<This has to be a setup. You have to tell the police about Wally, before he uses this to find you.>
He hesitated, but then at last added:
<I’m so sorry about earlier. Please let me know you’re okay.>
After he sent the third message, he looked up at William, who was studying him intently, as if watching Felix could help him understand what was going on better than even his own tablet.
“The Haberson Map is wrong,” Felix said.
“Felix . . .” Naomi hesitated. “I can’t imagine how you must feel, but the amount of data the map has, the places it can pull from and the probabilities it can run . . .”
“It’s wrong this time,” he insisted. “I can explain.”
“I think first, you need to call the police,” William replied. “At the very least to tell them you just messaged her. The Haberson Map has already pushed its search results to them—they’re going to be looking for her. If they find your communication in her cell records before you disclose it, you could become a person of interest in the case.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Felix said, even though he knew William was right. “I had nothing to do with this!”
“I know. But they don’t. And if it’s true that you were trying to rekindle your relationship, it could come across as suspicious,” William continued, as diplomatically as he could.
“And you both worked at the library before,” Priya added. “They could argue that you both would have known the Map Division’s pre-Haberson security systems inside and out.”
“You have a great job now, but they could argue that if she was still bitter about her termination all those years ago, and you had recently gotten back together . . .”
“No.” Felix groaned. “Stop. Just stop.”
He was becoming more desperate by the minute. The truth was that in the right light, Nell did seem horribly suspicious. But he knew it couldn’t be true. He’d seen the confusion on her face the first night he’d gone to her apartment and seen the Agloe map—it was as intense as his own. He’d heard no trace of dishonesty in her voice each time they’d met after that, as her findings became more and more strange. She was as lost and innocent in all of this as he was.
And now, with a target on her back, she was in even more danger than she had been before. If the police arrested her, Wally would know exactly where she was, and where the map was. If he could break in to the New York Public Library, could he break in to a court room, or a prison? Could he have been the one to cast suspicion on her in the first place?
“Felix . . . ,” Naomi began.
“It cannot be true,” he murmured. He looked up at her. “I know Nell, Naomi. I know her.”
William cleared his throat gently. “Sometimes, people can be not what they seem.”
Felix shook his head, refusing to believe it. His phone buzzed in his hand at the same moment, catching his attention. “Look,” he said, relieved. “That’s her now.”
But when he held up the screen, the notification wasn’t a reply from Nell. It was an alert that his messages had been kicked back to him, a little red X next to each one, indicating they hadn’t been delivered to her phone, because it was unreachable.
Huh?
Had Nell . . . had she . . .
Had she blocked his number to avoid him?
There’s no “we” anymore, he’d said to her, in the heat of the moment. He’d wanted out of everything—her investigation, her obsession with the map, her life.
You got what you asked for.
Hadn’t he?