Page 101 of The Librarians

“Hazel? Are you okay? Are you still there?”

“I’m here, it’s just that—under my picture, someone wrote ‘Hi’ and drew an arrow pointing to the right.”

“Shit!” The word escapes Astrid. “Oh my God, do you think—is it possible—”

The rub of glossy paper on glossy paper grows more strident—Hazel is paging through the rest of the yearbook at a breakneck pace. Astrid’s hand comes up to her throat. Beneath her thumb, her jugular throbs like an EDM rave. Next to her, Sophie’s knees knock together.

“I’m on the last page,” whispers Hazel, “you know, that blank flyleaf for people to write on.”

“What about it?” Astrid’s voice shakes.

“There is a huge character string.” Half a minute passes. “Fuck. It’s exactly sixty-four characters. That’s how long a blockchain private key is.”

“Lord Almighty,” squeaks Sophie. “You think you found it?”

“I don’t know. I need to FaceTime my hacker friend—she’ll know more than I do. If this is it, I need to hand it in to the police.”

“Okay,” says Sophie. “We’ll hang up now. Let us know what you find out.”

“I will—in the morning. But if you don’t see me at work tomorrow, you’ll know why.”

The line goes silent.

“Everything will be fine, right?” asks Astrid.

Her hands shake. She places them on her chair, under her thighs, to keep them still.

“Yes,” says Sophie, sounding only half-convinced. “Everything—and everyone, too.”

But everything—and everyone—is not going to be all right this night. That was always a given. The only question is,whoisn’t going to be all right?

The library is not brilliantly lit at night. But between streetlamps, exterior lights on apartment buildings across the parking lot, and exterior lights of the shopping center to the other side, enough illumination is provided for a midnight visitor to see clearly, without the aid of flashlights.

A man dashes out of the apartment complex and streaks across to the long, extended porch in front of the library. He counts only one car in the lot, an incongruously cheerful red Miata. Strange to conceive of Hazel Lee in such a symbol of suburban midlife crisis.

He hopes she will cooperate. He doesn’t want to hurt her. But it’s so much money. What else matters in the end? Nobody loves him anyway, so he might as well have as much money as possible. Money is loyal—unconditionally so—it will provide better than any parents and be more dependable than any children. It will form the bedrock of his future.

The front entrance slides open soundlessly, as does the next set of automatic doors. The interior of the library is shadows upon shadows, but he’s familiar enough with its layout to skirt the darkened public terminals and head for the staff breakroom.

The door opens. There is another door in the wall opposite, under which a fluorescent glow creeps. He takes a deep breath and wraps his gloved hand on the handle.

The storage room is a cave full of book stalagmites rearing up from the floor. A woman with her back to him sits on a knee-high stack of books. The hood of her jacket is pulled over her head but the slender volume on her lap is visible, with little rectangular headshots of children—that particularly American publication, the primary school yearbook.

He extends his weapon, points it at the back of her head, and commands, “Give me that if you don’t want to die.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

Jonathan’s house

Two nights earlier

As Hazel pauses at the edge of the den to remove her sneakers, Conrad, standing to her side and a foot or so behind, turns his head toward her.

And Astrid falls instantly in love with their love story. In the gravity and patience of his gaze, she sees a man who has searched a hundred airports and a thousand crowded intersections, not from hope but from a deep-rooted obduracy that even he himself cannot do anything about…

Lost in her own musing, Astrid is only vaguely aware of introductions going around. She might have even shaken Conrad’s hand.

Hazel says something in a gentle but urgent tone. Astrid realizes, a few moments later, that those words have been addressed to her.