Page 2 of Booked for Kidnapping

In the days following Senator Maybelle’s death, I’d learned a bitter truth: few, even among my friends and family, agreed with me.

Two wrongs never made a right, and looking the other way didn’t magically make problems disappear.

I waited, counting the ridiculous number of bouquets decorating the stage, each one with their tag still on it. The organizers allowed people to come up to pay their respects to the senator’s framed photo and unlit candles, although few bit on the bait. Most, like me, took their assigned seat and waited, murmuring to one another.

The skeptical, jaded side of me wondered how much the campaign had charged per ticket to attend the memorial, what goals everyone had in showcasing their grief, and who would become players in the bigger game, one with rules I didn’t understand and wouldn’t until I got closer to solving the mystery of the murders.

No, assassinations.

Too many possibilities lurked at the horizon. The killers could support their cause, martyring them for a better chance of passing the bill through a sympathetic congress. The congress knew the dead—and liked them. The killers could also be against their cause, hoping the bill would head to the grave along with the bodies of the fallen.

I wrinkled my nose at my poor foot, annoyed at its insistence on making a mess of my life. Worse, the damage from the bullet would one day allow me to walk again without enduring agony. As soon as the infection eased and I could undergo one more procedure, I might be able to learn to walk again without my cane, although I’d lug it around when at the library to avoid setbacks.

I wouldn’t be without pain, but I would be able to walk.

Benefiting from the woman’s death bothered me; her campaign’s money paid for my treatments and would for years to come. I still didn’t understand why Bradley’s mother insisted on allowing the campaign to fund my surgeries.

While under the guise of fiddling with my phone, I took pictures of the crowd, wondering if my efforts would offer any clues needed to make some form of progress on identifying and capturing the killers. No, not just on identifying and capturing the killers, but everyone involved with their activities.

Some killers worked alone, but our fledgling investigative cell had found the evidence I needed to understand that even small groups required a lot of support. Maybe four to six people could have done the hit, but it took a lot of money, effort, knowledge, and equipment to successfully assassinate a senator in public and escape without a trace.

Well, mostly without a trace. I’d witnessed a critical error on their part in the form of the illusionist failing to cover the headshot so investigators wouldn’t be able to identify the true cause of death.

Exsanguinators like me could no longer be blamed for a bullet’s work.

Aware Senator Maybelle’s allies likely lurked in the crowd, I researched the news, hoping for pictures or some insight we may have missed. Their shared beliefs bothered me.

Those beliefs made them targets, and while I wanted their bill to die, the idea of letting them be murdered left me with a sour stomach and a headache.

No matter how long or hard I thought about it, I couldn’t understand how my fellow librarians, my fiancé, and everyone else in my life could turn their backs and refuse to view the problem with open eyes instead of closed minds. Perhaps my brush with death had changed me more than I wanted to admit.

Or, perhaps, my willingness to lay down my life for Bradley’s sake had changed me.

The certainty of making the same choice for another, even a politician who wanted to see people like me dead and gone, grew into an insurmountable wall dividing me from my family and friends. They clung to their need to protect me.

I refused to bend, maintaining my need to put others over myself.

To my disgust, the news focused solely on Senator Maybelle’s assassination. Rather than chase after the truth, the media had opted to focus on the good the woman had done for the community, painting her as a martyr who wanted the best for the people. Hints of the bitter truth lurked within the articles, as they focused on the ideal people, the ones who wouldn’t be sent to the front lines should the bill pass without modification.

Old, white men would benefit the most, if they had the right aptitude to pass through the system. Here and there, vague promises offered hope to the lower castes. In the wrong hands, hope became a dangerous weapon, one capable of twisting an entire society into voting for their demise.

In the end, unless something changed, lies and greed would result in the entire downfall of our system, with thousands upon thousands of lives lost in some future war for the sake of purging society of the unwanted elements—unwanted elements like me.

I could almost understand why those lacking power would want to make people like me disappear under the guise of fighting for a good cause. The news articles I read offered no insights on the nature of that future war. Outside of Senator Maybelle’s death, all seemed well on the global stage, with minor hiccups as the United States interfered in the bickering of other nations. None of the conflicts seemed major enough to spark a large-scale war to me, and the actions the United States took part in were sanctioned by the global powers that be.

I could only wonder what would tip the scales and transform questionable peace into a war capable of killing millions.

When I returned to my apartment, I would need to look back at history to better understand the circumstances sparking off the worst of the wars, including the Holocaust, which had cost so many innocent lives. When I framed the bill in the light of the United States preparing to create its own Holocaust, I worried.

I worried, and I feared.

Chairs filled, and the murmur of conversation intensified. I recognized few faces. The old, white men who would benefit most from the insidious bill working its way through the government made up the vast majority of the attendees. Some of them were accompanied by disturbingly young women who dangled off their arms, trophies of the worst sort.

I wondered what they hoped to gain from attaching themselves to the chaff of society, those who sought to profit from the demise of their fellow Americans.

An old, white man took the seat next to me, dressed in a suit I suspected cost more than one of my medical bills. While I peeked at him out of the corner of my eye, careful to keep scrolling through the latest news at what appeared to be a slow, thorough reading speed, he stared at me through narrowed, dark eyes.

“You’re the exsanguinator,” he stated, and I admired the neutrality of his tone.