Page 25 of Booked for Murder

“And you want to yell at me about no safeties?”

“They have a four point safety system to prevent accidental fire. While they have an optional system that has fewer manual safety features, they still have safeties. It won’t stop you from being a complete and total idiot and discharging via the trigger, but if you’re going to be giving me a special trigger safety system that requires my magic to activate, then there will be zero risk of accidental discharge.”

“You’re excessive,” he complained. “Next you’ll tell me you want a Glock. I should give you a Smith & Wesson with a manual safety and the magic safety system just to annoy you.”

I considered the idea of a proper dual-safety system, liking what I heard, as I’d seen a few too many sloppy bodyguards pull the trigger when they didn’t mean to, resulting in a lot of injuries and one death. As doing investigative work sounded a lot safer than being anybody’s bodyguard, I asked, “How many shooters per investigator cell?”

While I’d been aware private investigators did band together into small groups the government dubbed cells, I’d never bothered to look into them beyond an awareness of their existence.

Investigators tended to leave Bradley alone, as it was very difficult to get any sort of dirt on the man—or it had been when I’d worked for him.

I’d been part of the reason why.

“You can only have one licensed shooter on the cell. The qualification process will annoy you.”

The entire job would annoy me. “Bring lunch with coffee, and I will consider your bribe of a firearm as sufficient reason to listen to the rest of what you have to say.”

“You’re going to take me for everything I’m worth, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely,” I replied.

“I tried to warn you,” Beatrice said, and she relaxed on my couch. “But if I’m going to be stuck here, lunch would be nice.”

“You two are going to make my own bodyguard want to kill me,” he complained.

I stared at him, as he’d made me consider killing him multiple times every day.

Beatrice cackled. “Your expression, Janette! What did you do to her, Mr. Hampton?”

“Bradley, please. And I annoyed her. Annoying her is one of my joys in life.”

“Then you must have been the happiest of men,” I muttered in my wryest tone.

“That I am. So, lunch and coffee. Is there anything else I can get for you ladies?”

I shook my head, and Bradley set Ajani’s brush on the coffee table before excusing himself to go on his quest for coffee and lunch. If I kept quiet, Beatrice would make sure I talked, so I said, “Just say it.”

“He’s hot.”

Of all the things she could say, she opted to comment on his unfairly attractive appearance? “While you’re not wrong, that’s what you picked?”

“How far would you have sprayed the senator’s blood had you been his killer?”

As that was closer to what I expected, I replied, “Six stories.”

“Damn. And you picked to be a librarian? But why?”

“I wanted to.”

“Every time I talk to you, you find some way to surprise me. What do you think he really wants with us, Janette?”

“Well, that’s simple enough. He was friends with Senator Godrin, and he abhors injustice. He wants precisely what he says he wants. He wants someone to find out who killed his friend, and for whatever reason, he doesn’t believe the official channels will do what he needs. And he needs the truth. So, I’m a known entity. You have connections within the library, which means you have connections to the other senators and politicians. It’d be trivial for you to drop a comment here or there to one of them and possibly get them to talk. Bradley is a very logical man, and he is not an impulsive man. Well, usually. I haven’t done any real research into investigative cells, registering to make one, or anything like that, so as soon as we ditch him, that’ll be our first job. I do recall that it’s possible to seal who is part of a cell, which was really annoying for some of the less ethical adepts, as they couldn’t just look up registrations to know who to avoid.”

“You showing up wasn’t in his plans.” Beatrice glanced at the door, waited to make sure Bradley didn’t sweep back in, and said, “I am getting the feeling you surfacing has changed his plans, and this shindig was an unscheduled addition.”

I nodded, unable to argue with her. “I’m sorry you were dragged into this.”

“I suspect I would’ve been dragged into it regardless. I do have those connections he wants to take advantage of. I deal with the library donors daily, and many senators do donate because they use our buildings for their business—and not all of their business is legitimate. I’ll want to go over just how you hid your real rating and falsified your identification, however. Mostly so I can be on guard against it in the future.”