Page 56 of The Librarians

She clips her Glock back into the holster strapped across her chest. “Why are you telling me all this?”

She hears a shrug, a push-and-pull of fabric against weapons, ammo, and communications equipment. “Isn’t the moment before mortal danger the time to lay out stuff like this?”

Her phone is on the floor beside her, counting down. Ten seconds remain before “she” discovers the yearbook, which Madeleine found in her deep dive on Hazel’s life in Austin—all part and parcel of Conrad’s quest for information earlier in the year.

“Are you expecting a response before mortal danger hits?” she asks, after the countdown disappears from her phone screen.

“No need. It’s enough that you know.”

But what does she know, exactly? And why doesn’t he want a response?

Because it is an end, rather than a new beginning , warns the fatalist part of her.

“If we survive tonight…” she says—and doesn’t know how to continue.

“Someone’s approaching,” comes Jonathan’s abrupt whisper.

Hazel is light in the head and heavy everywhere else.

Conrad turns on his microphone. “Roger. Be careful out there.”

Then he turns off the microphone, pulls Hazel close, and kisses her on the forehead. “You’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.”

Jonathan’s feet went to sleep a long time ago. The rest of him is jumpy and over-caffeinated.

The recording has just finished playing. “Hazel” is about to call the hacker she worked with before, to “verify” whether the made-up sixty-four-character string could be the private key to Kit Asquith’s blockchain fortune.

It’s now or never.

In the infrared view on his phone, a figure dashes out from the apartment complex, its heat-emitting windows brightly lit against dark cold bricks.

There are no walls or fences around the cluster of generic three-story buildings.

The moving figure, face and hands losing the most heat, swerves around a clump of blackish trees, leaps down a low retaining wall, and runs over the small depression that serves as storm drainage between the apartment complex and the library.

“Someone’s approaching,” Jonathan whispers into his headset.

He darkens his phone. It has served its purpose and is best put away so that it won’t give away his location. But without it, he, on his stomach atop the extended front porch of the library, is blind.

Footsteps come to a stop directly below him. Silence, then the front entrance opens with a pneumatic hiss as loud as a train whistle.

Jonathan’s heart pounds. This would be the moment a Star Wars character declares, I have a bad feeling about this.

The operation isn’t set up quite the way Jonathan wants it.

Not that he is an expert on police maneuvers, but he would have allocated both more manpower and more equipment.

Maryam wanted the same. But Detective Hagerty insisted that the entrapment be conducted with as few personnel as possible, to avoid alerting those they wish to catch.

And he got his way thanks to his seniority and pull within the department.

So Hagerty and his partner are staking out the suspects’ apartment. Leaving only Maryam and Detective Jones, her partner, to face an extremely dangerous individual.

Jonathan forces his thoughts out of their dark spiral. It will be fine. Maryam and Detective Jones are both seasoned cops. They will handle it. It will be over in the blink of an eye and then they can all go home.

How long has the intruder been in the library? Ninety seconds? Two minutes?

He imagines the intruder listening outside the storage room and then slowly pushing open the door. He would see someone in a hooded jacket with their back to him, and a genuine yearbook from a quarter century ago on their lap.

“Give me that if you don’t want to die.”

Jonathan’s teeth clench. Finally.

“Drop your weapon and put your hands behind your head. You’re under arrest,” comes Maryam’s cool voice.

Silence.

“Don’t look so surprised,” she continues. “Hunters can become prey, too.”

Her breezy confidence is reassuring. Still, Jonathan’s heart revs at a dangerous rpm. Adrenaline floods him; he digs the toes of his boots into the top of the porch to hold still.

“Fine, so I walked into it, I’ll give you this,” answers a man’s voice. He speaks fluent English and sounds British, but with an undertone of elsewhere.

That’s a capitulation, right? Is it all over except for the handcuffing and eventual fingerprinting?

“But I didn’t come unprepared,” continues the man.

“Your flak jacket and tactical masks are all well and good, but the carfentanil in this tranquilizer gun doesn’t require hitting the heart or even any major arteries.

Look at your colleague’s big, strong, undefended thighs.

If my finger slips, he’ll be dead by the time you finish talking to an emergency dispatcher. ”

Jonathan’s ears ring.

“Now, both of you,” says the man, a trace of smugness in his voice, “put down your weapons, hands behind your heads.”

By the lack of a subsequent scuffle, Jonathan has to assume that the detectives have complied.

Shit. This is what he was afraid of. But at least Hagerty and Gonzalez are close by. They will come to their colleagues’ aid, right?

“Now walk,” says the man. “You, lady, two steps ahead of me.”

“There’s a vehicle moving in the apartment complex,” Conrad speaks in Jonathan’s ear, his voice low and tense. “Might be our guy’s partner in the getaway car.”

Why didn’t Hagerty and Gonzalez stop the driver of the getaway car? What are they doing?

