Read Chapter 29: The Last Heist

Camille’s boots hit the wet concrete of the vault’s service entrance as Vasseur’s tactical team poured past her, rifles up, shouts echoing off the warehouse walls. She didn’t wait for orders. She moved on instinct, the stolen SIG Sauer heavy in her fist, her breath fogging in the pre-dawn chill.

The vault below was a charnel house of scattered canvas and splintered crates. The hit squad was gone—nothing left but shell casings and the acid reek of a hurried retreat. Vasseur bellowed for a perimeter sweep, but Camille was already at the back wall, where a loading dock gaped open like a wound. Tire tracks, still wet, ran toward the street.

“He’s running,” she said, not to anyone in particular.

She ran.

The van was a black box vanishing down the industrial strip, and she sprinted through the chain-link fence, her lungs burning, her legs piston-hard. She didn’t think about Ėlodie, or the hard drive, or the evidence. She thought about Étienne—his plane, his plan, his recklessness.

She reached the warehouse’s front lot and saw the unmarked car idling, keys in the ignition, door open. A uniformed officer was shouting at her, but she was already moving, wrenching the door shut and flooring the accelerator.

The airport perimeter was a fence and a hope. She drove straight at it, the car’s undercarriage screaming as it hit the ditch, and then she was through, bouncing across the tarmac, headlights catching the sleek silhouette of a private jet fifty meters ahead. Its stairs were down. Figures grappled in the spill of the cabin light.

Étienne had the ring leader by the collar, but he was losing the leverage—the man was taller, broader, and he drove Étienne back toward the fuselage with a brutal shove. Camille killed the engine and was out of the car before it stopped rolling.

“Camille!” Étienne’s voice cracked with surprise.

The ring leader turned. She saw his face for the first time: unremarkable, almost soft, the kind of man who blended into any room. He smiled at her, and there was nothing soft in the eyes.

“The little investigator,” he said. “And the forger’s ghost. How romantic.”

He had a knife. It flicked open in his hand as she closed the distance, and she didn’t slow. She knew his type, had seen it a hundred times in interrogation rooms: men who thought charm was armor.

He lunged. She sidestepped, not enough, the blade tearing across her jacket’s shoulder with a hiss of torn fabric. Then she was inside his guard, driving her palm up into his jaw, feeling the snap of his head back. He staggered, and she hit him again, in the throat this time, and he dropped to a knee.

Étienne was there, handcuffs in his fist—a set they’d lifted from the police evidence locker days ago, when the plan still seemed theoretical. He wrenched the ring leader’s arms behind his back and clicked the cuffs shut.

“You’ll never prove— ” the man started.

“We don’t have to,” Étienne said. “We have your vault. We have your ledger. We have your monster in the locket.”

Camille stood over him, chest heaving. Behind them, sirens began to wail, blue lights washing over the tarmac in slow, rhythmic pulses. She turned and saw Vasseur’s vehicles pouring through the broken fence line, their headlights turning the night to day.

The ring leader looked at her, and for a flicker, his mask slipped. She saw the calculation, the fear, the last desperate search for an exit.

She smiled at him. It was not a kind smile.

“The Caravaggio you spent a decade trying to flip?” she said. “I put a fire axe through it and called the police on myself to report you.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came.

The first officers hit the pavement at a run, Vasseur leading the charge, his face unreadable above his collar. Camille stepped back from the cuffed man and let the circus arrive.

For a moment, no one moved. Then Vasseur looked at the ring leader, looked at Camille, looked at the handcuffs already in place.

“You’ve got terrible timing, Moreau,” he said. “We had a raid plan.”

“Your plan left the back door open,” she said.

The corner of his mouth twitched. “So it did.”

He barked orders, and the ring leader was hoisted to his feet and marched toward the waiting cars. Camille sagged against the side of the jet, adrenaline draining out of her in one long, trembling wave. She felt the cut on her shoulder burn, the fabric sticky against her skin.

Étienne was beside her, breathing hard.

“You drove through a fence,” he said.

“You took a knife to a fistfight.”

“He had a bigger knife than I expected.”

She laughed, short and raw, and leaned into the warmth of his shoulder. The plane’s cabin lights flicked off behind them, the darkness swallowing its empty interior.

“Is it over?” she asked.

He didn’t answer right away. He looked back at the plane, then out at the line of police cars, the distant city glow on the horizon. The first faint stripe of gray was showing in the east.

“I don’t know what over looks like for us,” he said.

Camille let her head rest against him, just for a second. The sirens were quieting. The tarmac was filling with uniforms. Somewhere in a police evidence bag, she knew, was a locket with a microfilm that would end her father’s ghost for good.

“Then we’ll find out,” she said.