“Sure. We can put RFID tags in the books and on the patron’s library cards. Maybe—”
“I don’t care. Just do it.”
Doom pulled out her phone. “I’ve got to call some of my geek friends.”
Serenity waved her away. Joy, however, didn’t leave, and instead studied Serenity. “Going to be interesting to see how you’re going to ask Bentley to give you money for all this.”
Serenity looked toward the empty slab next door.
“We’re not. That’s the only thing I’m sure of. I found money in the books today to keep us alive, maybe for just a few days. I think it’s a sign. I’m going to do my best to make all of those dreams come true. I don’t give a damn what I have to do to find the money, but we’re not begging anymore. Let them stop the library big dogs if they can.”
Then she threw her head back and howled.
eighteen
trouble in paradise
“PRETTY GOOD SHOOTING, Marshall Dillon,” Serenity said. She was on the verge of falling asleep with Joe wrapped around her, and both of them wrapped up inside the after-sex glow. Safe. Warm. Happy.
Joe’s voice was sleepy-sexy, breathing soft in her ear. “We’ve got you to thank for that,” he said.
She giggled but it sounded more like a purr. “Not entirely. If I recall, there was a hand that wasn’t mine, and a mouth, and—”
“And they were all exactly where you said to put them, and exactly when. If you had played all prim-and-proper coy, you would have been asleep ten minutes ago.”
“And I would have missed out on number two, and number three, and—oh, number four was something special.”
The slow deep voice rumbled in her ear. “But who’s counting?”
She wiggled her hand onto him and purred. “They all count for me.”
“Again, you did it. We did it. Moments like these are the rewards we get for being honest and direct with each other.”
“Always honest,” she said, on the verge of slipping away to her dreams. “The one thing the Hammers and the Sweetblossoms had in common.”
Joe whispered, “You build on the right things, you get the rewards.”
“I like the rewards.”
She felt her eyes closing, a small smile on her face. Joe shifted and she knew he wasn’t quite as close to drifting off as she was.
He kissed her neck and laughed.
“All that energy tonight, Sweetblossum. What got into you?” He laughed again, lazy. “Other than…”
She mumbled her standard answer. “Another day.” It was usually enough to satisfy Joe. Joe’s cases—the ones he could talk about—were usually more interesting for them to discuss than anything that happened at the library.
But as she remembered her day, her eyes opened.
“Joe?” She felt safe and warm. “There’s something I need to get your opinion on. And some ideas. I kind of committed myself without knowing how to do some things.”
“Good time to ask. Right now, you know my answer to anything you want is going to be ‘yes.’”
“Well, maybe,” she said. “You spend all your time trying to catch people who do something wrong—at least wrong in the nice world of books. But some things are wrong, but not really wrong.”
Joe laughed. “I hear that from everybody I arrest. All the way from ‘pot should be legal’ to ‘he needed killing.’”
“I guess. But I’m not interested in that right now. The ones you don’t catch—how do they get away with it?”
There was a long silence. “You mean like, you want to know how to get away with murder?”
“No, not murder. Just—never mind. This wasn’t a good idea. I just kind of need to talk to my best friend Joe without other parts of him hearing.”
There was a shift and she heard his reading light click on. She buried her head into the pillow to shield her eyes.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he said.
She came out of her refuge and saw tightness around his mouth. “No, it’s like—never mind.” She snuggled up to his naked chest. “Let’s just go to sleep.”
He sat up straight and she slid off of him. “Which part of me do you want to go to sleep?” he asked. “The one you wanted to talk to, but now you don’t? Or the one you don’t want to talk to at all? You think I’m just supposed to roll over after that, and not even wonder what part of me you want to keep secrets from?”
She sat up now, feeling too vulnerable and naked to have this talk. She jumped out of bed and felt her breasts bounce in a way that would have felt sexy five minutes ago but felt exposed now. She pulled an Alabama football jersey out from under her pillow and stood on her side of the bed as she slid it over her head.
“Nothing,” she said. “There was nothing important I wanted to talk to you about. Just—shelves. At the library, I want to put up some shelves.”
“So you wanted to speak to the carpenter in me, but not the electrician?”
“Oh, for crying out loud, Joe. You get so—judgmental. I wanted to ask you one little thing without having to hear from Mr. Right and Wrong.”
Joe slid a tee shirt over his head, picked up a Michael Connelly book and waved it at her.
“The cop in this book says, ‘Everybody matters or nobody matters.’ It’s the same thing with right and wrong. All of it matters, or none of it matters. Right and wrong are all a man’s got—at least, it’s all this man’s got.”
“Damn your right and wrong.”
He tried to smile. It was weak, but it was an honest attempt. “Right and wrong, and my Sweetblossom. That’s all I’ve got, and I’m not giving up on any of them. We’ll work this out. Right now, I’m going to go sit out on the deck and read for a while.”
Then he was gone, and Serenity was standing by the bed, shaking.
nineteen
perchance to dream
SERENITY WAS DREAMING.
Her body wasn’t sleeping and her eyes were wide open, but her head was filled with dreams that she couldn’t shut off as she lay there, alone, in her bed.
She was running through the woods with Robin Hood and the Merry Librarians. With them, Bonnie and Clyde (the cool movie ones, not the nasty real ones) were robbing banks to fund Texas libraries.
Freedom fighter Serenity.
But her brain was awake enough to know she was dreaming. Only in books can you find that kind of weirdness.
In the darkness, she looked at the other side of the bed. No Joe-sized lump. And, if there had been, the chances were good that she wouldn’t be able to keep from sharing her secret with him.
Despite her dreams of glory, what did she have to share? A brief hour where she had hoped to make her library something more, something great? And for one hour, had the power to do a little of it, along with a promise she would do more.
And it was, you know, technically, illegal, which was why she hadn’t asked Joe to come back to bed.
She got up and looked at the clock. Three a.m. Saturday morning. She was too wired to sleep in her bed at home alone, too unsure of herself to try to find where Joe was.
She showered and drove to the library, puttered in the darkened stacks for a while, and then lay down on the three-legged couch in the storeroom/lounge and spent an hour tossing and turning. When she went back to her office she tried to work, but couldn’t focus.
Faulkner came out.
“Yeah, sure,” said Serenity. “What a joke. I find money to keep the old rattletrap open a little longer and I’m dreaming of—what? A library palace? More likely I’ll be running the prison library. At least there I’ll probably have a bigger budget.”