Page 39 of The Librarians

I bought this on my way back to the boat. Also bought another one—of the botanical garden—that I’ve taped up on the wall of my tiny, coffin-like cabin. I hope to be able to send this one to you soon. Thank you for a perfect day. I’m happy when I think about you.

Does he know that it is she beneath the balaclava? Does she want him to know?

The postcard is still cradled inside the pages of La cinquième saison . She closes the book and slams it at Conrad’s hand. He knocks it away, grips her by the wrist, and yanks her up. She uses the sharpness of his pull to ram her elbow toward his spleen.

He sidesteps her attack. She stabs her fingers at his eyes. He flings her away from him. She cries out as she sails through the air—and lands on the bed.

She scrambles up. He seizes her by the ankle. She kicks with her free foot. He grunts but grabs her by the knees. She pulls back to strike with both feet. He flips her whole person over.

The air is knocked out of her lungs as she lands on the mattress again, this time on her front. What feels like his entire weight jams into her lower vertebrae as he twists her arm over her back.

She lets out a whimper of pain.

“Hazel?” comes Conrad’s hesitant question.

Her heart pounds. He would have seen her automated tool working on his desktop but isn’t sure yet who she is. If she can escape the house and make a getaway, can Jonathan claim he has no idea what was going on upstairs?

Making use of his momentary distraction—and the easing of pressure on her spine—she jabs the elbow of her still-free arm toward his head.

He lets go of her and narrowly avoids her elbow.

She turns over and sits halfway up. But before she can scramble off the bed, he comes down on her like a mountain, grabs both her wrists, and pins them above her head.

And then he manages to free one hand. The barrel of his gun nuzzles the bottom of her balaclava.

Her flashlight is on the floor but still emits enough light for her to see the outline of his heavily shadowed features. And if he gets her balaclava off, he’ll see her just as clearly.

She thrashes. He presses her harder into the mattress, his cheek brushing against hers. She would like to headbutt him but can’t rear up with enough velocity to do that. Instead, she captures his mouth with hers.

Shock reverberates along her nerve endings.

The softness of his lips, the warmth of their contact, the peppery taste of the kiss—it’s as if she’s reliving her own best memories, memories the accuracy and reliability of which she had begun to doubt years ago, precisely because of their pristine loveliness.

The kiss turns scorching. Heat simmers under her skin. Heat radiates from his hands, now cupped around her face and the back of her head. Heat palpitates between them, as roiling and inexorable as stellar expansion, evaporating entire planets in its path.

Her arms lock around his shoulders. Years drop away and they are just two very young people who have fallen under each other’s spell. In the near darkness she can almost hear the Atlantic Ocean, swirling around the rocky precipices of Madeira. Almost smell the salt and happiness of a different eon.

She heaves him off her with all her strength. He lands on the floor with a thud. She leaps off the foot of the bed, runs to the door, and yanks it open. Only to have herself wrenched back and the door slammed shut with a thunderous crash that shakes the entire house.

“You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what you’re doing here.”

He flips a switch. Light floods the room. Hazel squints. Something feels odd about her face. It’s bare—her balaclava is gone.

She lifts the Glock he dropped on the bed in the middle of their kiss—and which she’d grabbed while getting off. “I will go and stay as I wish.”

Coolly, he pulls another semiautomatic pistol from behind him. “The one in your hand isn’t loaded. But this one is.”

She should have groped him more thoroughly while they were still in bed. “That’s fine. I’ll keep this one for now. It’s pretty handy for smashing into someone’s skull in an emergency.”

He is silent for a moment, his eyes down, his lashes casting shadows. Her gaze dips to his lips, still flush from their kiss, and she has to suppress an urge to put a fingertip to her own lips, tingling with remembered sensations.

He moves abruptly and opens the door. “Come on. We’ll have to explain the noise to Ryan and Jonathan.”

She doesn’t have to wonder why he isn’t worried that she’ll attempt to flee again—Ryan’s and Jonathan’s footsteps, pounding up the stairs, echo against the walls.

She walks into the passage, lined with large, framed prints of islands and seascapes, just as Jonathan emerges on the stair landing, breathing hard, looking both frantic and grim.

Ryan appears a moment later; his expression grows more puzzled as Conrad comes out of the bedroom to stand next to Hazel.

Hazel glances at Conrad. When he doesn’t say anything, she realizes We’ll have to explain means she’ll have to explain.

“Hi, Jonathan, hi, Ryan,” she says, putting all her heiress training to use. “Conrad and I ran into each other and thought maybe we should talk over things a little more.”

