Page 13 of Booked for Kidnapping

Everyone stared at me, and Bradley engaged me in a staring contest, which he won after several minutes. Huffing, I reached for a spare brush and tried to lure my fluffy goddess away from Meridian.

My fluffy goddess ignored my overtures.

Damned cat.

“Janette, why would they care if you were armed?” my mother asked, and I could feel her gaze boring into me.

“I’m just as good of a shot as I am an exsanguinator. I could have done a very good job of shooting people, thank you very much.”

Everyone snorted at me, with Bradley snorting the hardest and loudest. Then, he said, “Anyone who knows you also knows you wouldn’t shoot or exsanguinate anyone without a damned good reason, and the security people probably viewed you as extra protection for the service.”

“You’re biased.”

“I’m supposed to be biased in your favor.”

At some point, roughly five minutes after we’d signed the five-year marriage license to start the process of our engagement, he’d opted to ignore why we’d signed the papers, embracing the sentimental reasons for a marriage rather than the practical, legal reasons. I’d betrayed myself to his magic more times than I cared to think about, which gave him all the foundation he needed to work on the sentiments rather than the legalities.

I could handle the legalities.

The sentiments would test me in every way possible.

“I came away with a better idea of some of the political rivalries, which might be useful. People from both sides of the aisle attended, although I suspect there were absences, at least judging from the fact that they sent one senator to give me all of those cards. Wouldn’t a bunch of politicians want to claim the glory for themselves?”

“The service was invitation only,” Bradley replied. “Not everyone was invited. Now, what interests me is that the campaign invited those who weren’t Senator Maybelle’s staunch allies. We’ll have to go through your pictures to see who attended, though. The campaign didn’t make the guest list public, although your name was dropped as someone paying respects. That was probably a media stunt.”

According to Bradley’s expression, there was nothing he loathed more than media stunts.

“At least someone is making exsanguinators look good for a change. While I don’t like the someone being me, I’ll take a few hits for the team. We usually get treated like we’re plagued.” I shot a glare at Bradley. “And not a word from you.”

My mother snickered. “I see you have learned he does not have pure intentions.”

I kept glaring at Bradley, well aware he could snitch about my less-than-pure intentions.

He smirked, but he otherwise settled with a shrug.

“Our first mistake was not taking advantage of the opportunity we were given,” my boss announced. “While I understand why we were all against taking advantage of the opportunity, we need to remember she’s not someone with a middling talent who can’t take care of herself or others. We could have lost good information, including a better understanding of the existing political rivalries.”

My co-workers either sighed, grimaced, or scowled. I understood why Beatrice scowled. When we weren’t bickering, she took defending me to extremes. Mickey grimaced since Mickey disliked conflict almost as much as he couldn’t tolerate the sight of blood. Most of the others went the sighing route, as they understood Mr. Tawnlen wouldn’t rest until certain the issue wouldn’t come up again soon.

I expected somebody to make a fuss the instant trouble came calling again. As accepting a dinner meeting with one of the potential targets counted, I would hold the truth close to my chest until after the dinner, armed with the intel required to make progress on finding the murderers.

Until then, we’d have to continue flying blind until one of us discovered the important little detail that would help us piece the rest of the mystery together.

As usual, we needed to start at the very beginning. “We know Representative Kennedys began this with the introduction of the original bill. We all agree it’s a human rights nightmare. The refined version, introduced by a collection of senators, some of whom have already been murdered, is no better. The writers of the second bill all have abilities, wealth, or other criteria exempting them from being drafted—and their children are safeguarded from their bill. Correct?”

“Correct,” my boss replied. “What we don’t know is who unofficially supported the bill, working on it without having their names on the documentation. A lot of bills that make their way through legislation end up having additional support in the background from those who want to see it pass but don’t have the time or willingness to be a public sponsor. I think that’s where we really need to start. Who supports this bill? Who is against the bill? Motive matters, and we have reasons for both sides to want these senators to disappear. Also, from my time watching politicians at our branch, it’s also possible someone is taking advantage of the situation to draw attention away from something else. The killings have drawn a great deal of attention.”

No kidding, and to my dismay, an unfortunate amount of the attention was landing on me. “There’s also speculation they were attempting to pin the murder on me, but they hadn’t followed my movements or methods closely enough, operating outside of my general abilities. The first murder happened shortly after the crash.”

Somehow, I’d gotten to the point I could talk about the accident that had almost claimed my life—and the one that had left Bradley incapable of handling beeping machinery when attached to me.

“And you were still in the hospital for the second,” Bradley added. “Even after you were recovering out of the hospital, there’s a mountain of evidence confirming you were incapable of committing any of the murders. There’s a mountain of evidence showing you only had been able to do as you’d done for the other victims because you’d been contaminated with Senator Maybelle’s blood.”

The drug in the senator’s system bothered me. “Mr. Tawnlen, do we have any chance of being able to find out if the other senators were also on that drug? That drug bothers me,” I confessed. “If they have to be of a certain talent rating to dodge the draft, is it possible the use of this drug is connected to their murder? As in they weren’t killed because of the bill but rather due to their involvement with that sort of narcotic?”

“Now that we’ve gotten authorization to work as a cell, I might be able to get a copy of the autopsy reports. I don’t know if they did any toxicology reports, although a good coroner would under the circumstances. I’ll do what I can, but expect that to take a few weeks. It’ll take a lot of digging around and paperwork to get the authorization, and it depends on if the family has taken steps to bar the public from having access to those records.”

Organizing data was something I could do, and I relaxed at having a job that made sense to me and fit nicely into my skill set. “So, I guess that’s our next real step. We try to get as much information about the killings as we can, gathered and organized in a sensible fashion. We should go back through all of the recordings from the killings and draw up a report going through everything step by step. Then we want to go back at least six months before the first killing, tracking down as much information as we can on who might want to kill these people and why.”