Read Chapter 25: Blue Clue

The first pale streaks of dawn were bleeding over the Mediterranean when Victor pulled the rental car into the underground garage of the Hôtel de Paris. Camille hadn't spoken since they'd left the mountain chapel, her mind a knot of Pierre's confessions and the image of that blue ring sitting in the breached vault.

Victor killed the engine. Silence flooded the concrete space.

"You're quiet," he said.

"I'm thinking." She unbuckled her seatbelt and turned to face him fully. "The blue ring. The one left in the vault. The one Pierre made for Lidia. The one you gave me."

"The same design, yes. Lidia's signature."

"No." Camille pulled the ring from her coat pocket—the one he'd slipped onto her finger weeks ago, the one she'd kept despite everything. She held it up to the dim fluorescent light. "I examined this when you first gave it to me. I didn't say anything because I thought I was being paranoid. But I know hallmarks, Victor. I know them the way I know my own heartbeat."

His jaw tightened.

"This one," she said, turning it so the inner band caught the light, "has a micro-etched serial marker. RF-traceable. It's not just a copy of the ring Pierre made. It's a tracking device."

Victor's hand froze on the steering wheel. For one long second, he didn't blink.

"I put a tracer on Lidia's accomplice," he said quietly. "Three months ago. I had the ring made with a passive chip embedded in the band. It only activates within proximity of a paired reader."

"Who was the accomplice?"

"The man who broke into your shop the first time. The one who took the real pendant before the insurance switch was ever completed."

Camille's breath caught. "You knew. You knew who took it, and you've known all along."

"I knew someone was moving the necklace for Lidia. I didn't know it was Kovac until Pierre told us. The chip was a gamble—I planted the ring on the courier's jacket during a handoff in Nice. I never confirmed whether he kept it or ditched it."

"And the ring you gave me?"

"I made it from the same batch. The chip is dormant unless activated by a paired reader." He exhaled slowly, rubbing his temples. "I gave it to you because I wanted you to have something that could find the man who hurt you. I wasn't playing you, Camille."

"Bullshit." Her voice cracked on the word. "You used me. You used the shop. You used my trust to get close to Lidia's network, and you gave me a pretty piece of jewelry that doubled as surveillance equipment, and you didn't say a word. Do you know how that feels?"

"I know exactly how that feels." His eyes found hers in the dim light. "Because it's how I felt when my father used me as bait in a job gone wrong fifteen years ago. I've spent half my life trying to be the one who sets the trap instead of the one who springs it. That's not an excuse. It's the truth."

Camille wanted to hit him. She wanted to scream. She wanted to walk out of the car and never look back. But she was also a jeweler who understood that a chip in a ring was just a tool—and the real betrayal was what he'd done with the knowledge, not the metal itself.

"Where's the reader?" she asked.

Victor reached into his jacket and pulled out a device not much larger than a car key remote. A black screen, a single button. He pressed it, and a green light blinked twice.

"They gave it to the police as evidence," he said. "So I cross-wired my reader to the same frequency. If the ring is within fifty meters of anything that pings that network, we'll get a hit."

"And the blue ring left in the vault?"

"I planted that." His voice dropped. "I left it after the second breach. I needed Lidia to think her enforcer was sloppy, that the ring had been found and returned to a security sweep. I wanted her to doubt her people. To create a wedge between her and whoever was running the operation day-to-day."

Camille stared at him. "You've been running a counter-operation inside her network for months."

"I've been trying to get the real pendant back to you since the night your shop was hit." He held her gaze, unflinching. "I didn't do it perfectly. I didn't do it honestly. But that's what I've been doing."

A long pause. The garage hummed with distant mechanical life.

"Then use it," she said. "Use the chip. Kovac will be at the gala tomorrow night. If he's still wearing the jacket, we'll know. If the ring is on him, the reader will light up the second we get close enough."

Victor blinked. "You still want to work with me?"

"I want the pendant back." She opened the car door, then paused, looking back over her shoulder. "Whether I trust you again is a separate question. But we have less than twenty-four hours, and you're the only one who knows how to find him. So yes. I'll work with you."

She stepped out of the car and walked toward the elevator, her heels echoing against the concrete.

Behind her, Victor sat motionless for a long moment. Then he pressed the button on the reader one more time. The green light blinked, steady and patient.

Fifty meters. That was all the distance between them and everything they'd been chasing.

The elevator doors slid shut, and in the silence of the garage, Victor whispered to the empty air: "She's never going to forgive me."

But he pocketed the reader and followed her anyway.