Page 16 of Booked for Kidnapping

“Oh, right. I have to send you to my room instead. Everyone, out. I must send this woman to my room, and I don’t need or want an audience.”

To my astonishment, everyone obeyed, and I spluttered and waved my fist at their departing backs. When they were gone and had closed the door behind them, I heaved a relieved sigh. “That was wholly unproductive, and while I love them, I’m glad they’re gone.”

“It wasn’t meant to be a productive session. It was meant to make sure you had survived the service unscathed. They just didn’t think to come over and stalk your apartment until you showed up. I can’t tell if I win or lose points for hanging out here until you showed up,” he admitted.

“You win points, especially since you fed us lunch. Were you aware of my mother’s ploy to send me to your room?”

“No, but I would have been an enthusiastic supporter of the plan. I have a list of ways to make it backfire on them, and they’re ways that’ll make you happier, I think.”

“Does it involve sharing this rather small apartment, especially when I have to return to work?”

Senator Godrin’s murder had kept the library doors closed, and the renovations, which were about to begin, would keep them closed for at least a month, after which the library would reopen better than ever, with two whole new floors for patrons to use.

I looked forward to returning to my regular life, although I would have adjusted records to match my real ability rating and skills.

“I’m looking for somewhere near here that’s a bit bigger for us, but yes. That’s the idea. I’m not going to ask you to give up the work you want to be doing. If you want to go to nursing school, I’ll make it happen.”

“I’d like some more formal training, but as long as I can volunteer, that’s good enough for me. I do just as much good as a volunteer, and I can read between emergencies that way.”

“That’s really clever. So, what are our requirements for a new home?”

“Three bedrooms, so one can be turned into an office, and the other can be a guest bedroom or a bedroom for other purposes.”

“Does other purposes include kids? Because I’ve heard enough stories from your mother to imply I’m going to be cruelly used so you can have many children.”

I laughed. “I can’t help it. I see children and want an entire flock of them. I love kids, even when they’re being obnoxious little pests. So one day, at least one kid would be nice. But first, we need to deal with this problem of that bill and the assassins. Should any children come around, I want them born in a world—and a country—we can actually be proud of.”

“On that, we’re agreed. Want to bet they think we’re practicing to have kids right now?”

I loved insane people. “That would not surprise me in the slightest.”

“Rather than practice, why don’t we work while they waste time? I think we’ve wasted enough time as it is.”

“That’s the best thing anyone has said to me all day.”

FOUR

I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to kill so many.

The first sign of trouble was rarely the true beginning of a problem, so in order to get to the heart of the murders and the events leading up to Representative Kennedys writing a human rights violation of a bill, we needed to investigate the political climate triggering his decision to write legislation designed to murder twenty percent of the population. With that firmly in mind, I began trolling news outlets starting a year before Representative Kennedys had written the original bill.

I compiled a list of all mass incidents, magic or mundane, any notable political uprisings, riots, and incidents, and after several hundred entries, I questioned everything I knew about the United States. Violence infected society. The symptoms of the violence epidemic had become a center point of my life.

Without the risk of violence, Bradley wouldn’t have needed or wanted a bodyguard.

Then again, knowing what I knew about my fiancé, I suspected he would have found some other way to acquire a contract for me. The contracting system, for temporary and for lifers, had been established long before Representative Kennedys had concocted his little scheme to get rid of the unwanted people from society, myself included.

The contracting system offered the perfect way to create loopholes the wealthy and influential could manipulate.

The changes to the system the bill would force would change how the contracts worked, too. The wealthiest would be able to pluck their favorite people from the clutches of the military while the rest served—and died—under a permanent draft.

I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to kill so many. The entire concept boggled my mind and chilled me. I expected to lose a great deal of sleep over the situation. Rather than curse at the circumstances, I began my search with investigating movements concerned with population control of so-called civilized countries.

I could see an extremist group obsessed with global population control attempting something as callous and hateful as eliminating hundreds of thousands during a war, leaving only those they favored as the survivors.

Keeping a few of the unwanted, like me, made some sense. We’d be treated like animals in a zoo, alive but in captivity, bred at the command of those who believed themselves to be the rulers.

“Hey, Bradley?”