Page 20 of Booked for Theft (Vigilante Magical Librarians #3)

TWENTY

“That’s the vibe I don’t appreciate.”

The internet had dated photographs of the warehouse and the gas station, both of which crumbled and might collapse in the next stiff wind. As the pictures had indicated, the two buildings shared a parking lot, which someone kept swept. I could only guess the local government handled the cleaning to keep the place somewhat presentable.

Overall, they failed.

I regarded the place with disdain, tapping my foot while Bradley, Mickey, and Beatrice joined me.

“I’m not sure I appreciate the vibe of this place,” my fiancé admitted.

Mickey snorted. “I’m expecting a serial killer to emerge from around the corner at any moment.”

“Yeah. That’s the vibe I don’t appreciate.”

Then, because they could, the pair settled in to discuss which fictional, historic, and contemporary serial killers might best fit the location. Heaving a pained sigh, I stared at my best bitch. “Remind me why we put up with them again?”

“The sex.”

Damn. I considered Bradley, shrugged, and dared to step closer to our target. Within a minute, I regretted my decision.

Where there were sparks there could be fire, and the last place I wanted to be was near a gas station with a faulty wire ready to detonate the whole thing. Without the wires leading into the storage center, which appeared to have started its life as a small office building, the security company had forgone monitoring the place.

I pointed at it, disgusted with the entire situation.

“This place is one massive safety violation.” Beatrice clucked her tongue in disapproval. “Mr. Hampton? You might want to come look at this.”

Bradley’s father approached, and he joined me in expressing his general disgust with the situation. “All right. This will make the illusionists’ job much easier. We won’t even have to concoct much of a story for this. We’ll just rig a gas tanker sprouting a leak and repairing it in the lot, blow this joint, and leave. This won’t be hard to cover at all.”

According to Zachariah, we had three hours to get everything done before we would need to renew the illusions shrouding the place, which would be a tricky process while attempting to also maintain the illusions preventing anyone from observing our activities.

Heaving a pained sigh, I regarded Bradley’s father, hoping he understood the whole situation hurt my feelings.

“We’ll take you out for Chinese tomorrow to make up for the damage to your delicate sensibilities. You just had Indian, so it’s time for you to circle back to your first spicy love. Don’t play with the live wires, thank you for letting us know you found them, and focus on gaining access to the building. From the looks of it, nobody is monitoring anything here, and if they were, the illusions will cover us. We haven’t found a security system yet that is capable of blocking the magic now that we’ve figured out how it works.”

Understanding the military’s illusion tricks would be enough to get us all killed or imprisoned, and I had no interest in anyone discovering we understood how the government operated.

While Bradley’s father returned to checking the gas station tanks to see if there was any old fuel still within them, I headed for the doors with Beatrice and one of the security specialists with a hobby for breaking into places she shouldn’t go.

I loved Gabby, and I wanted to be like her if I ever tired of working as a librarian.

“What do you think, Gabby?” I asked as we approached the door.

The woman regarded the building with a wrinkled nose. “My picks are offended we’re even having to do this. It might even be unlocked from where people came to loot and just discovered a bunch of old papers in a box.”

Ugh. I hadn’t thought about the possibility of looters entering the place to see what they could find. “Would thieves leave boxes of papers alone?”

“Generally, yes. Unless they came in knowing what the papers are for, they’d leave, as papers don’t translate to easy cash.” Gabby put on a pair of leather gloves that had been stripped of all skin oils and potential prints, clearing her throat until we did the same.

As she possessed the right sort of magic to safeguard us, she cleaned our gloves again before taking hold of the knob and twisting.

The door opened.

I wilted, as breaking into the building counted as one of the more entertaining portions of the trip.

“We can break into your mother-in-law’s safe next week,” Gabby promised. “She bought some presents for you to wear on the cruise, so we can steal them and admire how they sparkle.”

Before being hired by Bradley’s father, the woman had dealt with some rather severe kleptomania, something the security company contained through allowed thefts, including one of the safes Bradley’s mother owned. To keep Gabby on her toes, that safe was replaced frequently with the newest and the best.

