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Cassie tugged his arm as if trying to flee, but he held her, looking at her and shaking his head sternly:We need to know. We haven’t finished what we came to do!

Drummond Fox, doing what had to be done, no matter the cost.

He hated himself as Cassie tried to turn away, turn her back on what was going on.

Then the man in the floor was nothing more than smacking lips and flared nostrils struggling for oxygen. Drummond watched as thelips fell still, as the man died in his tomb of concrete, and he held Cassie close, her face to his chest, their hands still clasped together awkwardly between their bodies.

The woman walked over to the mattress and Drummond took a few steps forward to watch. Not because he wanted to. Because he had to.

Cassie lifted her eyes from his chest and looked that way, just as the man on the mattress shook and melted into foamy liquid, as his gurgled screams bubbled horribly in the shadows.

Cassie shook her head and pulled away, using her free hand to attempt to pry Drummond’s fingers from her own. She was shouting silently into the shadows:No! No! No!And Drummond could see she was terrified and traumatized, her eyes flicking back to where the woman was inspecting the liquid mess that had moments before been a man.

Drummond tried to pull her back to him, tried to catch Cassie’s attention, but she was panicking like a terrified animal, her eyes wide and wild. She started thumping his chest with her fist, desperate to be released.

Then the woman stood up.

And she looked directly toward them.

Drummond’s heart stopped. It was all he could do not to release Cassie’s hand and flee himself.

Feeling something, seeing the change in Drummond, Cassie stopped and followed his eyes to where the woman stood. And suddenly she was still too, as if they had just seen a predator, the whole world frozen, waiting to see what would happen.

The moment passed, and the woman turned away. Drummond looked at Cassie and saw that she was crying, shadow tears pouring from her eyes, but the panic appeared to have abated. She was watching the woman and pointedly not looking at the mattress.

As the woman walked to a corner of the basement Drummond took a few steps to follow. The shadows and the gloom lifted enough for him to make out what the woman was doing. There was a safe here, in the corner of the room. They watched as the woman opened it and revealed three books inside. She removed books from her purse and placed theminside alongside the volumes that were already there. Drummond tried to peer through the gloom to make out what books she possessed.

Then she closed the safe, stood up, and walked straight past them. The sound of her heels on the stairs as she ascended back into the living area of the house was a slow metronome, and it felt like forever before the woman was gone, the door to the basement closed behind her.

Drummond looked at Cassie. She was gazing at the safe. When he tugged her hand, it took a few moments for her to turn her face to him. She looked traumatized. She had the hollowed-out expression of someone on the news, some eyewitness to a horrible event.

Drummond pointed at the safe and flicked his chin, asking the question:Enough?

She considered the question blankly for a moment, and then nodded.

She had seen enough. More than enough.

The Plan, Part Four—Azaki and the Books

“You know the problem with Lund,” Azaki said, waving his glass around airily.

“No,” Izzy said. “But do tell.”

“The problem with Lund is he thinks being quiet all the time makes people think he’s stupid.” Azaki stared at Lund, who was watching him from across the table. His brow was dropped slightly, as close to a scowl as Azaki had ever seen him come. “What he hasn’t realized is stupid people aren’t usually quiet. Stupid people are usually the noisiest people in the room.”

“Oh god,” Izzy muttered. “What does that say about me?”

Azaki peered at her for a moment and then laughed. “There’s always an exception to the rule. Because you are definitely not stupid.”

“Just loud,” Izzy said happily.

“Certainly loud,” Azaki said, toasting the air before sipping his drink.

They were in the mezzanine bar in the Macintosh Hotel. The hotel gave Azaki the creeps. He hated it, particularly at night when he’d tried to sleep. It was an empty place, rooms full of melancholy and memory. But of all the places in the hotel, the mezzanine bar was the place where he was most comfortable. Since meeting up with Lund and the others a few days earlier, he had been most relaxed when sitting in the bar with Lund and Izzy.

It had been strange, meeting Lund and Cassie again, so long after seeing them in Chile. For Lund and Cassie, when he met them in Bryant Park, it had been only a few hours since that last meeting. They had stepped through a doorway in Oregon to Chile, and then had stepped back after persuading him of his future. And then they had stepped through another doorway, alongside Izzy and Drummond Fox, to New York, to rendezvous with Azaki as promised.

They had spent the first night at a bland tourist hotel in Midtown, and while there Cassie had visited the Bookseller in the past and had persuaded her to let them use the Macintosh Hotel, a place the Bookseller apparently owned. Azaki had been quite excited when he’d heard about the place, but he had been disappointed when they’d walked across town and through the hoardings into the old building.