Read Chapter 18: Under the Paris Sky

The Sacré-Cœur rose white against a bruise-colored sky, its domes catching the last copper light of the evening. Below, Paris shimmered in a grid of amber streetlamps, and Claire pressed her palms against the cool balustrade, trying to let the city's vastness swallow the knot in her chest.

Laurent had found them. He knew where they were, what they were chasing. And they were still standing here, drinking in a view instead of running.

“You're thinking too loud,” Marc said beside her. He leaned against the railing, his jacket unbuttoned, collar loose, as if the evening had softened him around the edges.

“I'm thinking we should have gone straight to the airport.”

“Flights to Buenos Aires leave at dawn. We'd be sitting in a terminal for eight hours, staring at departure boards and making ourselves paranoid.”

“We're already paranoid.” She glanced over her shoulder at the tourists milling behind them, the clusters of teenagers, the old couple sharing a crêpe. No one looked familiar. No one looked like a threat. “I just don't like standing still.”

Marc was quiet for a moment. Then he turned, propping his elbows on the stone, so that his whole body faced her. His eyes had that earnest quality she'd learned to trust—the same look he'd given her when he'd offered his apartment, his couch, his time.

“I told you my father abandoned us,” he said. “I didn't tell you the rest.”

Claire's breath caught. She turned to face him fully.

“He didn't just leave,” Marc continued, his voice low. “He vanished. No note, no goodbye, no body. One morning he kissed my mother, said he was going to the bakery, and never came home. He was a notary. A man who filed papers and witnessed signatures—the most predictable person alive. And then he was gone, and no one could explain it.”

She felt the weight of the ring on her finger, cool and solid. Elodie's ring. For a moment, she almost told him. The words teetered on her tongue, and she saw herself saying them—*my grandmother disappeared the same way, and I've been wearing her ring my whole life without knowing who she was.*

But something held her back. A strange, protective instinct. Not for herself. For what the knowledge might change between them.

“How old were you?” she asked instead.

“Thirteen.” He gave a small, rueful smile. “My mother spent the next two years photocopying records, calling every hospital and morgue in the city. She hired a private investigator with her savings. They found nothing. Like the earth had opened and swallowed him.”

“Did you ever—?”

“Stop looking?” He shook his head. “No. I think that's part of why I became a lawyer. I went into law to believe that things could be made right, that every mystery had a resolution if you followed the rules long enough.” His smile turned wry. “I've since learned that rules mostly protect people who write them. But the obsession stayed.”

The evening breeze lifted a strand of hair across her face, and he reached out, tucking it behind her ear. The gesture was gentle, almost unconscious, and Claire felt heat rise to her cheeks.

“I think that's why I believe you,” he said. “Why I stayed that first day in your studio. When you told me there was another painting underneath, I didn't see a fraud case. I saw someone refusing to let a story stay buried.”

Claire's throat tightened. “Marc—”

“I know we haven't known each other long,” he said quickly, pulling back slightly. “I don't mean to— I just want you to know. You're not alone in this.” He gestured vaguely at the city below them. “Not in the looking. Not in the losing.”

She reached out and took his hand. His fingers were warm around hers, and for a moment, the fear in her chest loosened its grip.

“The difference is,” she said quietly, “you never found out what happened to your father.”

“I didn't.”

“I might still find out what happened to mine.” She paused. “Or hers. Whoever she was.”

Marc squeezed her hand. “We will.”

A flash of white light burst from their left—bright enough to blind them both. Claire blinked, her vision erupting into swimming afterimages. When she could see again, a man stood about twenty meters away, lowering a camera with a long telephoto lens.

He was thin, dressed in a dark jacket and a flat cap pulled low over his brow. He did not smile, did not approach, did not wave. The moment he saw them looking, he turned and walked—quickly, deliberately—toward the steps that led down into Montmartre.

“Hey!” Marc released her hand and started after him.

Claire followed, her heels clicking against the stone. The man didn't break into a run, but his pace quickened, weaving through the evening crowd with practiced ease. He reached the staircase and took the steps two at a time, his silhouette descending into the lamplit streets below.

Marc pursued him halfway down, shouting something in French that Claire couldn't quite catch. The man glanced back once—a pale oval of a face, unremarkable, unmemorable—and then disappeared around a corner, swallowed by the Montmartre night.

Marc stood at the bottom of the steps, breathing hard. Claire caught up to him, her chest heaving.

“Did you see his face?” she asked.

“Too dark. Too fast.” He ran a hand through his hair, scanning the street in both directions. “Professional. He knew how to lose a tail.”

Claire's skin prickled. The photograph. He hadn't taken a photo of the city, of the sunset, of the basilica. He'd taken a photo of *them*.

“Who sends a photographer after two people who just filed a police report about a stolen painting?” she murmured.

“Someone who wants to know what we're doing next.” Marc's jaw tightened. “Someone who doesn't want to follow us all the way to Buenos Aires.”

A cold thought settled into her chest. “Or someone already there.”

Marc looked at her sharply. “You think Laurent—?”

“Laurent was at the archive,” she said. “But Laurent isn't the one who made the portrait disappear. Someone else took it. Someone with resources.” She rubbed her arms, trying to warm herself against a chill that had nothing to do with the evening air. “What if there are other people looking for Elodie? People we haven't even met yet?”

Marc was silent for a long moment. Around them, the city hummed with the sounds of evening—a distant accordion, a burst of laughter from a nearby café, the rumble of a scooter. All of it felt suddenly like background noise, a curtain pulled over something watching from the wings.

“Let's get out of the open,” Marc said finally. He put a hand on her back, guiding her back toward the steps. “We'll go to my place. Pack. Keep the lights low.”

She nodded, falling into step beside him. But as they climbed the stairs, she couldn't shake the feeling of eyes on her back. She turned once, scanning the Plaza, the dome of the basilica, the shadowed corners.

A figure stood at the base of the stairway they'd just come from—still, dark, watching.

Claire blinked.

It was gone.

She looked at Marc, who hadn't noticed, and said nothing. But her heart hammered against her ribs as they walked, and she knew, with a certainty that settled like cold water in her bones, that they were no longer the only ones chasing the past.

Someone else was chasing them.