“Want to come steal shit out of Mrs. Hampton’s safe, Beatrice?”

“Do I ever. We’ll let the men have a play date and look at sporty cars. Mickey wants one, and Bradley offered to help do a used car search for a starter baby.”

Uh oh. “Beatrice, you know that’s code for finding a fixer upper that will cost more than a new sports car, right?”

She nodded, and her expression turned to one of despair. “He’s going to spend every spare cent on his new vehicular child.”

“It could be worse,” I reminded her.

“I’m not sure how.”

“He could want to collect actual children.”

“He does, though. He’s almost as bad as you are.”

Well, she was doomed, but until she came to terms with her status as a future beleaguered parent, I’d sympathize as much as I could. I hoped to be in those shoes eventually. “The vehicular child is much cheaper than the human child.”

“I keep telling myself that, but what will happen when we have the human children?” Beatrice sighed. “Our wallets already weep.”

“He won’t be able to repair his vehicular child as often as he would like. Alternatively, he can launch attacks on Bradley’s wallet to purchase parts so they can have play dates together. Mickey would be providing the vehicle to play with, Bradley would provide the parts so they can play.”

Beatrice’s expression brightened. “That’s actually fair, isn’t it?”

“It is. Both men are contributing to the fun time, so if Mickey can get the old banger, Bradley can help pay for the repairs since he’s getting good entertainment value out of it.” I regarded the door, which Gabby had cracked open. “What if there are mice in there?”

Shaking her head at my question, Gabby shoved open the door before replying, “I can almost promise there will be mice, rats, and other critters. Most of the windows are broken.”

“This sucks.” As time wasted, I stepped into the warehouse, armed myself with a flashlight, and took stock of the waiting disaster.

Sure enough, animals had nested in the place, and a few raccoons hissed at me before fleeing into the haphazard pile of boxes. As suspected, someone had been in the building before, and some boxes no longer had lids. I leaned inside to check the nearest pile by the door, discovering the campaign had used enchanted bankers boxes meant to protect the contents from pests.

Fortune favored us. “Gabby, are the charms still active on the box?”

The woman reached out, touched the closest box, and narrowed her eyes. “Yes, the magic is still working, although it’s fading. Given another two or three weeks, and I think the pressure from the local residents would shatter the enchantments.”

Excellent. We’d beaten a timer we hadn’t known existed. “Then let’s get this shit out of here and bail. Beatrice, look for anything interesting while I get our false documents. I’ll do most of the hauling, you can use your brain and see if you can cherry pick any good information for us. Try to pick two boxes, and Bradley and I will take those into our condo to start evaluating them.”

“What do you want me to do?” Bradley asked, and he raised a brow at me.

Right. I had a fiancé, and he was following me along. “Look pretty while us ladies do the hard work.”

“So help me, Mickey, if you aren’t covered in sweat from hauling boxes by the time we get home…” my best bitch warned.

Like Bradley, my fellow librarian eyed his fiancé with a rather displeased expression. “Or what?”

“I won’t have to take your clothes off and make certain every inch of you is squeaky clean.”

Mickey bailed out of the building as though all the demons of hell chased after him.

“I think he’s getting the better end of this deal,” Bradley muttered.

Men. “If you want to get sweaty in hopes of help showering when we get home, I’m not going to stop you.”

With hundreds of bankers boxes waiting for us to sort through, we’d need to bust ass if we wanted to finish before the illusions needed to be renewed. I opted for efficiency, joining Beatrice in checking the box for labels before cracking it open and examining the first few papers on top.

As promised in the note left within the pages of Schindler’s Ark , the warehouse truly contained every piece of paperwork from Senator Maybelle’s campaign. From staffer dossiers to campaign funders, government notices, and even copies of bills, we had a fortune in knowledge to work with—knowledge that couldn’t bite anyone in the ass. Well, anyone living.

