Page 39 of Booked for Kidnapping

“Sure.” He headed over, and he pulled a small water bottle out of his pocket, which he held out.

The lure of having something to drink drew me out of hiding, and I grabbed it, muttered a thanks, and guzzled it down. “Mostly, that spot is just a bunch of rocks, and after sitting on a bunch of rocks, I wasn’t in a hurry to fall on my face.”

“That’s a good and fair enough reason. We’ve got your cane in the car, but you look stable enough.” Bradley’s father stared at my shoes. “You’re not wearing a boot.”

I leaned against the tree, ignored the scrape of the bark, and wiggled off my sneaker to show him my sandy foot and its myriad of scars. “I spent most of the last however many months sedated, I think, with a few respites here and there. But when I finally really woke up, I got a working foot as compensation.”

“And that explains why you didn’t find a way to come home sooner. You couldn’t, not when sedated and under the knife.” Bradley’s father took hold of my ankle and brushed the sand off, poking, prodding, and rubbing at my foot. “Minimal swelling, and everything feels like it’s in place. I feel a few screws, probably a pin or two replacing some missing bone, but that’s much closer to what your foot should feel like.” Once satisfied I had a foot, he put my shoe back on.

“When did you take over my doctor’s job?”

“We all went in for schooling to keep busy while looking for you. As I told my boy I’d drag you back kicking and screaming if needed, you’re getting tossed over my shoulder and delivered.”

I took off my glasses and handed them over. “I’m ready for basic humiliation as long as it means you’ll feed me.”

He took my glasses so I wouldn’t break them. “Honestly, I’m preventing him from grabbing you, swinging you around until you get sick on him, and otherwise making a damned fool of himself.”

“I could hide behind you. That would also prevent the grabbing and being swung around.” Being grabbed and swung around sounded so much better than the various rejections I’d conjured during the wait. “Did he do anything horribly embarrassing when I emailed him?”

“He has a notice set up for your email address, so when your email arrived, his phone told him. Within ten minutes, he’d booked us a flight, then he showed up at my house, dragged me out by my ear, shoved me in my own damned car, and shoved his phone at me to go over your email while he took us to the airport. He didn’t want to leave his car at the airport.”

Bradley never failed to amaze me. “How did his mother handle your kidnapping?”

“He said I would be returned in a day or two, so she’s fine with it. We’ve gotten used to him dragging one of us off if he has found a lead on you. We made him promise he would take one of us with him. He’s trying not to drag Ren all over the planet.”

“Ren thinks I ran away on purpose?” I guessed, bracing for the beginning of my living nightmare.

“No. Why would you think that?”

I pointed at myself. “I’ve done it before?” I frowned and regarded the older man, trying to figure out how my expectations, which involved everyone being angry at me, hadn’t manifested.

“No, you were shot and kidnapped. That is not a foundation for someone to run away. It was clear you’d been shot, and then you were dragged off by someone in a gas mask after they bombed the area. Most have accepted you’d probably gotten killed after you’d been taken, but I’d raised Bradley to be stubborn from his first breath, and he was never the quitting kind. Your parents are quietly holding onto hope for the same reason. The rest are realists and are trying to come up with ways to help Bradley get over your loss.”

“Was that before or after they had a rage-fueled fit over meeting with a senator about a library donation?”

“There was no rage-fueled fit. You met with a donor about a donation, and as there was evidence of the donation going through at the time of the meeting, with an additional donation being made shortly after, it’s generally been accepted you were doing your job for the library. Investigators confirmed Senator Westonhaus had inquired to make a donation for your library, so while everyone was on edge about who you were meeting with, no one could fault you for doing your job. We all underestimated your relentless drive to help people, however.”

“I don’t remember anything about it,” I warned him. “Honestly, I hadn’t even realized I’d been shot until I checked the news in the library. The scar isn’t in a place I usually look.”

“You took a pretty hard knock to the head after you’d gotten hit in the arm. You’d shoved the senator out of the way and took the round, so we think you may have spotted the shooter somehow. You hit him as hard as you could on a lame foot, got shot, and went down in a heap.”

“What did I hit my head against?”

“Asphalt.”

I grimaced. “That sounds like a good reason to have no memory of the incident.”

“You do not have a good track record when it comes to hitting your head against things.” Bradley’s father sighed. “We have your purse, your tablet, and your laptop. Your things had been left on the street or in the senator’s vehicle, and they were given to us shortly after the police audited the scene. It was determined you were only taken due to your interference with the murder attempt. The kidnapping seemed to be fairly haphazard, as it was fairly easy for Senator Westonhaus to be recovered. According to the senator, he was taken to a different vehicle, and he wasn’t sure if you’d survived. There was a great deal of blood, so he was under the impression you’d been shot in the head rather than the arm, thus leading police to abandon the search for you, instead looking for a corpse rather than a living woman.”

I pointed in the general direction of the house I’d been held in. “I was held over there somewhere in a nice family home. Three stories. They used a lot of illusions on where I was held. I was cuffed, but they had some form of guilty conscience, so the cuff was padded.”

“Removed the padding and slipped out of the cuff?”

I nodded.

“Good girl. All right. If you’re going to hide behind me, do so. Lean on me if you want. Get the weight off your foot before I have a heart attack.”

I obeyed, sighing in relief at his warmth, and resting my cheek against his back. “My foot’s fine. As fine as it gets. I walked on it all day, and honestly, I feel like I could walk on it more.”