Page 61 of Booked for Kidnapping

“You are her territory.”

“You know that, I know that, but while she knows that, she’s a little jealous.”

“A little?” Bradley’s father laughed. “If rings are what you want, rings are what you’ll have. If I let you two into a car dealership, you’ll have meltdowns. I have a test you must pass before either of you purchase anything other than family cars. I’ll make some calls. But you won’t be getting near any sports cars until I’m sure you won’t crash it having an episode. That goes for both of you.”

Damn. Bradley had obviously learned how to be domineering from his father. “I surrender. Again.”

“Good girl,” his father praised. “Do you have everything you need in your purse?”

I read between the lines, although I wasn’t sure if he meant my firearm or the ridiculous variety of birth controls that’d been left for us. “I have everything important in my purse.”

“Your gun, Bradley?”

“I’ll carry mine in its case. She has hers in her purse.”

“Good. Hurry on up, then. I want an address so we can start pulling our own weight. The others are investigating without us, and I’m feeling outclassed. Of course, now that we know more, it’s easier to investigate. Mickey’s gotten some good leads about the various men and women who could have pulled off the operation, and it’s interesting.”

“Interesting how?” I asked.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Bradley’s father promised.

Within an hour of searching for where I’d been held, I understood what Bradley meant about the illusionist having targeted me.

The house didn’t exist, not in the way I remembered. The woods dividing the properties and leading towards the ocean was real, and without magic twisting my sight, I got my first real look at what had been my world. Instead of a three-storied house, I’d been held in a sprawling Mission-style manor. The window I’d escaped from hadn’t been a window at all, but a patio door leading to a rose garden and a path leading to the woods, where someone had set up a table with chairs to enjoy the shade.

I pointed at the home with its neighboring woods with their odd trees, at least odd compared to the more common palms and coastal scrub. “That’s the place. I remember those trees.”

“That’s some pretty damned impressive mental manipulations, Dad. That’s not a brick and stone house. They flat-out erased her ability to perceive anything outside of what they wanted her to perceive.”

Mr. Hampton grunted and kept driving while Bradley snapped pictures of the place with his phone. “She probably wasn’t even kept in a spare room, she might not have even been chained at all, and it’s even likely she was treated well and let loose when her depression became more than they could readily cope with. The books were probably real, and they would have kept her somewhere comfortable while she read, and the illusionist—possibly some other talent—would have overrode any of her natural inclinations. The operation wouldn’t have been covered under much of an illusion, because it would have been too dangerous. They would have needed to be able to monitor her health, so they would have only done minor illusions to trick her into cooperating. The trauma would have done most of the work, since Janette’s already known to suffer from trauma-induced amnesia. That’s Mickey’s theory at any rate. And since the illusionist was overriding her perceptions and taking control that way, I won’t be able to get any information from her even if I tried.”

“How did you get such a clear reading on the operation, then?” I asked, a little annoyed over Bradley’s father talking about me like I wasn’t there.

“It’s the same reason I can’t really read you when you are in a calmer environment. Unlike Bradley, who is predominantly attuned to positive feelings and emotions, my talent shines on the other end of the spectrum. I can identify major sources of trauma and get readings from them. I don’t quite get a front-seat view, but it’s close enough. Think of my ability like having a surround camera or snapshot of what was going on at the time of a traumatic event. I can peek into what happened there. Bradley can, too. He really shines at reading inorganic objects, since he has a better view of them than I do. But his organic reading is rather useless unless you happen to be his future wife, in which case, I think you will find his abilities much to your liking. He can get organic readings like I can, but his general nature and inclinations makes it far more traumatic for him.”

No kidding. “That is the understatement of the year, Mr. Hampton.”

“He’s just too sensitive, and he gets emotional feedback. I don’t get the same emotional feedback he does. So, I can view what happened to you rather like watching a movie, where Bradley experiences it more as feelings to go along with the movie. If he had tried to read that operation, he would have ended up screaming or crying.”

I grimaced. “He can get feedback like that?”

“He has to deliberately make the attempt, and he knows better than to try to peek on traumatic events unless absolutely necessary. That’s why he tends to stick to inorganic objects. The feedback is limited.”

“I hadn’t realized that was how it worked,” I admitted.

“He thinks of it like a dirty little secret,” Bradley’s father admitted with amusement in his tone. “It’s also part of why he pushed so hard for your contract. He knew you were interested in him from the start, and he’s always been interested in you. He’s just a little shit who isn’t good at leaving the nest without a swift and hard kick to the ass.”

“I didn’t want to scare you off,” Bradley stated, and he glared at his father, leaned back in his seat, and crossed his arms. “If you scare her off, I’m not going to forgive you.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”

I snorted. “That’s not going to be a problem.” I doubted I’d be willing to let him leave my sight, outside of going to the bathroom on his own, anytime soon. “Can I leash him?”

“I don’t care what you do to him as long as you bring his still-living body home for visits.”

Yep. Bradley was a loved child. “I have a question.”

“What is it?”