Senator Maybelle might end up being a sacrifice for the general good of the people, depending on what we found within the records, but I understood the risks Representative Forsythe had taken tipping me off on the location of the warehouse and precious sheets.

Unfortunately, there was no way of ranking the boxes by importance. Judging from the first few I opened, someone had taken the haphazard approach, shoving everything inside with no care if it were damaged or disorganized. I could only assume campaign workers had given up on finesse, given a deadline to get everything packed up and put into storage.

As such, we took the same approach, transferring the campaign material into a new box before cramming as many of our falsified documents as possible into one before repeating the process.

With all of us working together, it took us a little over an hour to load the truck, stage the building, and get to the serious work of lighting everything ablaze.

Much to my alarm and disgust, the old gas station still had fuel in their tanks, more than enough to go up into a rather nasty explosion with sufficient sparks.

To mask the possibility of arson, the illusionists concocted a leaking gas tanker going down the street, with most of the spill happening along the road near the station, which left a trail of danger in its wake. The illusion had the tanker pulling over near both buildings, with a rather large puddle of fuel left by the time the driver finished the repairs and departed. Zachariah handled spilling gasoline up the street for several blocks to match his working. Then the trail ended with a few drops here and there, suggesting the driver had noticed the problem quickly and worked diligently to correct it.

Only when everyone was safely out of the way and we were prepared to depart did Bradley’s father splash some gas near the sparking wire before bolting for his SUV. Once inside, he moved to a safe distance.

The minutes ticked by, and I wondered how many sparks it would take to ignite the gas.

Ten minutes later, the whole place went up with a whoosh, and I gasped at the rapid spread of the flames. The puddles burned, and the trail of gasoline led the fire to the station itself. Between the opened tank and the fumes surely rising from below the asphalt, the inevitable explosion rattled my teeth in my head and cast a blinding light.

Bradley cursed. “We better get out of here, Dad.”

“The team is covering everything with illusions, even the acoustics,” he replied. “Calm your ass down, boy. This is going to plan. Honestly, I’m a little alarmed it’s going perfectly to plan thus far. That doesn’t usually happen. Zachariah, you were careful with the creation of the tanker driver, correct?”

“I modeled it off someone who passed away a year and a half ago, with slight changes. There might be someone with a similar appearance, but yes. I was careful. I checked the tags on a burner laptop before using them on the vehicle. It won’t take them long to figure out it’s an invalid plate. I made some adjustments to the plate to make it clear it was a driver using a falsified plate rather than a stolen one. I’m sure it’ll send the government on a merry chase once they decide to search deeper.” The illusionist chuckled. “It’s a little sad that some of our best work is wasted on cameras, but the cause is good. Our night isn’t over yet, but I’m confident that Randell, Gabby, and Mark can get the truck to your place in the Hamptons, unload it, put everything in the bunker, and make the truck disappear.”

I eyed Zachariah. “What do you mean by make the truck disappear?”

“By ten in the morning, that truck will be nothing more than scrap metal and a memory,” the illusionist informed me. “What doesn’t exist can’t bite us later.”

I turned my ire onto Bradley’s father. “Where did you get that truck, sir?”

“I bought it for a thousand dollars two years ago, and we already cleaned it of serial numbers just in case. We’ve been testing illusions on it for longevity and so on. I registered the vehicle as destroyed six months ago, and we’ve been storing it at the main office in the garage under illusions just in case I might need it.”

At two years ago, he’d started making plans long before Senator Godrin’s assassination at my branch. “Why did you do that?”

“I saw the writing on the wall a while ago, and I wanted a getaway vehicle available to staff at my headquarters. I have a legitimate truck in a different color we use for business, but this one? I wanted it in case it was needed—and it was needed. And don’t you judge me, little girl. You were doing what at the library right under our noses?”

“Living happily albeit painfully,” I replied.

He huffed at me.

I smiled back.

“Let’s just go, Dad. The faster we’re out of here, the better off we are. Let’s not get caught at the scene of the crime.”

