Page 50 of Booked for Theft

“Ah, but we’re just chasing wishes and dreams, Janette. Everyone who knows us is fully confident the last thing we would ever actually consider doing is make a run for office. For me to be your vice president? The thought is so absurd nobody is going to take it seriously.”

Life had gone sideways on me again, and I needed at least a few weeks to come to terms with everything—weeks I didn’t have. “Except for the literal millions of people we’re hoping will write our names into the ballot.”

“But if we aren’t doing anything to promote ourselves or run a campaign, then it’s the will of the universe versus any deliberate actions on our part,” he pointed out, and he returned all the newspaper scraps so I could add them to my pile of things to hide. “You check all the books for more scraps while I go through the photocopies and pictures to see if I can find anything particularly relevant. Senator Thaddens has given us a gift from the grave, one that is beyond priceless. We now have the key to the historic timeline. All we can do is hope that one of his videos he left for us indicates why he felt we needed to know. And more importantly, is Emma a hapless messenger or involved? Senator Thaddens could have put this whole thing together the night before his death when he was updating his will to make certain you received the books. And he likely knew the government would target him for attempting to defy their plan for the future.” Bradley got up and left the room, and he returned a few minutes later with envelopes, paper, and pens. “In any case, I don’t think we should involve Emma with any of our plans, in or out of the cell. She will be facing enough grief. If she needs a purpose, we’ll find one for her. It’s safer for us all this way.”

I nodded my agreement.

I wanted to trust the woman, but when we battled a government with endless wealth and ruthless inclinations, we couldn’t afford to trust anyone. If Bradley and I fell, we would fall together, leaving behind our family and friends in the dark, safe from our schemes.

We would involve them in cell matters, which would help our cause.

The rest would be our burden to bear.

“And if we go down, we go down together,” I told him.

He sighed. “Honestly, and I hate myself for saying this, but if it gets to the point where only one of us can get out, one of us should get out. Living to fight another day is important, even if it means only one of us survives. But I will insist on this much: if at all possible, we both take that cruise in October, even if it becomes apparent you might end up a resident of the White House. The days leading up to the election will be the most dangerous, and the people can’t vote for a corpse—or corpses. We both need to survive if this is to work.”

Right. The voters needed to elect us both, and we’d have to use the government’s rules against them in order to chart a new course for our country. “Right. And we also need to make certain the cell is working on the stuff the government wants us to be working on so we at least appear to be playing their game, all without a bunch of nosy librarians clueing in that things are not as they appear.” I groaned and bowed my head. “I feel like this is impossible. I should have stopped to think about this. This is insanity.”

“If you want a changed government for Christmas, you’re going to have to give it to yourself as a present, and that means playing the game. How are we going to play this game? That I’m not sure yet. But if we don’t, who will?”

I wondered how many times someone had said such a thing only to fail in the face of impossible odds and a ruthless government determined to keep its power. If Bradley was correct about the year, the government had been working on mastering its tyranny for over four hundred years, keeping us all in a holding pattern in order to maintain the society it ruled.

“How old is your antique laptop, Bradley?”

“It’s fifty years old,” he admitted. “This is part of why I think a lot of what we’re speculating might be true. Over the course of fifty years, the components for these laptops shouldn’t be readily available. But they are. They’re very similar to what is in my main laptop. The only difference is the motherboard, which has options for no wireless chips whatsoever. There’s a port for it to be plugged into a router with a cable, but that’s it. And there are even modern models that are easy enough to disable the wireless on. This is a throwback to hundreds of years ago. Tech truly hasn’t changed much at all. The only thing that has changed? The names of what we’re using, all so we are trapped in an illusion.”

“And it’s not even a magical one,” I muttered.

“It’s not,” he confirmed. “I vote we put everything away, give ourselves a break, and return to this tomorrow. At least tomorrow, there is a high probability of kittens underfoot to make the work a little more pleasant. It’ll still be painful, but at least we’ll have kittens.”

“That’s something, and at this stage, beggars can’t be choosers, so I’ll take it.”