Page 109 of The Librarians
“They would have been told to buckle in and hang on while the planewas in free fall. The two forensic pathologists I spoke to in the UK agreed that all the passengers would have died instantly upon impact—at sufficient velocity, hitting water is almost the same as hitting land.”
Everyone wants an instantaneous death, if death must come, but who would have chosen the panic, chaos, and utter loss of control of a plane crash? Had Kit realized what was about to happen? Or had he been too stunned by the sudden development in what should have been a routine small-plane flight?
She clasps a hand around her upper arm. “After my dad died, I had a hard time, because I was convinced that if he’d survived, at some point he and my mom would have reconciled. His death destroyed that possibility. Kit also has no more possibilities left—he will always be known first and foremost as a financial criminal who died while trying to escape justice.”
Conrad is silent for some time. “How’s your mum, by the way? On Madeira you said she wanted to protect you from life itself. I imagine she did not take kindly to Kit’s misdeeds.”
This is a rather Asian question, inquiring after the parent of an acquaintance, a parent he’s never met. “She’s still furious at Kit. She’s even angry at her parents because they were the ones who most wanted me to settle down.”
“I must be getting old,” he says. “Of everyone involved, she’s the one I really feel for.”
His comment startles Hazel into laughter, a much-needed release after the oppressive underwater footage.
“I should leave soon,” she murmurs after a minute. “You probably have a lot of work.”
“I do, but I’ve shoved it off to my assistants.” He runs his fingertips along a row of purple asters and peers at her from beneath his eyelashes. “Would you like to stay for lunch?”
After ramping up her heart rate and unleashing a flood of wild sensations in her, Hazel’s dream lover does not proceed to seduce her but instead informs her that he must examine the contents of Perry’s phone—apparentlybefore Perry’s parents sealed the phone for APD, they allowed Conrad’s people to extract its data.
Hazel chooses to go over videos accumulated by Nainai’s DIY security system: Now that she knows she must be of interest to the same person who installed surveillance devices in Astrid’s condo, it behooves her to double check whether Nainai’s cameras might have caught someone lurking.
At first she doesn’t think she’ll get any real work done, with Conrad in the same room. But they settle on the opposite ends of the two extra-long sofas and after a while, she becomes absorbed in her task.
Lunch is country pâté sandwiches on good, generously buttered bread, accompanied by a small bowl of crispy cornichons. Conrad slices two pears for their dessert. After lunch he simply goes back to his work; Hazel, who is again pondering the question of her departure, hesitates a moment then does the same.
She comes across the video of herself sashaying down Nainai’s catwalk two nights ago, just before the first time she visited Conrad’s house, and smiles a little. Maybe she’ll download the video and send it to her mom at some point, if Nainai hasn’t already done so.
The next one is from the same night, of Nainai voguing as she slides into the camera frame, blue steeling as if she gave birth to not only a doctor and two engineers but also Zoolander himself. This one Hazel will definitely save.
Between spring and autumn of this year, Nainai seems to have shrunk a whole inch in height. She walks slower, the rims of her eyes are always dry and red, and her hair is so sparse that half of her scalp is visible. Hazel wants to hang on to every piece of evidence that Nainai’s heart is still as young as ever and her zest for life just as undimmed.
“My God,” exclaims Conrad.
She looks up. “What is it?”
“I went through Perry’s camera roll on my way back from London, but at the time I didn’t even notice this.”
He comes over with his laptop, places it on the wide armrest next to her, and crouches down beside it. Her gaze strays to his hair. Her fingers dig into the sofa’s cushion. She wants to rub the inside of her wrist against hisbeautiful, bristly skull; instead, she wrenches her attention to the pixels he wants to show her.
The image is that of Astrid, smiling widely, her eyes shining. The date indicates that the photo was taken during Perry’s first visit to Austin, back in spring. Astrid, in a floral dress and a cute, matching coral cardigan, leans over the back of a chair in the library’s reading area. Behind her, standing by the DVDs, looking over his shoulder, is none other than the man who tried to pass himself off as Tarik Ozbilgin.
Hazel grips the edge of the screen.
“Madeleine has been trying to find the fake Tarik Ozbilgin,” says Conrad, “but she says Google changed something and reverse image search isn’t what it was. It used to be a piece of cake for her to figure out for her clients if someone they met online was catfishing; these days it’s a matter of luck. Let me send this one to her and see if it gets her better results.”
He takes the laptop and rises to his feet.
“Is—is he the one, then?”
The one who killed Perry Bathurst, and possibly two other people? The one they are trying to entrap?
Conrad does not answer her question. He only says, “When the time comes, I’ll stay with you.”
To distract herself from the onslaught of fear, Hazel goes back to watching clips recorded by Nainai’s motion-activated cameras. And deletes what feels like a hundred raccoon clips in a row—as if she can obliterate all the dangers barreling toward her by getting rid of useless pixels from the past.
A much longer video coming up the queue snares her attention. Usually the clips are three to five seconds—wildlife don’t stay in frame very long—or ten to twenty seconds—the amount of time needed by most delivery personnel to move into camera range, set down their loads, and move out of range again. But this one is over a minute in length.
In the clip a lithe, tanned blonde woman approaches the house holding a stack of paper. She spies the camera and studies it for a moment. Then she reaches out a hand to press the doorbell, just out of view.
