Read Chapter 4: Debt Collector

The luggage car smelled of diesel and damp cardboard. Mercer stepped over a collapsed suitcase and scanned the narrow aisle between stacked crates, his torch beam cutting through the dim fluorescence that buzzed overhead. Camille moved behind him, her footsteps light but deliberate.

“Two minutes to the French platform,” she said. “If Vernet’s not here, we abort and let the DGSE handle the fallout.”

Mercer didn’t answer. He was already looking at the shape on the floor between two cargo racks—a dark heap that didn’t belong among the luggage. His torch caught the navy blue of a Eurostar attendant’s uniform. The man lay on his back, arms splayed, head turned at an angle that was wrong in every way that mattered.

“I found him,” Mercer said quietly.

Camille stepped past him, crouched, and pressed two fingers to the attendant’s neck. She didn’t need to say anything. The pallor of the skin, the fixed stare, the faint sheen of bruising along the jaw—Renard had been dead for a while.

“He’s one of the train staff,” she said. “I saw him at the platform in Calais.” She stood, wiping her fingers on her trousers. “Someone needed his uniform. And his keys.”

Mercer’s eyes moved over the body. No visible wound. The bruising on the jaw suggested a single, efficient strike—or a chokehold applied from behind. Whoever did this knew what they were doing. Professional. Fast.

He knelt beside the body and went through the pockets with practiced economy. Wallet, empty of cash. A schedule card. A set of keys on a ring stamped with the Eurostar logo. And in the breast pocket, something thin and rectangular that caught the light—a playing card.

Mercer pulled it out.

Queen of hearts.

The edges were worn, the face slightly faded, but there was no mistaking the faint pencil mark in the corner. A tiny “F” scrawled in ink that had long since bled into the cardstock. Henri Fournier’s signature. His calling card. Left on bodies like a fingerprint, a taunt that followed every job he’d ever done.

Mercer’s chest tightened. He stared at the card for a moment longer than he should have.

“What is it?” Camille asked. She was watching him with that sharp, assessing look she’d worn since the compartment. Suspicion flickered behind her eyes.

Mercer turned the card over, made a show of examining it, then slipped it into his own pocket. “Nothing. A train card. Probably fell out of his wallet.” He stood, brushing dust from his knees. “Keys are here. Whoever took his uniform must have dropped them when they moved him.”

Camille’s gaze lingered on his pocket for a beat too long. She didn’t believe him. That was clear. But she didn’t push—not yet. Instead, she gestured to the body. “We need to report this. The conductor has to be informed.”

“If we do that, we lose the element of surprise.” Mercer shook his head. “Someone wanted access to the train. They got it by taking Renard’s place. That means there’s at least one person on this train wearing a dead man’s face.”

“Or one person wearing his uniform,” Camille said. “You’re assuming they’re still aboard. The window in the compartment was tampered with. You said so yourself—someone could have gone out through the maintenance hatch and left.”

Mercer shook his head again, slower this time. “Vernet didn’t leave. She was taken. And whoever took her needed a way off this train after they did it. They wouldn’t leave before reaching the other side. Too risky. Too many eyes.”

“So they’re still here,” Camille said. “On a train that’s about to dock in France.”

Mercer glanced at his watch. Ninety seconds. Maybe less. The train would be braking soon, the lights in the car flickering with the power change as they emerged from the tunnel proper into the approach tracks of the French terminal.

He looked down at Renard’s body, then at the luggage car around them. Stacked crates, suitcases, a bicycle boxed in corrugated cardboard. There were dozens of places to hide in here. But the luggage car was also the only place on the train where someone could move without being noticed. The attendant’s uniform gave them access to every compartment—and the keys gave them access to everything else.

“Wait,” Camille said. She was staring at the body. “His name tag. It’s missing.”

Mercer looked. The breast of the uniform was bare where a name badge should have been pinned. Whoever took the uniform had been thorough. They’d stripped the identifying details, but they’d left the body here, in the luggage car, where it would be found. Either they were sloppy, or they wanted it found.

