Read Chapter 27: The Perfect Decoy

The service shaft spat them out into a drainage culvert that ran behind the cosmetics warehouse, concrete slick with algae and the smell of old rain. Camille’s palm pressed flat against the wall to steady herself, her other hand gripping Élodie’s wrist so hard she could feel the girl’s pulse hammering through her own fingertips.

“Where’s Étienne?” Élodie’s voice was sandpaper-rough, stripped of its usual bravado. She looked smaller now, hollowed out by whatever sedatives Petiot’s men had pumped into her.

“He was right behind us—” Camille started, but the vault door’s hydraulic hiss echoed down the shaft behind them, followed by bootsteps on metal grating. Not Petiot’s security team. Those had been scattered when the Caravaggio went up in flame paste. No, these were heavier, more deliberate. Professionals.

She pulled Élodie deeper into the culvert, counting steps until they reached the rusted maintenance ladder she’d mapped from Étienne’s blueprints. Above them, a grate led to a service alley. Below them, the shaft fed into the warehouse’s storm drain system, which emptied into the Seine’s secondary canal half a kilometer east.

“Camille.” Élodie tugged at her sleeve. “He’s not coming.”

Camille listened. The bootsteps had stopped at the junction. Someone was giving orders in a low voice, words impossible to parse but the cadence unmistakable. Coordinated sweep. Flanking maneuvers.

“He’s drawing them off,” she said, the realization hitting her like a cold splash. Étienne had the hard drive—the audit trail that would bury Petiot and everyone who’d profited from Papa’s murder. He wouldn’t risk both of them being cornered together.

She pressed two fingers to her earpiece. “Étienne. Come back. We’re at the maintenance ladder.”

Static. Then, barely audible: “Keep moving. I’ve got company. I’ll lead them to the decoy point.”

The decoy point. Of course. He was already executing their contingency plan—the one they’d mapped out on the safehouse floor with charcoal and stolen hotel stationery. A classic misdirection: leave something valuable enough to make a search party stop and question what they were really after, while the true asset slipped out the side door.

“We need a Monet,” she muttered.

Élodie blinked at her, still groggy. “We what?”

“Petiot’s crew knows what we stole. They’ll expect us to run with the evidence. But if they believe we’re still in the vault, still trying to salvage the originals, they’ll commit everything to containing us.” Camille was already scanning the culvert walls. Nothing. She’d need something to forge with, something convincing enough to hold attention for the ten minutes they’d need to disappear.

She froze. The wreck of a Monet—one of the smaller ones, water lilies at dawn, too luminous to be real and too flawed to be Petiot’s work—had been in the crate stack nearest the shaft entrance. She’d passed it when helping Élodie climb out. It had to still be there, planted accidentally when they’d fled.

“Stay here,” she breathed, pressing Élodie against the wall. “Count to ninety. If I don’t come back, take the ladder up and run. Don’t stop for anything.”

Élodie grabbed her sleeve. “He’ll kill you if he finds you alone.”

“He’ll try.” Camille forced a grin she didn’t feel. “But your father taught me a few things about how the ring operates. It’s time I used them.”

She slipped back into the shaft before Élodie could argue, her limbs remembering the cold metal rungs from the descent. The vault was below, smoke still curling from the space where the Caravaggio had been. The hit squad would have moved to the center by now, looking for survivors, looking for evidence. What they wouldn’t expect was someone coming back.

The Monet forgery sat exactly where she’d marked it, a canvas of blues and golds that shimmered even through the haze. Good enough. She’d studied enough genuine Monets in her years on the insurance side to know what made collectors hesitate—the brushwork, the light, the way the signature sat just left of center. Petiot had kept this one because it was too good to destroy, but flawed enough to sell as a study rather than a museum piece.

Perfect.

She dragged it toward the shaft opening, positioning a fallen steel beam so the canvas gleamed through the gap. From the vault’s interior, it would look like a survivor attempting to salvage it. All she needed was for the squad to see it and commit.

