Felix scooted closer. “Nell, if you just show her the prices we found, and tell her about the strange disappearances of all the other copies from the interinstitutional database, that would at least be enough to convince her the map is important, and worth protecting. She might even—”
“She did,” Nell said. “Practically offered it to me at the funeral, if I can deliver.”
“Your old job?”
Nell nodded.
“Nell, that’s great . . .” Felix started to say, but the words petered out when he saw her expression. Despite the good news, she looked as lost as she had the day of the Junk Box Incident. Confused, desperate. Vulnerable. A stab of sympathy in his chest caught him by surprise.
“I know it is. And I want it. More than anything. But I also wish I could figure more out before I have to turn it all over to her and the police, and let them take over,” she replied. “He was my father, you know? I just want to know why.”
“I understand,” he said softly.
She sighed. “It feels over, before it even began.”
He nodded. But that was a good thing, wasn’t it? One last favor for old, kind Swann, she’d said. Then they could go back to living their own lives. To never seeing each other again.
It was better that way. Wasn’t it?
To his astonishment, his hand was suddenly up, signaling the bartender to send them another round.
What was he doing? he cried inwardly.
Nell opened her mouth to say something, equally stunned, but the bartender was already pouring.
He waited tensely for her reaction as two fresh glasses thudded down in front of them. She’d been too late to cancel his order, but she could still get up and walk out anyway. No one could make Nell do something she didn’t want to do.
It was going to be bad, no matter what. He just didn’t know if it was going to be awkward excuses and false apologies about it getting late sort of bad, or laugh in his face sort of bad.
At last, she picked up her drink.
“Uh, thanks,” she managed.
They clinked rims, and Felix took his time with the beer, not sure what he should say. Nell was clearly feeling the same way. She wet her lips, only pretending to drink, so she could seem occupied.
The charade gave them a few seconds of acceptable silence, but eventually he was going to have to set his glass back down on the counter and come up with more conversation.
“Well, I still have two days until I have to meet Irene,” she finally said. “I can at least keep working on it until then.”
Felix was about to argue about the potential danger again—but then she took a sip. A real one.
“Well, how did it go with Ramona?” he asked, encouraged.
Nell turned to him slowly on her stool, and he was surprised at the expression on her face. She was so lost in the question that all of her guardedness had temporarily fallen away.
“It was the strangest thing,” she said. “She recognized me immediately when I came in. She said—she said that she’d known my father since his college days. And my mother, too.”
“What?” Felix cried. “Ramona Wu and your father, and mother, were old friends?”
“And a couple others, all from their university days. There were seven of them in total,” Nell answered. “I couldn’t believe it either.”
“Did she tell you anything useful about the map?”
“No,” she said. “I didn’t let on that I actually have it, given what we found online, but she didn’t want to tell me anything anyway. She was terrified, Felix. She kept trying to get me out of her shop, and then told me not to come back.”