Read Chapter 13: Aftermath of a Knife

The muzzle of the pistol pressed a cold, perfect circle against Marcus's temple. Petrova's men had hauled him to his knees on the slick rock beside the underground river, Sophie slumped against a boulder a few metres away, her face pale, her shoulder wrapped in a makeshift bandage that was already soaked through.

"If I squeeze, you become a footnote in a very tedious report," Petrova said, her voice carrying the clipped precision of someone who had eliminated men before and found it no more memorable than filing paperwork. "But I find myself curious. You know things about the Bardi locks. Things that took my people weeks to even suspect. How does a deadbeat insurance investigator from London understand blood-keyed mechanisms?"

Marcus stared at the black bore of the barrel. His jaw was locked, but his mind was racing through the possible exits—the river behind him, the tunnel mouth they'd emerged from, the sheer rock face on either side. None of them were viable. He was going to die on his knees in a cave in the Val Ferret, and Tom's file would stay sealed in Turin forever.

Then Petrova's wrist flicked as if answering an invisible call. She tilted her head, listening to something no one else could hear.

"Gentlemen," she said, her voice suddenly clipped with new purpose, "secure them. I have a more pressing matter."

The man holding Marcus shoved him hard against the rock. Rough hands bound his wrists with plastic ties, then hauled Sophie up beside him. Petrova walked toward the river's edge where a second boat had been dragged onto the shingle, and as she stepped into it, she turned back. Her eyes found Marcus's.

She raised the pistol and fired.

The bullet cracked past his ear and buried itself in the soft rock behind him. The sound ricocheted around the cavern, and Sophie flinched, letting out a small cry.

"A single bullet," Petrova said, almost wistfully. "Because I want you to remember that I chose not to spend it." Then she was gone, the boat's engine coughing awake and fading into the dark.

The two men left behind exchanged glances. One of them, a heavyset man with a scar across his eyebrow, shrugged and began walking toward the tunnel entrance they'd come through. The other knelt in front of Sophie and cut her bindings with a knife, then did the same for Marcus.

"Get out," the scarred man said without turning around. "The river runs to a village about three kilometres downstream. You'll find a road. If you're still here when we come back, we finish what she started."

Marcus didn't wait for a second invitation. He staggered to his feet, grabbed Sophie's good arm, and pulled her toward the river. They splashed into the shallows, then began wading downstream, the current tugging at their ankles, then their knees. Cold water bit through his boots. Sophie leaned heavily against him, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps.

They walked like that for half an hour, the tunnel walls gradually widening, the ceiling rising until stars appeared above them—a crack of night sky between vertical stone walls. The river widened into a rocky stream bed, and they stumbled out onto a gravel bank under a crescent moon.

Marcus collapsed onto the gravel, pulling Sophie down beside him. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The only sounds were the rush of water and Sophie's ragged breathing.

"I need to tell you something," Sophie said finally. Her voice was hoarse, scraped raw by cold and pain.

Marcus looked at her. Her face was a mess of scrapes and drying blood. Her good hand was pressed against her injured shoulder, and she was shaking.

"Petrova," Sophie said. "Why I was feeding her information."

Marcus closed his eyes for a moment. "You had a debt."

Sophie blinked. "You knew?"

"I suspected." He opened his eyes and watched the moon on the water. "You're careful, Sophie. You don't get caught making mistakes. Yet you walked into a vault wearing a wire. That's not a mistake; that's a choice you made deliberately." He paused. "So what was it? Drugs? Gambling?"

"Misdiagnosis," Sophie said quietly. "Five years ago, they told me I had a degenerative neural condition. Something that would take away my ability to walk, then speak, then breathe. I was terrified. I went looking for specialist treatment, and the only person who could get me into the top neurology clinic in Zurich was Petrova. She had connections. She pulled strings. In exchange, she asked for small favours—information about artefacts, about collectors, about the people who handle them. It was easy to say yes when you think you're going to lose your legs in two years."

Marcus was quiet. "And the diagnosis?"

