Page 51 of The Librarians
Conrad looks back at Hazel, his amber gaze direct, forceful.
“My dad had the love of not only one but two good women, two great women in fact. And if you want to be a wanker and argue that maybe my mum was too successful, theirs was a starter marriage. By the time he began taking bribes, he’d been married to my stepmother for more than ten years.
She looked like a young Catherine Deneuve, was devoted to him, and had the most spectacular home-cooked dinners on the table every night.
And what did he do? Demanded palm grease to support a series of mistresses while she made sure everything was perfect at home.
“Your love would not have changed a thing for Kit. Maybe he felt poor being married to you, but trust me, he would have felt poor regardless. Because he looked down on himself and his family’s relative penury, and the cure for that was never yours—or anyone’s—to give.”
It takes Hazel a moment to understand that Conrad’s ire was aimed less at his father than at Kit—he is upset not for himself but for her.
But she is upset for him. “When did your father commit suicide?”
“A few months after Madeira.”
And she was able to meet a young man as of yet unmarred by scandal and tragedy. “Would you have told me this, under different circumstances?”
One corner of his lips lifts, a rueful smile. “Under different circumstances you’d still be married.”
“Well, you know what I mean.”
With his buzz cut, he couldn’t look more different from the boy she remembered from Madeira. He’s leaner, grimmer, and so much warier. But as he says, carefully, “Yes, I’d have told you—not so soon, but yes,” she is suddenly reminded of that younger, more trusting man.
Her phone buzzes. She grabs it. Astrid has texted.
That is the signal for Hazel to text her back, then Astrid would call and they would lay the groundwork for the much longer conversation they would have in the very near future, in Astrid’s house, where every word they speak will be transmitted to a remote listener.
That they will have to lure the hidden killer into the open has been obvious to Hazel since the moment Conrad pointed out that the intruder who entered Astrid’s place might have been there to install a few surveillance devices, in case Perry did find Kit’s cold storage and entrusted it to Astrid without her realizing its significance.
Or, should the intruder be desperate for further leads, of the two people connected to Kit’s crypto, Astrid lives in a place that is far easier to access: More than a dozen cameras keep watch over Hazel’s grandmother’s house; Astrid’s had, until recently, none.
So Hazel and Co. need to take advantage of the fact that—if spy gadgets have indeed been placed in Astrid’s condo—now they have a direct conduit to the intruder, who is most likely also the murderer of Perry Bathurst, Jeannette Obermann, and the homeless patron, bribed with a meal and a few dollars to make trouble for Perry, and then executed to avoid any leak.
Hazel’s phone rings. She takes it and goes out to her car.
When she was sure that the secret audience would be—or at least include—Kit, she’d planned to play up her fear of Tarik Ozbilgin, the supposed army medic who might have stuck a weaponized fentanyl patch on Perry.
To let Kit know that while they were not quite on him yet, they were getting close. And that he should act without delay.
But now that Kit has gone to his eternal rest in the stygian depths of the North Atlantic, and her words will be carried to the ears of a dangerous stranger, what should she say?
Most certainly not that she is frightened of Tarik Ozbilgin, especially if he’s listening.
She wants to lure him in, not to send him running or make him think he should kill her—or, God forbid, Astrid—to keep himself safe.
“Has Jonathan told you, by some chance, that I’m a widow?” she says to Astrid.
She doesn’t really hear Astrid’s response. Astrid must be surprised that she’s bringing up Kit, but Astrid is meant to be astonished, in any case. So Hazel presses on and dumps it all on Astrid, syllables spilling out too compressed and too fast.
Conrad stands guard outside the car, staring down into his phone, and lets himself in only after she hangs up.
“You okay?” he asks.
She doesn’t answer for a while. Anyway, who’s really okay? Everyone is just carrying on as best as they can. “So, Tarik Ozbilgin…”
“Madeleine sent an email about him just now.”
She turns toward him. In the little two-seater, there is hardly any distance between them. But the light from the front porch of the bar isn’t quite enough for her to make out his expression. She can only feel the leashed energy within him. “What is it?”
“She’s found him.”
“Already?”
“She has a buddy who is also army medical personnel and confirmed, after logging into something called”—Conrad glances down at his phone—“CHCS—Composite Health Care System—that there is a Tarik Ozbilgin, army medic, with the 10th Mountain Division. But when she looked up Tarik Ozbilgin’s social media profile, his timeline indicates that he hasn’t been anywhere near Austin around the time of Perry’s death—or within the past few years, for that matter.
Not to mention, he looks nothing like the man we saw in the video. ”
Her head throbs, from the coffee, the overload of information, and the dread that only bores ever deeper into her cortex. Her hand, of its own will, lands on Conrad’s forearm. “Then who is the man in the video?”