Ryan looks from Hazel to Conrad, then back again, and seems to make a conscious decision to take things at face value—for now. “Didn’t know you were coming back so soon, Conrad,” he says.

Conrad shrugs. “Last-minute change of plans.”

“So…everything’s okay?” asks Jonathan, his voice tight.

Hazel nods. “Everything’s fine. We saw your pickup truck and didn’t want to interrupt you and Ryan, so we came in from the side.” This house has to have a side door or several, right? “But in the dark we tripped.”

Jonathan evidently doesn’t believe her—he knows why she is really here. She’s pretty sure Ryan doesn’t either.

“Okay then. You guys talk things over.”

Ryan turns to leave, giving Jonathan little choice but to follow. But at the top of the staircase, Jonathan turns around and looks again at Hazel.

Go , she mouths. You can go .

Jonathan is not at all reassured, but Ryan is already halfway down the stairs, looking back expectantly at him, and Hazel clearly does not want him to be further involved.

But what is going on? Was Conrad lying in wait? Has he managed to entrap Hazel with a ruse about being out of town this week?

“Hazel, do you want something to drink?” asks Conrad all of a sudden.

But his voice is low. And the way he studies her, with such undiluted attention—Jonathan could almost forget that he has just caught her housebreaking.

She glances at him. Is she also surprised by his apparent solicitude? “I could use a glass of wine,” she says, deadpan.

“Could you get that for Hazel, Ryan?” Conrad calls toward the curving staircase. “I have to check something on my desktop. I’ll meet you guys in the kitchen in five minutes.”

Without waiting for an answer, he disappears into his bedroom. Hazel stares a moment at the now-closed door, then turns to Jonathan and smiles slightly. “Well, let’s go.”

Jonathan loved the kitchen in this house last night.

Ryan before the stove, Ryan draining pasta, Ryan’s head-tilted smile as he extracted the cork from the bottle of red Jonathan had brought.

But right now all he can think about is whether Ryan and Conrad are in this together.

The hell Conrad is looking at his desktop. What is he doing? Loading a bazooka?

No, actually, maybe “desktop” isn’t a euphemism. Maybe he really has to wipe his hard drive after Hazel has rooted around in there.

Ryan pulls out a pale pink bottle from the fridge. “How about a glass of Kylie Minogue’s Prosecco for you, Hazel? I was at a gay wedding this afternoon and they gave everybody a bottle.”

“It will do,” Hazel answers.

She trails her fingertips along a row of hefty cookbooks, looking for all the world like she’s on a casual, or at least a normal, visit. Wait, is that a Glock in her pocket? Jesus, Jonathan thought they’d agreed not to bring firearms to avoid unnecessary escalation.

While Ryan fetches stemware, Hazel unwraps the foil atop the bottle and twists and pops the cork, her motions quick and efficient. “How was the wedding? Did you have fun?”

Ryan tilts a glass and pours carefully into it. “Wedding was nice. Not one hundred percent sure though that at my age I still have ‘fun’ at weddings.”

“Oh?” says Hazel, accepting the glass of prosecco from Ryan. “What do you have, then, instead of fun?”

Ryan pours another glass and frowns slightly, an unusual expression for him.

“If I think the couple isn’t gonna make it, I wonder why everybody is there wasting their time.

If I do think the marriage will last, then I’m forced to ask myself: ‘Do I want to be married? Am I going to make a disaster of it? And do I want it just because it’s the most patriarchal, heteronormative thing under the sun? ’?”

Hazel picks up the glass he’s just finished pouring and gives it to Jonathan. “What about you, Jonathan? Do you like weddings?”

She’s doing her Jedi mind trick, diverting attention from herself, and once again doing it so successfully that Jonathan dives headlong into the topic.

“I love weddings—I can’t help it. I don’t even mind those that I’m sure will end in tears, as long as in that moment I can feel a sense of genuine hope and commitment. ”

This earns him a long look from Ryan.

“Hey, Conrad,” says Ryan, shifting his gaze. “Do you want to get married?”

Jonathan turns to see Conrad walking into the kitchen, in head-to-toe black like Hazel.

“Is that a proposal?” he replies casually. “I’ll think about it after you learn to load the dishwasher properly.”

Ryan chortles.

Conrad picks up one of the remaining glasses of prosecco from the island and turns to Hazel. “Can I show you the alcove, Hazel?”

He speaks to her in the same low, gentle tone, but Jonathan remembers the stupendous door slam from earlier.