Read Chapter 10: The Orphan's Trail

The floorboards creaked under Lucien’s weight as he stepped into the narrow apartment on Rue des Trois-Frères. The air smelled of dust, stale perfume, and something sour—milk left to spoil in a forgotten glass. He’d broken the lock with a twisted hairpin, one of several he kept sewn into the lining of his coat, and the door had swung open with a groan that felt louder than a cathedral bell.

Behind him, the stairwell was silent. No footsteps. No German voices. Just the distant hum of the city pretending to sleep.

He clicked on a small pocket torch, dousing its beam with a gloved thumb until only a sliver escaped. The apartment was small—a bedroom, a sitting room, a kitchenette the size of a wardrobe. It belonged, according to the concierge he’d bribed with a half-kilo of ersatz coffee, to one Colette Fournier. Twenty-three years old. Blonde. Left in a hurry about three weeks ago. The concierge had described her as “a quiet girl, always reading.”

Reading. That was the detail Lucien held onto as he swept the beam across the room.

The bed was stripped. The wardrobe stood ajar, empty hangers swaying faintly. A porcelain washbasin held a cake of dried soap and a single strand of hair. He picked it up between two fingers—golden, almost white. He let it drop.

No photographs. No letters on the table. No address book by the telephone, because there was no telephone. Whoever had cleaned this place had been thorough. Professional.

Lucien crouched, running his fingers along the baseboards. Nothing. He moved to the bed frame, lifting the thin mattress with one hand while the torch played over the slats. Dust bunnies. A button. A dead spider. No note taped to the underside. No papers stuffed in the springs.

He stood, frustration tightening his jaw. Colette. The name had slithered out of Pépé’s mouth just before the shooting started, and now it was stuck in Lucien’s head like a splinter. A young French mistress who helped a German colonel hide gold. If she was alive, she was the thread that could unravel the whole tapestry.

But she was gone, and her apartment was cleaner than a nun’s conscience.

He moved to the bookshelf—a sad little thing, three planks of pine sagging under a modest collection. Zola. Balzac. A tattered copy of *Madame Bovary* with a cracked spine. A poetry anthology. He pulled each book out, shook it, checked the pages. Nothing. He was about to leave when he noticed it: a thick novel, *Les Misérables*, wedged between the poetry and a cookbook. It sat slightly proud of the others, as if it had been pulled out and replaced in haste.

He slid it free. The book fell open to a page near the middle, and something fluttered to the floor.

A scrap of paper, folded into quarters. Lucien picked it up, unfolded it. One line of handwriting, slanted and hurried, in pencil:

*If you’re reading this, I pray you’re a friend. The house at Neuilly. The cellar door. He kept the key on a chain around his neck. I couldn’t take it with me. — C.*

Lucien stared at the words until they burned into his memory. Neuilly. A wealthy suburb west of Paris. The house at Neuilly—whose house? Brandt’s? Some hideaway paid for with Occupation francs? And the cellar door. He kept the key on a chain around his neck. Five kilos of gold had already slipped through Lucien’s fingers tonight. He couldn’t afford another failure.

He folded the note, slipped it into his inner pocket, and returned the book to its place. He was halfway to the door when he heard it: a soft footstep on the landing. Then another. Then the quiet metallic click of a pistol being cocked.

Lucien killed the torch and pressed himself against the wall beside the doorframe. His own revolver—a tired Lebel with a worn grip—came into his hand smooth as a reflex. He held his breath. The footsteps stopped. The silence stretched, thin as wire.

A moment later, a voice—low, female, French—came through the keyhole. “Lucien Marchand. I know you’re in there. Put the gun away. I’m not here to kill you.”

He recognized the voice. Camille. Of course. Of all the nights she could have chosen to follow him, it had to be this one. He exhaled slowly, but did not lower the revolver.

“How did you find me?” he said, keeping his voice level.

“The concierge. She was happy to talk for a second ration card. You weren’t the first person to ask about the girl tonight—I made sure the second one was me.” A pause. “You can open the door. I’m alone.”

Lucien weighed his options. He could climb out the window—down a drainpipe, across a rooftop, lose her in the alleys of Montmartre. But Camille had resources. She had the Resistance’s network, its eyes and ears. If he ran from her now, she’d be a problem forever. And she knew about Colette, which meant she had her own sources—sources he might need.

He unlocked the door and stepped back, letting it swing open.

Camille stood in the dim gaslight of the stairwell, a long wool coat over her shoulders, her dark hair pulled back severely. She held no visible weapon, but Lucien knew better than to trust appearances. Her eyes flicked past him, taking in the room, the stripped bed, the empty wardrobe.

“Find anything interesting?” she asked.

“Not yet,” Lucien said, which was true enough. The note burned in his pocket.

“The girl. Colette Fournier.” Camille stepped inside, closing the door behind her. “I’d heard whispers about her—the kind that make it to the wrong ears. I thought you might be walking into something. And I was right.” She glanced at the small hole in the doorframe where the lock had been. “You’re sloppy, Marchand. You should know better than to break into a building where the concierge drinks with the gendarmes.”

“Noted,” Lucien said flatly. “You came all this way to lecture me on lockpicking technique?”

She smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “I came because you owe me. I gave you what you asked for—the patrol route, the trust of my network. And now I hear you’ve been asking around about a gold hoard. Brandt’s gold.” She let the words hang in the air. “You didn’t tell me about the gold, Lucien. You didn’t tell me about the map fragment, or the gunmen in Le Marais, or the fact that you’re playing a game that could get my people killed.”

“Your people aren’t involved.”

“They are now.” She stepped closer, and he caught the faint smell of cheap soap and gunpowder. “You’re not the only one with ears on the street. I know about the villa. I know about Brandt’s mistress. And I know she’s not the only one who’s missing.”

Lucien’s pulse quickened. “What do you mean?”

“The girl had a sister. Younger. Seventeen. She worked as a seamstress in the ninth arrondissement. She disappeared the same night Colette did. No one’s seen her since.” Camille’s jaw tightened. “The Gestapo took her, or someone who works for them. She might still be alive. She might be leverage. And if she is, Colette might be walking into a trap as eager as you are.”

Lucien absorbed this. It changed things. The note in his pocket was dated nothing, signed with an initial. It could be weeks old. Colette might already be dead. Or captured. Or she might be waiting at the villa in Neuilly, her hand on the cellar door, ready to trade her secret for her sister’s life.

“Thank you for the information,” he said, keeping his voice flat. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a long night ahead.”

“Not without me, you don’t.”

He met her eyes. “You want to come with me to Neuilly?”

“I want to come with you to the truth,” she corrected. “You don’t trust me, and I don’t trust you. But we both want the same thing—a way to hurt the bastards who run this city. If the gold helps us do that, fine. If it just lines your pockets, then I’ll deal with you after.” She smiled again, colder still. “But I’d rather not have to.”

Lucien considered his options again. She was right about one thing—he couldn’t do this alone. Too many enemies circled the same prize. Camille had a network, a purpose, and a gun. He had a scrap of paper and a debt hanging over his head.

“Fine,” he said. “But we do this my way. You follow my lead, you don’t ask questions, and if we split up, you don’t come looking for me until sunrise.”

“Agreed.”

He didn’t believe her, and she knew he didn’t. But they moved together toward the door, out into the cold Parisian night, where the streets stank of petrol and fear. The villa in Neuilly waited on the far side of the river, and with it, three more knotted threads: a colonel’s key, a missing girl, and the promise of enough gold to buy Paris back from the occupiers—or to get them both killed trying.