At four in the morning, Zachariah escorted us back to our condo, using his magic to disguise our passage. Bradley and I carried a box each, and once safely inside with the door locked, we went to the dining room, set down our plunder, and took a few minutes to tend to our beasts before taking quick showers and catching a few hours of sleep.

At ten, muttering curses while making coffee, I contemplated burning the entirety of the government to the ground. Once Ajani suckered me out of a second breakfast and the kittens were enjoying a snack, I headed for the dining room to begin the tedious process of sorting through papers.

Bradley, who’d decided he needed another shower if he wanted to be remotely functional, came in wearing one of his best suits, his hair still damp. “Mom is going to bring Chinese food over at one. Dad’s still sleeping, and she’s contemplating another nap. Beatrice and Mickey are going to the branch to ferry books upstairs. Her boss called her because one of your co-workers called him, indicating that you are going to be championing for a new elevator and a wheelchair lift.”

Busted. “I did mention that to Henrietta, but I was going to handle it on Monday.”

“Henrietta decided to take it off your plate. Both requests were approved, and the main branch is going to take care of the contract for the work to be done; they already know how to handle it because of their elevator situation. Expect a month for the new elevator to be installed.”

“That’s it?”

“The shaft is already there, so it’s a matter of pulling everything out, installing the new components, and making certain everything is to code. The wheelchair lift will be installed on Monday. That’s easy. Expensive, but easy.”

“Will a librarian have to operate it?”

“Nope. Any library card holder will be able to activate it without assistance. It will also read identification cards for the entirety of the United States, and medical cards will work with it, too. There’ll be a call button if someone doesn’t have a valid card, in which case the library’s security guard can help patrons,” Bradley informed me.

I frowned. “What security guards?”

“The ones my father will be providing starting next week. He is contributing staff and hours as a charitable donation. There will be two pairs of guards at your branch at all times, they are going to have ten pairs at the main branch, and the other branches are getting between one and four pairs depending on size and number of entrances. At all branches with elevators, all guards will be trained on how to handle most lift problems, assist patrons getting in and out of the building, and so forth. It works really well for him, because it shows support for your career choice. It also might deter anything else from happening on the steps of a library.”

Huh. We’d wanted better security for a while, making do with cameras that we monitored and a phone number for the police in case of issues. As a general rule, we were expected to fend for ourselves, which we did.

Other branches had more trouble than we contended with, and I suspected we got away with as few incidents as we did due to how we handled most situations. For the most part, we handled any cleanup needed and defused situations to the best of our ability.

It helped that a local gym up the street had decided to come to the aid of the homeless, offering their showers to the general public. Several of the homeless shelters and thrift stores had joined the party, offering services to those who wanted to acquire a job or otherwise improve their situation.

It wasn’t much, but we tried.

“Does your father know we have community initiatives in place?”

“The security team is prepared to help the homeless get to the gym, to shelters, and otherwise assist the library in addressing such issues, yes. He’s looking into hiring full-time social workers to assist the homeless at each branch. He’ll be able to write the entire operation off his taxes, and it’s work that his employees want to be doing. He’ll be using the positions as rewards, and they’ll rotate every two months. He requested volunteers, and most of his workers are interested in helping. The ones who aren’t either live a hefty distance from the library, don’t have easy transportation, or can’t for some reason. The incentives for doing the work are pretty strong, so most want to participate. He’s contemplating setting up a shuttle to get employees to the libraries to remove the transportation issue.”

“Maybe your dad should be running for office,” I muttered.

“The government would become a tightly run ship, that’s for certain. So, we have a few hours to work on this. What approach do you want to take?”

I sighed at the box, flipped it onto its side, and dumped it out. “We shall make piles, organized by type, and skim searching for anything important. Do we have a camera we can use for this?”

“I do, and I have a huge stockpile of memory chips so we can send all the relevant photos to news outlets. Between me and my parents, we managed to get a hold of a hundred through hitting up different stores. I got a compatible card reader, so copying all the files can be done with relative ease. I’ll name each file to be sensible, which will be time consuming, but if we’re working together, it shouldn’t be too bad.”

