Read Chapter 8: Disappeared Guard

The industrial quarter’s security office smelled of burnt coffee and stale cigarette smoke, a combination that made Camille’s stomach turn. She stood over the shoulder of a skeletal night manager named Delacroix, who had reluctantly pulled the previous week’s shift logs after Victor flashed a crumpled police credential that wouldn’t survive close scrutiny.

“You’re lucky I’m too tired to ask questions,” Delacroix muttered, tapping a nicotine-stained finger on the glowing monitor. “But I’m telling you, nobody’s accessed that container since it was sealed. Not legally, anyway.”

Camille leaned closer, scanning the columns of names and timestamps. The container holding what she believed to be the real Cœur de Neptune had been moved from the workshop floor to the loading bay at 1420 hours on Tuesday. Two security guards had logged perimeter checks every thirty minutes until the container was sealed at 2100 hours. After that—nothing.

“Who was on duty Tuesday night?” Victor asked, his voice smooth but edged with something harder. He stood behind them, hands in his pockets, watching the door like a man who expected trouble.

Delacroix scrolled backward. “Let’s see… Tuesday. That was Henri Moreau’s shift, and Luc Perrin. They traded off the perimeter checks.”

“Moreau,” Victor repeated slowly. “He still work here?”

The manager’s face flickered with something—uncertainty, or perhaps discomfort. “He was supposed to come in Wednesday morning. Never showed. No call, no nothing. I had to pull a double shift to cover his rounds.”

Camille’s pulse quickened. Her fingers itched toward the blue diamond ring still tucked inside her jacket pocket. It had become a talisman of sorts, a physical reminder that this web extended further than a single forged necklace. “Did you file a report?”

Delacroix snorted. “You think the administration cares about a missing security guard? Moreau’s been here eight years. Reliable as a Swiss watch until Tuesday. Checked every box, did every sweep. Then poof. Gone. I figured he got cold feet or found a better job in Cannes.”

“Cannes,” Victor said, the word hanging in the air. Camille felt the connection snap into place—the unsolved theft at a Cannes jewelry exhibition in 2006, the one her father had whispered about for years, the one she’d recently begun to suspect involved Bellamy’s handiwork.

She straightened, wiping her palms on her trousers. “Do you have his address?”

Delacroix raised an eyebrow. “You’re not a cop, are you? That badge’s got more lamination than integrity.”

Victor smiled—that disarming, practiced smile Camille had learned to distrust. “We’re conducting a private audit for the port authority. Insurance purposes. If one of your guards is missing during a high-value shipment’s transfer, our client wants answers before they pay out.”

It was a decent lie, delivered with enough confidence to pass. Delacroix sighed, scribbled an address on a scrap of paper, and slid it across the desk. “If you find him, tell him he still owes me a shift.”

---

Henri Moreau’s apartment occupied the third floor of a modest building near the train station, the kind of place a single man with a quiet routine might call home. The door was locked, but Victor produced a thin metal tool from his wallet and had it open in eleven seconds—a skill that made Camille’s jaw tighten.

“That’s not your first lock,” she said.

“Practice makes permanent,” he replied.

The apartment was unnervingly tidy. A single coffee mug dried in the rack beside the sink. The bed was made with military precision, corners tucked tight. On the nightstand sat a worn paperback—a thriller with a creased spine, bookmarked at page 214. A photograph of an older woman, presumably his mother, smiled from the mantle beside a stack of unopened bills.

Camille moved through the space slowly, cataloging details the way she would examine a piece under magnification. A jeweler’s daughter learned to notice what others overlooked—the slight wear on a chair arm, the dust pattern that revealed what had been moved.

“He didn’t plan to leave,” she said finally. “The bills are still sealed. His toothbrush is in the bathroom. His suitcase is in the closet.”

Victor was rifling through a drawer in the desk. “Nothing criminal in here. Pay stubs, old receipts, a tax return from two years ago. Very boring life.”

“That’s what makes it suspicious.” Camille picked up the photograph, studying the woman’s face. “A man this routine doesn’t just vanish. He’d need a reason.”

“Or a push.”

She glanced back at him. Victor’s expression had shifted—the charm had evaporated, replaced by a cold calculation that made her feel like she was looking at a different person. The man who owed money to Thomas Falk, who had stolen two million euros from Bellamy’s operation, who had spent years running cons across the Riviera.

“You think someone made him disappear,” she said.

“I think Ferrand knows more than he let on.” Victor opened another drawer, then paused. His fingers traced the edge of something inside. “Camille. Come look at this.”

She crossed the room. In the drawer lay a neatly folded shirt—and beneath it, a single envelope, unopened, bearing the logo of a budget airline. She pulled it free and tore the seal. Inside was a plane ticket to Nice. Departure time: 5:40 AM, Wednesday morning. The day of the swap.

But the ticket was for the wrong direction.

“Nice is twenty minutes west of here,” Victor said. “If you’re trying to disappear from Monaco, you go to Marseille, or Milan, or Paris. Not Nice. That’s like hiding in your neighbor’s living room while they watch.”

Camille turned the ticket over. “Maybe that’s the point. A flight within easy driving distance—he could have driven to Nice and claimed the ticket wasn’t his. Left it here to make it look like he planned to leave.”

“His car is still in the garage,” Victor said. “I checked the parking log on our way in.”

She looked at him sharply. He was already three steps ahead of her, and the realization unsettled her as much as the missing guard. “What are you suggesting?”

“I’m suggesting this is theater.” Victor took the ticket from her, studying it under the window light. “Someone wanted us to find this. To believe Moreau fled across the border. But there’s something wrong with it.”

“What?”

“The date.” He held it up. “This is a photocopy. Look at the ink quality, the paper texture. There’s no thermal coating. Someone fabricated this to look like a receipt they could leave behind.”

Camille’s mind raced. If the ticket was planted, then Moreau hadn’t fled—he’d been removed. Silenced. And the person who planted the ticket had anticipated that someone would come looking. Which meant they were watching. Following. Orchestrating from the shadows, like a puppeteer testing the strings.

“We need to get out of here,” she said.

“Agreed.”

They moved toward the door, but Victor stopped, hand on the frame. He turned back to the apartment, scanning the walls with fresh eyes. Then he crossed to the bedroom and pulled back the corner of the rug—revealing a small trapdoor cut into the floorboards.

Camille’s breath caught. “He was hiding something.”

Victor knelt, lifting the hatch. Inside was a shallow compartment containing a single object: a cracked leather notebook, bound with a rubber band. He pulled it free and flipped it open. The pages were filled with handwriting—not logs or accounts, but observations. Dates, times, descriptions of vehicles. A man’s name scratched out repeatedly: *Christophe Bellamy*.

The last entry was dated Tuesday night, three hours before the container was sealed: *“He’s coming back. The boat never sank. I saw him at the loading bay—alive.”*

Camille read the words twice, her heart hammering against her ribs. The legend was true. The forger had cheated death, and Henri Moreau had seen him—hours before the guard vanished.

Victor closed the notebook, his eyes meeting hers.

“Get in the car,” he said. “We’re going to find a ghost.”