Read Chapter 19: The Ration Card's Due

The atelier smelled of turpentine and wet plaster, a perfume that clung to the back of Lucien's throat as he eased the door shut behind him. The horse stood in the center of the room, ghostly pale under the single hanging bulb, its crate propped against the far wall like a coffin waiting for its tenant.

He didn't have time to admire it. He had forty liters of gasoline in two rusted cans, a forged ration card, and a plan that hinged on the kind of chaos that made men stupid.

Fire was the perfect alibi. A blaze in the sculptor's studio, reported by a concerned neighbor—or better, by Lucien himself in a voice pitched with panic—would bring the fire brigade, the gendarmes, and an hour of blessed confusion. In that hour, he would crack the horse open, confirm the gold, and close it back up before anyone got too curious.

He unscrewed the first can and began splashing gasoline along the baseboards, moving in a steady arc toward the rear of the studio where a false wall hid the storage alcove. He'd scouted it earlier that afternoon, through a window streaked with grime, and knew the layout by heart. The horse was too heavy to move, so the work would happen here, in the open, with the flames as his only witness.

The second can went on the workbench, pooled across the sculptor's tools, soaking the rags he'd left in a careless heap. He struck a match, watched it gutter, and dropped it into the nearest puddle.

The fire caught with a whoosh that surprised him, heat blooming against his face. He stepped back, counted to ten, and then moved to the horse.

The plaster was thicker than he'd expected, layered in sheets over a wire armature. He'd brought a chisel and a hammer, and he set to work on the horse's flank, chipping away the surface in broad, ugly strokes. Flakes of white dust drifted down, catching the growing glow from the flames. He worked fast, breath short, listening for the first distant wail of a siren.

It came after five minutes. He had time. Maybe not much, but enough.

The plaster gave way to something harder. Wood. He cursed, adjusted his grip on the chisel, and started again, revealing a plank frame beneath the sculpture's skin. The gold was down there, packed inside a false belly, waiting for the Reich's museum vaults.

He pried the first plank loose with a groan of nails, then the second. His hands were shaking from adrenaline and the heat, which was spreading faster than he'd planned, licking at the curtains, climbing the wall where he'd splashed gasoline.

A third plank. A fourth. He could see a dark cavity inside the horse's body, and something gleamed there, catching the firelight.

Gold.

The sight of it stopped him cold. Bars, stacked like cordwood, their stamped edges winking at him. He reached in, fingers brushing the cool metal, and felt a surge of something that wasn't quite triumph. It was closer to vertigo. A whole fortune, and he was kneeling in a burning room to touch it.

He pulled his hand back. He couldn't take it all. Not tonight. He just needed proof, something to show Marcel—or to hold over the deal when it came time to move the prize.

He lifted a single bar from its berth, feeling its weight drag at his wrist. Ten kilos. Maybe more. He slipped it inside his coat, where it pressed against his ribs like a promise.

The flames had reached the workbench now, devouring the rags, curling the edges of the sculptor's sketches. Smoke was starting to gather in the rafters. Time to go.

He made it to the door, one hand on the latch, when the sound came—not sirens, but the hard, flat crack of a fist against wood on the street side.

"Monsieur Petit? Police. Open up."

Lucien froze. The name on his forged papers—the dead printer's identity—echoed in the narrow space between him and the door. He glanced toward the rear of the atelier. There was a window back there, small but big enough. He bolted for it, gold bar heavy against his chest, hoping the fire was still slow enough to forgive him.

He crashed through the window, glass biting his shoulder, and landed in the alley on a bed of trash. He scrambled to his feet, gasping, and saw the silhouette at the alley's mouth too late to turn.

A woman's shape, pistol raised. Not Sabine. A man behind her, Milice armband livid in the glow of the fire now consuming the atelier behind him.

"Monsieur Marchand," the woman said, and the name hung there between them like a death sentence. "We have questions about this ration card you used this morning. The serial number flagged a list."

His hand—the one not holding the gold bar against his chest—went instinctively to the pocket where the card had lived. It was still there. Useless now, and worse than useless. It had brought them here. The Milice had its claws in the ration system, cross-referencing every purchase, and he'd been a fool to think a dead printer's paper would survive contact with the occupation's ledger.

The fire roared behind him. The woman's pistol did not waver.

He had two options: run through a woman with a gun, or surrender a ton of gold he hadn't yet earned. Neither appealed. But the alley narrowed behind them, and they'd left the street open at their backs.

A gamble, then. Life was always a gamble.

He dropped the gold bar. It hit the cobbles with a sound like a church bell, and in the instant both of them glanced down—a reflex, a fatal one—Lucien ran.

He didn't look back. Not when the woman's pistol cracked and sent a bullet past his ear. Not when the fire swallowed the atelier behind him, taking the horse and its cargo into the flames. Not even when he heard the screams begin.