Page 1 of Booked for Kidnapping

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.

But no, the whole lot of them had become my match in stubborn pride, refusing to take any chances when the best place to get information would be ground zero, the senator’s memorial.

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.