She shuffled to the last page of the diary, then looked up at the two of them.

“Thomire believed the clue to this second part could be found in a book Revere carried with him everywhere. When Revere passed away, just a few years later, the book also ended up in the library in his house, but Thomire never made it back to the Americas to retrieve it.”

“So, this is a dead end,” Nick said.

Hailey didn’t answer. He could see she was thinking the same thing. But Adrian was still looking at the eagle, and his hands seemed uncomfortable against the shiny material of his bicycle tights.

“What sort of book?” he asked.

Hailey glanced up at him.

“Thomire only calls it ‘le livre avec la couverture rouge.’”

Adrian was silent. Hailey seemed to be reading his face.

“You know where it is.”

Adrian ran a hand through his Medusa-like hair.

“This is more poppycock. Foolishness.”

“But you do.” Nick could feel Hailey’s excitement from a few feet away. “Can you take us there?”

“You’re fugitives,” Adrian said, suddenly pulling his gaze away from the eagle. “Criminals.”

Nick put a hand on his shoulder. Not hard, just to get his attention. Nick wasn’t an educated man, like Adrian, but at the moment, he could make an educated guess.

“You want to know the truth about this eagle as much as we do.”

Adrian looked at Nick’s hand, then reached up and removed the offensive appendage.

“I know the truth. My colleague was chasing fairy tales, and so are you.”

Still, he didn’t walk away.

“Fine. Yes, I think I do know where we can find ‘the book with the red cover.’ But we’re going to need to get across town. I assume neither of you brought your bicycles.”

Hailey was suddenly up on her feet. Nick pulled her aside.

“And you’re sure about this?”

“A few hours ago, we were sitting on half a billion dollars in art. Now we’ve got a bronze eagle that might get us enough to pay for the lawyer we’ll need to beat a homicide rap. But if Thomire was right—you could pay for a lot of lawyers with a working philosopher’s stone.”

Nick nodded. He didn’t like the idea of following Adrian—someone he didn’t know—but the professor did seem to be an expert on the facts surrounding the eagle, Revere, all of it. And as Nick had surmised before, if the man had wanted to turn them in, he would have done so already. He had no reason to help them beyond his own selfish quest to understand what was going on—but on this, they were aligned.