Read Chapter 3: A Phantom's Trail

The fluorescent hum of the records room was the only sound for the first hour. Camille had pulled every file the company kept on Le Fantôme—seven thefts across four cities, spanning six years. Each one a different house, a different insurer, a different artist. The only constants: no prints, no fibers, no witnesses, and a white calling card left behind with a single line of ink.

She spread the photographs across the long table. Venice. Vienna. Lyon. London. The cards were all the same size, same paper, same elegant copperplate hand. But the messages differed. *For the love of light.* *What the eye forgets.* *A memory in oil.* They read like poetry, or riddles, which is why the police had spent years trying to decode them as taunts.

Camille didn't think they were taunts. She thought they were signatures. The work of an artist who signed his pieces.

She pulled up the Renoir crime-scene photos and placed them beside the oldest theft, a Modigliani taken from a Milanese collector in 2019. Both frames had been cut at the corners with surgical precision. Both canvases had been rolled, not folded, and both rooms showed the same absence—a single chair moved six inches left of its original position. Not a mistake. A habit. The man liked to sit before he worked.

Camille circled the detail in each photo. Then she took out her phone and opened the photograph she'd taken of the locket before hiding it in her coat pocket. The miniature portrait was too small to read clearly, but the rim engraving was legible even at this distance. 142.

She leaned back and stared at the ceiling. One hundred forty-two. What did it count? Days? Thefts? Some number meaningful only to the man who'd left it?

Her phone buzzed. A text from Inspector Renaud, her contact at the Paris Prefecture.

*Anything on the Auvray theft? We've got nothing. Phantom's clean.*

She typed back quickly. *Me too. Cross-checking Interpol fields.*

Lies, she thought, and the word sat like a stone in her stomach. She had evidence the police didn't have. She had a clue designed for her specifically. And she had no idea what it meant.

She opened her contacts and scrolled to Julien Chevalier. Forensic photographer. Old friend from university who now ran a private imaging lab near Montparnasse. They hadn't spoken in two years, not since he'd asked her to marry him and she'd laughed because she thought he was joking. He hadn't been.

She sent a message with the locket's photograph attached.

*Need a close-read on a miniature portrait. Ink and pigment analysis if possible. Discreet. I'll owe you.*

Three dots appeared immediately, then vanished. Then another pause. Her thumb hovered over the keyboard. After a long moment, the reply came.

*Camille. For you? Always. Drop it off tonight. I'll run it while you wait.*

There was no anger in the message, which somehow made it worse. She typed a thanks and pocketed the phone. The locket pressed against her ribs, a small cold presence beneath her shirt, where she'd hung it on a chain that morning. She'd told herself it was safer on her person than in her desk. She hadn't told herself the other truth—that the thief knew where her desk was.

The door to the records room swung open. Bertrand Delacroix, her boss, stood in the frame with his arms crossed. He was a square man with a square face and a haircut that hadn't changed since the nineties.

"Moreau," he said. "My office."

She gathered the photographs and followed him down the corridor. His office smelled of stale coffee and printer toner. He closed the door behind her, which was never good.

"Auvray called me this morning," he said, sitting behind his desk without offering her a seat. "Told me he wants you on the case exclusively. No rotation, no junior associates."

"That's unusual."

"That's pressure." He leaned forward. "His policy is worth two point three million euros through Vasseur. If we don't recover the painting within sixty days, we pay out. The broker has been useful. I don't want to lose him."

"You want the painting recovered."

"I want the case closed." He looked at her, his small eyes sharp. "The Auvray theft has all the markers of Le Fantôme except the calling card. Which means either we're dealing with a copycat, or someone else is telling us this one's different. Either way, you're on full time. All other cases go to Ledoux."

She nodded. Full time meant she was the point of liability. The woman who would eat the loss if it went wrong.

"One thing," Delacroix added as she turned to leave. "I know you were at the scene alone for a window before the police arrived. Auvray told me."

She kept her face still. "He asked to meet at his office. He was anxious."

"I'm sure he was." Delacroix picked up a pen and studied it. "Be careful, Camille. You have a history of getting close to cases. The ones that look personal usually end up being personal. Don't let this one get under your skin."

She almost laughed. If he knew what was hanging against her chest right now, he'd have her on desk duty for a month.

"I won't," she said, and left.

---

The apartment was silent when she arrived home that evening. She knew it immediately—that particular stillness that isn't peace but absence. She paused in the doorway with her keys still in her hand, listening. The refrigerator hummed. The radiator ticked. Normal sounds. But the hall light was on, and she never left the hall light on.

She stepped inside, careful to touch nothing. The living room looked untouched. The kitchen untouched. Her bedroom door was closed, which was how she left it, but something about the line of the door unsettled her. She pushed it open.

The room was a storm. Drawers yanked open, contents scattered across the floor. Bedclothes torn back. The mattress slit from top to bottom in one clean line, cotton batting spilling like snow. Her bookshelf had been pulled over, spines broken, pages crumpled.

She crossed the room and checked the window. Locked from the inside. The front door had shown no sign of forced entry. A lockpick, then, and a fine one.

Nothing was taken. She checked the jewelry box on her dresser—empty of anything valuable, and still full of the cheap costume pieces she kept there. Her laptop sat on the desk where she'd left it. Not even a drawer was missing.

The locket at her throat. That's what they'd come for.

Her phone buzzed. She looked down. The notification showed a message from an unknown sender, no preview text. She unlocked it and opened the message.

A photograph. Her own bedroom. Taken from the doorway, minutes ago. Below it, one line of text:

*I'll collect what's mine, Camille.*

The phone grew heavy in her hand. She scrolled up. No email address, no number traceable. Just the image and the words.

He'd been here. He'd stood where she was standing now.

She dropped the phone on the bed and pressed her palms against her face. The locket was warm against her chest, a pulse point of evidence. He knew she had it. He knew she hadn't logged it. And now he was telling her, in the clearest way possible, that this was a game between the two of them—and that she was already inside its rules.

She pulled the locket out from beneath her shirt and held it in her fist.

No. She wouldn't let him set the terms.

She stormed back toward the kitchen for a basin to secure the locket in, head a whirl of strategies, ideas to hide it more securely than on her person—but when her hand reached for the drawer of plastic containers, she froze. On the counter sat an object that had not been there this morning, gleaming in the dim hall light.

A white card. Ink. Copperplate.

*You may borrow it a little longer.*

Her breath stopped. She walked toward it slowly, as if it might disappear. Her fingers brushed the card's edge. It was real. He'd been here, and he'd left his ghost for her to find.

She turned, heart slamming, searching the apartment again—but she was alone. She always would be, until he chose otherwise.

Camille picked up the card carefully, by the corner, and slid it into the pocket of her coat. Evidence. New evidence, the kind police properties would know well.

She photographed it. Then she sent the image to Julien.

*Can't make it tonight,* she typed. *Change of plans.*

She needed to buy herself a little time.