It would have to do. Snatching a handful of sheets, I began the tedious process of reviewing everything. The first few pages proved to be invoices for office supplies, and as nothing seemed amiss from them, I set them aside. The next papers appeared to be part of a conduct guide detailing how campaign volunteers were to behave, which I sorted into a new pile. Bradley headed to the other end of the table with his box, dumped it out, and joined me in sorting through the sheets.

Twenty minutes into the job, I questioned everything I thought I had known about how campaigns were operated, especially in terms of financials. From screws to saddles, Senator Maybelle’s campaign had a little of everything. “Saddles, Bradley? Why would a political campaign need to buy saddles ?”

Bradley set aside his papers and rummaged through his organized sheets, and after a minute or so, he lifted up a page and waved it. “President Castillo sent a memo to her campaign ordering her to run a charity event, a horse ride for children. Her campaign was to provide everything for the event, horses, bridles, and saddles included. After the event, the horses were to be auctioned with their equipment, and all funds were to be distributed to a charity of her choice to garner good will among Americans.”

Bastard. I could see how that ploy would work to gain support among horse lovers. “President Castillo was decreeing what Senator Maybelle was to do during her campaign?”

“It appears to be that way. I have a bunch of memos here that are reminders for what her campaign team needed to be doing and when. There are numerous bills of sales for horses and so on in this box.”

Our boxes had come from the same general section of the warehouse, so I could only assume we had gotten lucky in terms of overlapping materials. “But a horse ride and selling the animals?”

Bradley went through a different pile, pulling out a bill of sale for a horse, which he handed to me along with another sheet. “I’ve found at least ten sales registries for the horses, and they were bought from a kill market. They’re being stabled at a horse rescue, and judging from the invoices, the bill for their stabling is only paid through until the election. The charity auction would take place the week before the election, likely to boost Senator Maybelle’s run.”

I took the sheets, sighed, and reviewed the stabling contract, which had Senator Maybelle’s campaign paying three thousand per horse per month. Near the end, if the stabling contract was not renewed, the horses would be sent back to the kill market. “Some rescue. They contracted to send the horses back to their originating market.” I tossed the papers at my fiancé. “You are buying me a wedding gift, Bradley.”

“I am?”

“Yes, you are. You will be contacting that horse rescue and acquiring all those animals for me. Use the angle that you want them as soon as possible but in October at the latest to start training and conditioning them for your wedding project. They’re all off the track thoroughbreds according to the stabling contract. We’ll figure out something to do with them after they’re off the executioner’s block.”

Bradley sighed, took the documents, and reviewed them again. “In good news, the stable is in Maryland, so it would definitely be in my searching grounds for such a thing. All right. I guess we’re opening a rescue center for these horses. Hopefully, the stable honored the contract despite Senator Maybelle’s death. We’ll find out soon enough.”

“The idea of selling them for charity was not bad, but those horses aren’t going to be picked up by the auction date, not with Senator Maybelle dead and her campaign dumped. Let’s limit the deaths. Maybe we’ve done a shit job of saving people , but at least we can save these animals.” I wrinkled my nose at the tactic—and that a horse rescue would send animals back to a kill market after charging a political campaign thousands for the care and upkeep of the animals. “It doesn’t cost that much for a month per horse, does it?”

“It does not, not by a long shot. Our horses are costing us a few hundred a month, as they are spoiled children enjoying the high life. Sunflower’s more expensive, but she has weekly vet visits because everyone is paranoid. Apparently, we’re being excessive, but Sunflower’s previous owner is pleased with our excess. Your mare is loved, and that’s the important thing.”

I nodded. “We should go visit our children after lunch. I need some love and affection from them.”

“Assuming they’ll sell the horses, I’m sure we can find one you can ride while Sunflower handles being a mother and caring for her foal.” Bradley frowned, grabbed his phone, and tapped at the screen. “Ah, they’re open today, and they have public information that they’re open to be contacted about rescues at any time. Let’s see what we can get. I’ll be specific about wanting off the track thoroughbreds, so maybe that’ll get us access to the campaign horses.”