Or they were still in the car and hadn’t had time to move it.

Mercer’s hand drifted to the holster under his jacket. He swept the beam of his torch across the far end of the luggage car, past the stacked crates, past a trolley of mail bags, to a door at the rear that led to the service corridor. The door was slightly ajar.

“We’re not alone in here,” he said quietly.

Camille moved her hand to her own weapon, a compact SIG she carried in a hip holster concealed by her blazer. Her eyes traced the same path Mercer’s had. “You’re certain?”

“The door wasn’t open when we came in.”

They stood frozen for a moment, the hum of the train’s engines filling the silence. Then Mercer advanced, moving low and fast toward the door, his torch swept to the side so he wouldn’t telegraph his position. Camille mirroring him on the other side of the aisle, her footsteps silent against the steel floor.

Mercer reached the door and pressed his back against the wall beside it. He motioned to Camille, then shoved it open hard with his shoulder—

The corridor beyond was empty. Fluorescent light buzzed, flickering. A service cart sat abandoned halfway down, stacked with linen and mini bottles of water. The corridor turned at the end, leading toward the first-class cabins.

But there was something on the floor. A small object, glinting.

Mercer crouched and picked it up. A silver cufflink. Matching the one he’d found in the sealed compartment. Engraved with the same three letters—HLF.

He turned it over in his palm, his breath catching slightly. He didn’t need to hide this one. He’d already shown her the first. But he knew what it meant now. Whoever was wearing Renard’s uniform had been in Vernet’s compartment. They’d dropped the first cufflink there, and they’d dropped this one here, in the corridor, as if leading them along.

No. As if herding them.

“It’s a trail,” Mercer said. “Someone wants us to follow.”

Camille came up beside him, eyes on the cufflink. “Why?”

“Maybe they want an audience.” Mercer slid the cufflink into his pocket—the same pocket as the card. “Or maybe they want us exactly where they need us.”

“And where is that?”

“The service corridor runs the length of the train.” Mercer looked up, tracing the line of the ceiling. “It connects to every car. Whoever has Vernet could be anywhere by now.”

“Or Vernet could still be in the luggage car,” Camille said. “You said yourself—there are a dozen hiding places in there. We found Renard, but we barely searched the rest.”

Mercer knew she was right. The luggage car had a false floor in some models, maintenance access panels that ran along the undercarriage. He’d read the schematics years ago, back when he’d trained on Eurostar routes. There was enough clearance under the floor for a person to lie flat, tucked between the service conduits and the chassis. It would be an uncomfortable ride, but doable—especially if you had someone on the inside who could open the hatch.

And the only people who could do that were the train staff.

“We need to find the conductor,” Mercer said. “Whoever took Renard’s uniform is posing as one of the crew. That means they have access to every carriage, every key, every maintenance panel—and they can get off this train in France without raising a single alarm.”

The train lurched. Brakes engaged, the pitch of the wheels changing as they began the long braking approach toward the terminal. Outside the corridor windows, the walls of the tunnel gave way to the first concrete slabs of the approach tracks. The lights of the French terminal were visible in the distance.

Three minutes. Maybe less.

“Three minutes isn’t enough,” Camille said. She looked at him, and this time the suspicion in her eyes was undisguised. “You’re not telling me everything, Mercer. I saw your face when you found that card. You recognized it.”

Mercer held her gaze. For a moment, he considered telling her. Henri Fournier. The name he hadn’t spoken aloud in four years. The partner who’d died in a Paris safehouse fire—or hadn’t. The man who owed Mercer a life debt that had never been repaid.

But the card was in his pocket, and the cufflink was in his pocket, and both of them pointed to a man who was supposed to be dead.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “A mistake. Now move—we need to reach the conductor before we dock.”

He started down the corridor, and Camille fell in behind him. He could feel her eyes boring into his back, and he knew, with the certain knowledge of a man who’d spent a career lying, that she didn’t believe him for a second.