The Cartographers(33)

“You really have to go,” she finally said, spinning back toward Nell with such a tense, panicked look in her eyes that Nell faltered.

“Okay, okay,” she agreed, hands up in a gesture of surrender to mollify the older woman. She wanted to keep pushing for answers about the gas station map, but if she said any more, she worried she’d give herself away for sure. Ramona would know that it in fact hadn’t been destroyed, and that she had it. “Just tell me what he wanted you to find for him, and I’ll go.”

Ramona looked as though she was going to refuse, but finally, she hurried back to the counter and ducked behind it. Nell heard the sound of a dial turning and a heavy safe door swinging slowly open.

The older woman stood back up at last, holding a single envelope in her hands. “This.” She paused, then handed it over to Nell. “I shouldn’t give it to you, but . . . once someone’s gone, I know how much even the smallest tokens can mean.”

Nell looked down at the package in her grip. It was a typical manila envelope, plain and common. And just like her father’s portfolio, it felt light enough to likely contain only one sheet of paper. On the front, there was a short scrawl in a messy hand—she glimpsed her father’s name quickly, likely a note from the seller to him.

“You really do have to go now,” Ramona said quickly, before Nell could read the writing or open the flap, with a desperation bordering on terror.

“Whatever my father owed you for this,” Nell started to say. “Once his accounts are transferred to me—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ramona cut her off. “Consider it a gift.”

Nell nodded. “Well, thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” Ramona said, but it didn’t come out like a conversational pleasantry. More like a warning. “Just hurry. You’ve already been here too long.”

She had gone to the door and was holding it cracked open. She gestured for Nell to tuck the envelope into her bag, and Nell obliged, hiding it away. Ramona’s eyes combed the street outside like a deer scanning the woods for wolves at night, darting and desperate.

“Don’t ever come back here. For your own safety,” she said as Nell stepped out.

Nell shook her head. “I can’t promise that.” How could she, after finding out that Ramona knew both of her parents? “People say I’m even more stubborn than my father was. And you knew him well, apparently.”

She expected Ramona to insist further, but instead, the thin pink line of Ramona’s lips quirked into a shadow of a smile—the first one Nell had seen since she’d been there. “It wasn’t a request. It was a statement of fact,” Ramona said as she began to swing the door shut.

Just as the door closed, the click of the latch echoing heavily as it locked, Nell caught Ramona’s last words.

“You can’t find a place that doesn’t exist.”

What?

Nell put her hand up on instinct to shield her eyes from the sudden glare of morning light caught in the door’s glass panel and then moved closer to peer inside. “Ramona?” she called softly.

You can’t find a place that doesn’t exist?

What could that mean? Nell knew where the shop was. She was standing right there in front of it. Of course it existed.

She knocked lightly, hoping to ask Ramona what she’d meant by that last line, but the dealer was already gone from the front of the shop.

Nell took a step back, hesitant. She’s probably just busy, Nell thought. Right? But everything—Ramona’s unease, the strange connection she had to Nell’s mother and father, the way she’d checked the street before showing Nell out, as if afraid of something out there—was all too unnerving to ignore.

Slowly, Nell turned around and searched Doyers Street for the black Audi again, trying to look casual.

The road was empty. She let out a relieved breath. But it caught halfway in her throat as she looked farther down the way.

At the next intersection, there was a dark car parallel parked against the curb, with a person sitting inside.

Shit.

Her eyes darted to the wheel wells, to see if there was rust, but she couldn’t get a clear view from where she was.

And she wasn’t going to wait around to find out.

Nell turned and walked quickly down the sidewalk in the opposite direction, dodging pedestrians. She made a few random turns, and crossed and recrossed the street, heading deeper into Little Italy, until she was as sure as she could be that no one was following her, either on foot or in a car.

What had the driver looked like? She tried to remember, but the windows had been tinted, and she’d been in too much of a hurry to escape to recall.

On a whim, she ducked into a little coffee shop. There were just a handful of customers, all engrossed in their newspapers or phones, and the barista was chatting with the chef, unbothered that Nell didn’t seem to want to order anything.

She slid into a seat away from the windows, then pulled the envelope Ramona had given her out of her tote bag. Her eyes jumped to the scrawl on the front she’d noticed before.

Daniel,

I’m sorry for the delay. It took us much longer than expected to find a copy.

I hope this helps. Be careful.

Francis



Francis. One of the other friends from Ramona’s story.