While I waited for the result of the call, I resumed sorting papers, making certain anything dealing with the animals was put to the side.

“Good morning. My name is Bradley Hampton, and I’m looking for some horses to adopt as part of a wedding gift for my fiancé, who recently received a pregnant mare as a gift. She loves her new horse, so I want to purchase a herd for her. She’s interested in off the track thoroughbreds, and I’d like to surprise her with the herd as part of our wedding plans. We will be going on a venture to Europe in October, and we’ll need the horses for then.” Bradley referenced the stabling contract before saying, “I’m looking for at least twenty-five animals. I can take them immediately if available, but I can wait for as late as mid-October as long as they have all vetting records required to be transported to Europe.”

Bradley spent a few minutes listening, and every now and then, he rolled his eyes. “I’m willing to offer five thousand a head for them, assuming you have their papers and vet records. You do? Excellent. Will arranging for transport for them this week be an issue? No? Excellent. I’ll have my transporter get in touch. Please send the invoice to me so I can pay it promptly.” Bradley gave the person his pertinent details, including our address, telephone number, and his email address. Once he hung up, he shook his head. “I was told, flat-out, that they had animals from Senator Maybelle’s campaign and were looking to get rid of them, as they were taking up space and preventing them from helping any other rescues.” Bradley went through the contract again, and after a moment, he made a satisfied sound. “There it is. There’s a clause that if anything happens to the campaign, the rescue may sell the horses at their discretion for any value they deem fit. The sales value for the horses will go to the rescue—and it counts as a charitable contribution for us.”

“But we’re buying animals. How is that a charitable contribution?”

“Apparently, the horses are deemed to be a ‘gift’ in exchange for the contribution.”

“How fucking sleazy,” I grumbled.

“You can wage that battle later. For now, the horses will be safe, and I got them all. Nobody wants failed thoroughbreds, so they’ve been having trouble finding homes—at least homes willing to pay several thousand a head.”

I grabbed my phone, dialed my mother’s number, and braced for chaos.

“What’s wrong?” my mother demanded.

“Nothing’s wrong with me . You’re going to be angry and try to murder me in the next two minutes, though,” I informed her.

She sighed. “What did you do now?”

“I rescued twenty-five off the track thoroughbreds so they wouldn’t be sent to a kill market, and I need to toss them into your pasture.”

“Why would I get angry at you over that?”

“It’s twenty-five horses you did not have to deal with yesterday that you now have to deal with today. That is a lot of horses.”

“But they’re thoroughbreds. Any stallions?”

“Good question. Bradley? Are there any stallions?”

Bradley checked the papers. “There are three, assuming the stable didn’t have them gelded. Rest are mares.”

“Three stallions unless the rescue gelded them, twenty-two mares. We’ll have their registrations.”

“We were talking about throwing up a proper barn and an indoor arena, and if we have twenty-five new horses to handle, it’s now a need rather than a want. Good. Well done! Are you going to be picking one for yourself?”

“I am,” I confirmed. “Can we come visit Sunflower and Majestic later today?”

“Of course. Wait until after three. She has a doctor’s appointment at two.”

“We’ll try to make it for two so I can be at her appointment.”

“She’s having her hooves done,” she warned.

I sighed, as I’d learned the sound of the farrier doing his work tripped my trigger for unknown reasons. “I’ll do my best to keep from cringing, but no promises.”

“If you cringe, you cringe. Do you want roast for dinner?”

“Yes, please.”

My mother laughed. “We’ll see you this afternoon. Love you.”

I told her I loved her back before hanging up. “Sunflower is visiting with the farrier at two, and I’ve decided to be brave. Have your mom bring the Chinese food to my mom’s place, and we’ll call it a day.”

“That works. What about the paperwork?”

“We’ll pack it up and put it in the closet for now. Tomorrow, we’ll start looking into this in earnest after work. We have a lot of work ahead of us, and some rest will do us both a world of good.”