Read Chapter 7: Midnight Encore

The train swayed through the night, its rhythm steady as a heartbeat. Camille had walked these corridors a hundred times, but tonight every shadow felt heavier, every click of the wheels louder.

She checked her watch—2:16.

The Les Chenêts viaduct loomed ahead, invisible in the dark, but she felt it coming like a breath held too long. Her hand drifted to her coat pocket, where Julian Moreau's pocket watch rested against her palm. It had been warm all evening, a low thrum she could feel through the fabric.

The corridor lights flickered.

He was there.

Not a suggestion of a man, not a shimmer at the edge of her vision. Julian Moreau stood in the center of the aisle, solid as any passenger, his tweed jacket crisp, his hair dark and damp as though he'd just stepped out of rain. His eyes found hers immediately, and the warmth in her pocket flared.

"You came back," he said.

His voice was different now. Less like wind through a gap, more like sound passing through matter. Camille took a step closer, her conductor's cap firm on her head, her practiced calm a shield.

"I didn't have a choice," she said. "You keep showing up."

A flicker of something crossed his face—amusement, maybe, or grief. Hard to tell with a man who'd been dead sixty years.

"You wear their uniform," he said, nodding at her navy jacket, the gold buttons, the stripe of her rank. "Your family gave me this ride."

The words landed like a blow to her sternum. Camille's hand tightened around the pocket watch in her coat. The metal was nearly hot now.

"I don't know what you mean," she said, but her voice cracked on the last word.

Julian tilted his head, studying her the way a man studies a map before a long journey. "The Laurents," he said softly. "Conductors, inspectors, lawyers. You inherit what they take."

Camille's blood went cold. *He knows my surname. He's known all along.*

"How—" she started, but the words died in her throat.

Julian lifted his hand, palm open, toward her face. "You have his watch. Henri's grandson's great-granddaughter. The debt travels through blood."

"The debt." Camille's voice was barely a whisper. "My father spent thirty years repaying it."

"He did," Julian said. "But the chain doesn't break with payment. It breaks with truth."

The train lurched. Camille stumbled, catching herself on the seat rail. When she looked up, Julian was closer—close enough that she could see the faint scar at his jawline, the wear at the elbows of his jacket. A man who'd lived, not just died.

"What happened at the viaduct?" she asked. "You were alive after the crash. You heard them."

Julian's jaw tightened. "I heard enough."

"Names," she pressed. "You heard names."

He opened his mouth, but the compartment door at the end of the corridor slid open, and a passenger stepped out—an elderly woman in a silk robe, clutching a toiletry bag, half-asleep.

"Conductrice? Is there a problem?"

Camille whipped around. "No, madame. Just checking the passage."

When she turned back, Julian was gone.

The pocket watch in her coat pulsed once, then stilled.

---

Camille couldn't sleep after her shift. She sat in her small apartment in Nice, the watch on the table before her, the face catching the lamplight. At 2:17 the hands had spun again, faster this time, before settling back to their frozen position.

*Your family gave me this ride.*

Not an accusation, exactly. More like a fact stated plainly, as if he wanted her to sit with it.

She reached for her phone and dialed the number she'd saved two days ago but never called. The one Sophie had dug out of their father's address book, scribbled in pencil with a note that read: *If it gets too heavy.*

It rang three times. Four. On the fifth, a man answered.

"Delacroix."

His voice was old but sharp, like a blade kept in good condition despite years of disuse.

"Loïc Delacroix?" Camille said. "My name is Camille Laurent. I think you've been waiting for my call."

A pause. Then a low, dry chuckle.

"Sixty years, give or take. I was starting to think your grandfather took the secret to his grave after all."

Camille's grip tightened on the phone. "He's not in a grave. He's in Cannes, living under another name."

Another pause, longer this time.

"So you know about that," Delacroix said slowly. "Then you know about the ledger too."

"The green one. He has it."

"He does," Delacroix said. "And I have something better. I have the file your great-grandfather tried to bury. The one with the original maintenance report, the one with the torn page re-fitted."

Camille's breath caught. "You have the torn page?"

"I have photographs of it, taken in 1955 before it was destroyed. And I have something else—a deposition. Signed by a man named René Aubert."

The name hit her like a slap. She'd seen it in the archive, scribbled in the margins of the maintenance log, a supervisor's signature she'd assumed was routine.

"René Aubert was the one who cut the brake line," Camille said, the words tasting like ash.

"He was the one who signed the confession," Delacroix corrected. "Whether he cut it himself or just watched, that's in the file. But the man who paid him, who told him to make it look like an accident—"

"Henri Laurent."

The silence on the line was confirmation enough.

Camille stared at the pocket watch. The hands hadn't moved, but the warmth had returned, thrumming against the wooden table as if the watch itself were listening.

"I need to see that file," she said.

"Then come to the address I'll send you. Tomorrow. Bring the watch." Delacroix paused. "And bring your questions. I've been holding them for sixty years, girl. I want to see if you can handle the answers."

The line went dead.

Camille sat in the dark, the watch warm against her palm. Julian had called the debt a chain. Her father had spent his life carrying it. And somewhere in Cannes, a man who'd been dead to her family for sixty years was holding the key to what came next.

*Your family gave me this ride.*

Julian didn't just know her name. He knew who she was, who her ancestors were, what they'd done. And he'd chosen to appear to her anyway. To tell her. To trust her.

She looked at the watch, at the frozen hands pointing eternally toward 2:17.

*Tomorrow,* she thought. *Tomorrow I find out if the chain breaks or cuts.*