblings this go around, as we survived having two children under the same roof with only minimal struggle and loss of sanity. We think we’re practiced enough now to handle the mayhem.”
Oh. My eyes widened, aware I counted as the most troublesome of any children in their lives. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. You haven’t done anything wrong. The only reason we didn’t tell you was because you hadn’t asked. But, you’ll both get a rather thorough lecture on what to look out for should you decide to have children. And if you’re thinking anything self-deprecating, you’re Bradley’s perfect woman, and while you are trouble, you’re treasured trouble.”
Damn, Bradley’s father didn’t pull his punches. “I’ll try to be less trouble moving forward.”
“That’s all we could ever ask of you, although we all know you were born trouble. May you have several just like you.”
“With how we look at babies?” Bradley chuckled. “And I’m nowhere near as bad as Janette.”
“Oh, you’re bad,” Mr. Hampton muttered. “Especially around baby animals. Baby humans? You sigh. Dramatically.”
“He does not!” I eyed Bradley with interest. “Do you?”
“I might be guilty of such a thing.” Bradley shrugged. “I’m my father’s son.”
“I, too, am guilty about sighing dramatically around babies of any species. His mother is, too. Although honestly, our sighs are a bit more regretful in nature, as we probably would have had one every other year had things been different. But we’ll have to be careful about how we adopt moving forward, especially if that bill continues moving forward. Now that we’ve detoured from what’s really bothering Janette, let’s get back on subject. Yes, Janette. I was aware it was entirely possible everything you experienced in the past nine months is essentially a lie. The opera
tion was traumatic, and I’ve already informed the doctors and therapists—and the FBI investigators I’ve been dealing with—that we will not be even considering attempting to break through whatever the illusionist did to you. It has too much risk of long-term psychological damage, more than you’re already facing.”
Well, shit. “You’ve been talking with the FBI?”
“I may have done a rather full reading when I checked your foot up to the operation. I was able to verify that you had your memories overwritten and suffer from trauma-based amnesia. Dr. Mansfield has verified your medical situation as well. There’s no point in questioning you because the entirety of your testimony is essentially compromised. You can’t tell them what happened because the evidence has been sealed or removed from your memories. With the evidence of trauma, interviewing you beyond what we’ve already done would be considered cruel and unusual punishment. They try not to do more damage to the victims than necessary. You’ll be interviewed, but it will be to have someone verify you’re speaking the truth. I’ve been verified as speaking the truth, so you’ll be questioned for maybe ten minutes and you’re done.”
“That’s it?” I blurted.
“Your testimony can’t be used in court because you’ve had your memories overwritten or erased. There are no three-storied houses anywhere here, not within walking distance of the beach. Dr. Mansfield estimated your max range, in your current health, was no more than four or five miles.”
“How many miles are we from the beach?”
“Two by the most direct route, and there are walking paths through the trees to reach the park. I suspect you were escorted to the beach and monitored from a distance. After putting that much work in on making certain you were physically healthy? Your kidnappers would not have taken risks getting you back to civilization. Once you were near the library, they probably released whatever hold they had on you so you could behave normally, although it’s likely they implanted a suggestion to request help from a trusted party. I would have presumed your parents, but I won’t lie, it was rather pleasing to see you went straight to Bradley.”