Hagerty’s voice booms in his ear. “Individual in the gray Honda CRV, Texas license plate BVF 7725, is highly armed.” He sounds panicky. “I repeat, individual in the gray Honda CRV is highly armed.”

Fuck. The guy in the library will most likely use one of the detectives as hostage and human shield until he makes a successful escape—and the highly armed individual in the SUV has practically guaranteed that escape.

The thought of an unconscious Maryam being kicked to the side of some desolate stretch of I-10 is bad enough, but what if they don’t let her live?

“Tell your guys outside not to be stupid,” says the man.

“My partner and I came alone,” answers Maryam. She might be quaking in her boots, but her voice is even, if flat. “There’s nobody else here from the force.”

The man snorts in derision. “And where is Hazel Lee?”

“At home. We drove her Miata here.”

The CRV nears the exit of the apartment complex and disappears behind some utility buildings.

Conrad comes around the side of the library at that exact moment—thank goodness they disabled the alarm on the emergency exits in case anyone had to leave during the wait. He sprints to Hazel’s Miata, and crouches down.

The CRV covers the scant hundred feet of road distance between the driveway of the apartment and the entrance into the library’s parking lot, banking two sharp left turns in succession.

The sliding doors underneath Jonathan hiss again, opening.

His heart migrates to his throat, each beat a hard thump against the base of his skull.

Being atop the porch gives him a certain amount of surprise factor, but he can’t see anyone until they emerge from under the structure—and if he crawls too far forward, he might be seen by the driver of the getaway car.

Maryam is the first to become visible, her hands behind her head. She looks toward the CRV, then back at her partner, careful not to glance up toward Jonathan.

The CRV draws closer. The driver’s-side window rolls down; a dark muzzle sticks out.

Detective Jones and his hostage taker step into view, the tranquilizer gun held much too close to his neck. Jones also happens to stand between the Miata and the man, making it difficult for Conrad to take shots.

Jonathan exhales and squeezes the trigger. Dark blood blooms on the back of the man’s left hand. He screams and drops the pneumatic device.

The muzzle from the SUV sprays bullets—Jonathan’s silencer is good but in real life a shot is never soundless and now he has revealed his location.

He scrambles back, sliding on his stomach, then rolls toward the edge of the porch.

Shots erupt like dozens of champagne bottles popping, overlaid by the shattering of glass, grunts, more screams, and the sickening crunch of fist on bone.

He drops down behind the second of the two brick pillars to the side of the entrance.

Conrad, firing from behind the Miata, has forced the driver of the getaway vehicle to scoot out the passenger-side door to use its bulk as a shield—only a few jagged bits of glass still cling to the cowl of the SUV’s windshield.

On the ground, Jones crawls, dragging one leg behind him. Maryam and the man grapple over a handgun in the man’s uninjured hand. Even though he has only one good hand, Maryam is barely holding even. Worse, she has her back to the Miata and Conrad would have to shoot through her to get to the man.

Jonathan is in a much better spot. But no sooner does he peek out than a barrage of fire forces him behind the safety of the brick pillar again. A few feet behind him the glass panels of the library’s sliding doors crack and crash in a shower of shards.

Jonathan tries again. The muzzle raises from behind the CRV. But this time, Hazel, who materializes from nowhere, slams the butt of a handgun into the driver’s temple. The driver cries out in pain—a woman!

Before the woman can react, Hazel pistol-whips her again, grips the assault weapon in her hands, and kicks her in the chest. The woman goes down with a grunt.

Jonathan, belatedly coming out of his astonishment, takes aim and lands a shot to the man’s arm.

But his partner’s peril must have pumped the man full of adrenaline.

He wrenches the handgun free from Maryam, shoves her in Jonathan’s direction, and uses the second he buys himself to run toward the back of the CRV.

If he rounds it, Hazel will be exposed!

“Watch out!” Jonathan screams.

But Conrad is already by Hazel’s side, firing at the man.

The man goes down. Jonathan is astonished. At that angle and with nearly the whole of the CRV between them, Conrad’s rounds shouldn’t have been able to do much beyond stalling the man’s approach.

Jonathan stares at the downed man. And only then does he see the tranquilizer dart sticking out from his calf—and the pneumatic device, now in Detective Jones’s hand.

The chaos isn’t over. Hazel holds the woman down on the ground, her knee on the latter’s spine; Conrad shouts for handcuffs.

Maryam throws him a pair even as she cries out for bandaging for Jones.

On rubbery legs, with the siren of oncoming police backup in his ears, Jonathan sprints into the library in the direction of the first aid kit, grabs it with trembling hands, and runs back out.

He pants hard, his heart pumps wildly, he can barely feel his fingers, and he worries that he might pass out. But what a wonderful rush of euphoria and relief—the worst of the danger is over.

They have made it.