“I’m trying not to let my imagination blow it out of proportion,” Nell finally allowed.
“Hey.” He pointed at the clock above them. “It’s five o’clock.”
Finally! She jumped up as Humphrey disappeared toward the printer room, chuckling to himself. She fixed her hair, cursing its unruliness, and then shoved everything from her desk back into her bag. Makeup, keys, phone—and her father’s portfolio.
She glanced over her monitor to make sure Humphrey was still around the corner, and then slowly held the portfolio up in front of her.
This was it. She touched the warm, supple leather. As hard as it was for her to let go, this was the end of her investigation. All she had to do was turn over the map to Irene, let the police take over looking for Wally, and put the whole thing from her mind. After all, she’d have plenty to concentrate on in its place: negotiating the terms of her return to work at the library, giving her notice here at Classic, and reclaiming her life and her career.
And her relationship with Felix.
A grin had crept onto her lips yet again, she realized, and she desperately forced it down before Humphrey returned.
Poor Humphrey. Even though Classic was not the right place for her, she still owed him so much. He’d given her a job when no one else would and tolerated her endless complaining about their products for seven long years. Maybe she could work something out with Swann to send him scans of some of the library’s maps he didn’t already have in his inventory, to spare him the expensive licensing fees. That was the least she could do—she’d have to think of more.
It was still hard to believe that after tonight, she might no longer be just a design technician for knockoff art. And all she had to do was the easiest thing in the world—nothing. Just hand over the gas station highway map. The Agloe map, as she’d started thinking of it now that she knew its secret.
Her gaze drifted down to her desk—where she realized she’d been doing it again. Doodling little fragments of the Agloe map on her drafting paper throughout the day, as if by instinct. Like it was a part of her, a map she’d created herself and knew by heart, rather than something she’d found.
If only she’d had more time. Not just to figure out the mystery behind it, but also to have been able to draw the whole thing herself. A copy just for her. She craved that almost as much as she craved the answers to her questions, for some reason. To trace every line and road onto her own paper, with her own hand, to draft every town, especially Agloe . . .
No. She had to let go.
Even if what she was letting go of was the very thing that sparked the Junk Box Incident. Even if she’d just found the phantom settlement on it. And even if she was closer to understanding the whole mystery, and maybe her father, than she’d been in her entire life. So close she could almost taste it.
She knew what she had to do.
“Nell?” Humphrey called, startling her.
Quickly, Nell crumpled the draft paper, threw it in the trash, and shoved the portfolio into her bag. As she hurried, she took one of the stiff white Classic envelopes they used to mail smaller customer maps and jammed it into the middle of her towering in-box, so her desk was completely clear.
“You’re still here?” he asked as he came back around the corner, holding an armful of freshly printed budget reports.
“I’m leaving now,” she said, standing up and hefting her bag onto her shoulder.
“Well, have fun. And be careful.”
Be careful? Nell cocked her head.
“Sorry,” he chuckled. “I listened to my dad say it to every one of those four sisters every time they left the house. Just slipped out.”
She smiled. “I’ll be fine. It’s the New York Public Library, not an underground club or something.”