Movement in the haze. Two men, silhouettes against the vault’s emergency lights, zeroing in on the gleam of canvas.

Camille didn’t wait to confirm. She shoved the painting further into the gap, heard a grunt of command from one of the men— *priority target, the artwork*—and hauled herself back down the shaft to where Élodie was already counting aloud.

“Forty-seven. That was fast.”

“They’re the greedy kind.” Camille grabbed her hand. “Move. We’ve got sixty seconds before they realize they’re chasing a fake.”

They took the maintenance ladder at a sprint, Camille counting rungs until her hands hit the grate. Below them, boots pounded toward the decoy. She shoved the grate open, hauled Élodie through, and they dropped into a narrow alley that reeked of rotting fruit and exhaust. The warehouse’s loading bay loomed ahead.

Camille’s phone vibrated. A text, no name. *Diversion active. North route. Bring her to the laundry bridge.*

“Your boyfriend?” Élodie asked, reading over her shoulder.

“The one who’s about to save our lives, yes.” Camille flagged down a motorcycle courier with a forged press badge and a wad of euros big enough to buy silence. He didn’t ask where she got the money, just handed over the helmet and pointed toward the river.

They drove north through streets that felt too quiet, too still. The air had that pre-dawn tension, when the city held its breath before the first Metro trains rumbled. Camille kept the throttle loose, weaving through delivery vans and early-morning bakery trucks until the laundry bridge—a disused rail crossing above the canal—rose into view.

Étienne was there, pressed against the railing, watching the road. Relief cracked through his face when he saw them, then hardened into something sharper. “You brought the decoy out?”

“You meant for them to find it,” she said, not a question.

“They’ll spend the next hour verifying it’s not a forgery. That gives us the canal route to the east checkpoint.” He pulled Élodie into a brief, hard hug. “You’re safe now.”

“You lied to me.” Élodie’s voice shook. “You told me you’d never let them take me.”

“I meant it.” He released her. “And I kept it. Come on.”

They moved along the canal path, single file, Camille between them. The hard drive weighed in Étienne’s jacket pocket, a hard rectangle against his chest. The plan was simple: reach the checkpoint at the canal lock, transfer to a water taxi, cross the city to the police station’s rear entrance, where an anonymous tip would summon Delorme. With the audit trail, she could clear her name, clear Papa’s memory, and bury Petiot in the same grave he’d dug for her.

Except the water taxi wasn’t there.

Camille checked the lock. Empty. No hull, no wake, no dockworker looking for a fare. Just still water reflecting the grey pre-dawn.

“Étienne. Your contact was supposed to—”

A shot cracked past her ear, chipping stone from the lock’s edge. She threw herself and Élodie behind a maintenance shed, the bullets following in a tight pattern that kicked up dust inches from their heels. Étienne returned fire with a handgun she hadn’t seen him produce until now.

“They didn’t buy the decoy,” he said, voice flat. “They’re using the infrared on the paintings. They knew the moment you swapped it.”

Camille’s mind raced. The vault’s security room had a thermal camera. Petiot would have flagged any room-temperature object moving through a space that should have been cleared. They’d been herded north, into this kill zone, the entire time.

“Then we go south.” She popped up, firing twice at the muzzle flashes, and grabbed Élodie’s arm. “Trust me.”

She turned to run and heard Étienne swear behind her. A moment later, the bike she’d abandoned on the bridge exploded in a bloom of orange, the blast wave knocking them off their feet. The courier’s helmet had a tracker. Of course it did.

Élodie was already running for the taxi stand at the far end of the canal. Camille followed, knowing that every step took them deeper into Petiot’s trap.

Then a second explosion detonated closer—not the bike, something else. Étienne’s body went limp mid-stride, and the hard drive fell from his pocket, skittering across the cobblestones.

The gunfire stopped.

Camille couldn’t see who had pulled the trigger, only that Étienne was down and Élodie was screaming and the drive—the drive Eliott had died for—was sitting in the open, waiting for whoever came to collect it.