“No.” She shook her head. “I’m staying here with you. I don’t give a crap about the map. I only wanted it in the first place because I wanted to get back to the library again. But what’s the library without you in it?” she said to him, so the last thing running through his mind wouldn’t be a burning need to tell her to run with the map, to leave him to die alone, because what he was doing wasn’t important. That would be exactly something Swann would think. Even in his final moments, he would be caring about her, and not himself.
“Save . . . ,” Swann repeated.
“I don’t care about saving the map,” she said again to him.
But Swann shook his head. He was smiling now, as impossible as it seemed.
“Go, save . . .”
And then he was gone.
“Swann,” Nell whispered. She cradled his face. “Swann. Swann. Swann.”
Through the haze of her grief, she saw that Felix had also fallen to his knees, where he was still hostage beside Wally, crying, too. Ramona, Francis, and Eve were clutching each other in horror, and Humphrey was hovering over Nell, larger than she’d ever seen him, looking determined to take Wally’s next bullet if he dared aim at her.
But Wally was not looking at any of them at all. He was still staring at the map in Swann’s absent grip, its open face becoming lightly misted with rain, its back in danger of becoming stained with the spreading red if it stayed there much longer.
“The map,” he finally said. It was not a statement, but a command.
“Wally,” Ramona started, stepping forward, but he stopped her with the aim of his gun.
“Not you,” he said to her. “Or any of you.” His gaze returned to Nell. “It’s just going to be the three of us.” Himself, Felix, and Nell.
“Don’t you dare hurt her,” Humphrey said, still hovering over Nell. “I don’t care if there’s a map or not, if you so much as touch a hair on her head, I’ll—”
“You weren’t her only beloved adopted uncle, Bear,” Wally said, sneering. “The library was an accident. You know I would never hurt Nell. Never on purpose.” He glanced sidelong at Felix. “That’s what Felix is for.”
Nell thought she might faint from the horror of those words.
“Just the two of us,” she said, her voice cracking. “Let Felix stay here.”
“I’m not leaving you,” Felix argued, even as he flinched as Wally brought the gun back toward him. “Never again.”
She glared desperately at Felix, willing him to take it back, or make a break for it, to try to escape somehow. She had already lost Swann—she wouldn’t be able to bear it if she also lost him.
But Felix just glared desperately back at her, equally determined.
“The map,” Wally said to Nell. “Do it now, or I will.”
There was nothing left to try. She looked at the others who had come with her, and then took the map from Swann’s lifeless grip with shaking hands.
Slowly, blinking through her tears, her eyes found their way back along the winding roads to the place where they all were, in the pale green fields off County Highway 206, and moved toward the little white dot of a town that didn’t exist. She read the tiny name above it. Five letters that were the answer to the greatest secret she had ever known.
AGLOE.
“Nell,” Felix said then, his voice tiny.
“It has to be,” Nell murmured, her eyes still locked on the map. “It has to be here . . .”
“Nell.”
She looked up, and her heart almost stopped.