The Cartographers(85)

I shouldn’t have said it. I was trying to keep Wally distracted, but the words had the opposite effect. They replaced his confusion at finding me there with panic. He jerked his belongings to his chest guiltily. “It’s not what you think.” He pushed past me, desperate to escape.

Right toward where Eve was still struggling to cover herself.

“Wait,” I begged, giving chase.

“Leave it, Francis,” he said, running faster now. “You don’t understand.”

“No, you don’t understand,” I cried. “Wally, stop!”

Then Eve screamed.

I came around the corner to find her still huddled there. Mostly dressed, but not completely. Not enough to hide what we’d been doing.

Wally stared at us in openmouthed shock, unable to believe what he was seeing. His shoulders slumped, and his hands went loose, almost spilling everything he was holding across the floor.

He looked so horrified, so hurt. As if we’d betrayed him just as much as we’d been betraying Romi.

Maybe he was right.

“Wally,” I said weakly.

I thought he was going to run. To expose us to Romi, and the rest of the group. It was what we deserved.

But instead, he stared at his hands. At the map he was holding. Merely the latest one he’d found—or stolen, perhaps.

“You keep my secret, and I’ll keep yours,” he finally said.





XIX




“Felix. Felix.”

Felix blinked hard, trying to clear his eyes, but the screen continued to swim in front of him, a blur of out-of-focus words. “I’m fine.”

He prepared to keep arguing—to say that he wasn’t in shock, he didn’t need to go home, that what he needed was to keep digging until he understood what was going on—but he didn’t have to. A faint thud by his elbow made him look over.

“Thought you might need this,” William said, gesturing to the coffee mug. “I made a fresh pot.”

“Thank you,” Felix said gratefully, and drank as much as he could of the steaming brew while William sipped his more slowly. The office door opened again, and Naomi came back in carrying a pizza. It was almost midnight, but Felix’s stomach barely grumbled at the sight of the white-and-red-checkered cardboard box.

The story of Irene’s murder was all over the news now. Priya had put a live feed from a local television station up on the big screen, which was currently showing a mess of police cars, ambulances, and people in sparkling attire all huddled together on the steps between the two gigantic lion sculptures. They all looked shell-shocked, both terrified to be there but also unable to make themselves leave, even though they’d likely already been cleared by the police. Ainsley had arrived at the library too now and was answering questions about how Haberson’s library security would share everything they had with law enforcement, would spare no expense, and would not rest until justice had been served.

And somewhere inside, there was a paramedic team with a stretcher, draping a body bag over Irene Pérez Montilla’s lifeless body.

Felix shivered. He had just been there, he had just seen her.

So had Nell.

“Police finished another sweep and have confirmed again there are no other victims,” Priya said to him then, seeing his expression. Her meaning was clear. Nell and Swann were safe, wherever they were.

Felix nodded and glanced at his phone again, which sat silent on his desk. He’d been frantic, in those first moments after hearing the news, that Nell might have been with Irene when she was murdered, finally doing what he’d implored her to do all along, and had been attacked as well. It had taken all three of them to calm him down enough to tell him that the police were leaning heavily on Haberson for information about the event as they investigated, and that Haberson security had assured Ainsley, who then assured William, that there was only one victim.

He was still desperate to call Nell—but she and Swann were probably still giving their statements to police, and even more than that, he didn’t want to do it in front of his coworkers and boss. He wanted to talk to her alone, so he could apologize for starting the fight they’d had and could comfort her, let her cry or scream or be angry or afraid. None of that was possible hunched over a cell phone in the middle of his crowded office.

Besides, the best thing he could do now to make up for being such an ass to Nell—and to help her—was to focus on solving Irene’s murder.

As soon as he left, even if it was four in the morning, he’d call her or go over to her apartment. He’d sleep outside the door if he had to, until she had rested enough and woken up. Then he’d apologize and tell her everything he, Naomi, and Priya would have dug up tonight on Wally.

Because it had to be Wally. Even if Felix had no idea what Francis had meant by his nonsensical claim that Agloe was real, all three of Dr. Young’s friends were deathly afraid of the same person. That had to count for something.

“This is the third incident at the NYPL in a week,” Naomi said with a sigh, mystified. “And the most brazen of all. If only our security system was fully installed.”

“It was scheduled to take another week, but it will be done by tomorrow, I promise,” William said. “But at least we already finished affixing every piece of their inventory with our micro RFID tags.” He frowned as he looked at his tablet. “And it seems that nothing was taken this time, again. We don’t have our own movement data from the first murder, or the first break-in, of course, but if we accept the library’s security data from those two events, nothing was stolen either of those times, too.”