"Wrong," Sophie said, and the word came out like a release of breath. "A second opinion eighteen months later showed it was a misread scan. A shadow on the image that was mistaken for a lesion. I was perfectly healthy the entire time." She let out a short, bitter laugh. "By the time I knew, I was already in too deep. Petrova doesn't let people walk away from favours once they're owed."

"People believe what they need to believe when they're scared," Marcus said. "I've done worse things for smaller reasons."

Sophie looked at him, something uncertain in her eyes. "You're not angry?"

"I'm not the one who put a bullet in the rock next to my head," Marcus said dryly. He sat up and pulled a small black device from his inner pocket—a rectangle the size of a matchbox, with a thin adhesive strip on one side. He bent down and, before Sophie could react, pressed it firmly into the sole of her left boot.

"What the—" She tried to jerk her foot away, but he held it steady.

"Tracking transmitter," Marcus said. "Millimetre-thin, military-grade. I put it in your shoe while you were unconscious at the glacier camp, before we went down. The battery lasts about ninety days."

Sophie stared at him, her eyes wide. "You knew I was compromising us, and you let me walk around with a tracker in my shoe?"

"I needed to know where you went when you weren't with me," Marcus said. "And I needed to know if you were worth trusting before I told you anything real. Tonight, you just proved you're more than a paid informant. You're a woman who got caught in something she couldn't escape." He let go of her boot. "That makes you something I can work with."

Sophie was silent for a long moment. Then, slowly, she nodded. "So what now? The chest is gone. Petrova has it. The ledger wasn't even in the vault."

"We're not done," Marcus said, getting to his feet. He offered her his hand. "I'm not going back to London without Tom's file. And I'm not giving the Baroness a story about why I lost her prize." He pulled Sophie up, and she swayed slightly, catching herself on his arm.

"Where are we going to go? Petrova's people are somewhere in these mountains. The Baroness thinks we're on a retrieval mission. Vandermeer is chasing us across half of Europe."

"All the more reason to stop running in circles." Marcus pulled out his phone, cracked and water-damaged, and squinted at the screen. It flickered, then died. He swore. "I need to make a call."

They walked along the gravel bank until they found a narrow shepherd's path that climbed toward a distant cluster of lights—a village. As they approached the first stone houses, a cold wind swept down from the summits, and Marcus spotted a single light burning in the window of a small farmhouse set apart from the others.

He knocked. After a long pause, the door opened a crack, revealing an old man with a weathered face and a rifle cradled in his arms.

"Ives," Marcus said. "It's Marcus Webb. I need to use your satellite phone."

The old man squinted at him for a moment, then his expression shifted into something between recognition and resignation. He opened the door wider and gestured them inside.

Half an hour later, Marcus sat in a cramped kitchen that smelled of woodsmoke and cured meat, a cup of instant coffee steaming in his hands. Sophie had been given an old coat and a seat by the fire, and Ives had disappeared into a back room to fetch the sat phone.

Ives returned and set the device on the table. Marcus picked it up, dialled a number from memory, and waited. It clicked twice before a voice answered—a woman's voice, low and wary.

"Who is this?"

"Marcus. I need a location."

A pause. "You're supposed to be in a glacier, not calling me in the middle of the night."

"The glacier didn't work out. The ledger isn't where the records said it would be. I need to know where it is now."

Another pause, longer this time. Then the voice came back, careful and measured. "The last confirmed sighting is a chateau in the Loire Valley. Château de Bellemère. It's been under private ownership for two centuries, and the current owner has never sold a single asset from the estate."

"What makes you think the ledger is there?"

"Because three days ago, a woman matching the Baroness Von Halber's description made a private visit to the chateau and stayed for four hours. She left with a leather portfolio, but she didn't leave through the main gate. And two days before that, a man with a brand on his hand—a wolf mark, I believe—arrived by private helicopter and hasn't been seen since."

Marcus's grip tightened on the phone. He thanked the contact, ended the call, and set the device down.

Sophie looked at him from the fire. "What is it?"

"There's a place called Château de Bellemère in the Loire Valley," Marcus said slowly. "The ledger may be there. But if the Baroness visited it three days ago, then she knows more about this operation than she's been telling us." He looked at his coffee, then back at Sophie. "And I need to figure out whether we're the hunters or someone's bait."

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