Chapter 33: Pont des Arts

They came up out of the Roman sewer into a violet dusk.

The iron grate opened onto a stone ledge below the Quai de Conti, with the Seine sliding past black and silver. Priya's car was waiting at the top of the steps, its engine running. She leaped out as they emerged and caught Elara by both arms, her face streaked with tears.

"I thought we had lost you."

"Vivienne is hurt," Elara said. "Julian shot Dr. Valmont. There are orderlies still in the cellar."

"They are out." Priya's voice shook. "Tobias went in the back way with Brandt's men. They are all alive."

"Brandt's men?"

Priya glanced at Rhys. "He will explain."

The safe house was a narrow flat above a bakery in the Marais, smelling of yeast and warm sugar. Tobias sat at the kitchen table with a bandage around his forehead and a cup of strong coffee. Edmund stood at the window with his arm in a sling, watching the street. A doctor Priya trusted was stitching Vivienne's ankle in the next room.

Rhys leaned against the counter. He had washed the blood from his face, and the handcuff was finally gone.

"Detective Brandt has a daughter," he said quietly.

Elara looked up.

"Camille. She was a perfumer. Twenty-six years old." His voice was very even. "She worked for Julian Hart for two years. He took her formulas and her name. She signed a release she did not understand. Eleven months ago, she—"

He stopped.

"She took her own life," Priya said softly.

The room went still.

Elara thought of the flat, cold eyes in the interrogation room. The sweat on his temple. Be reasonable, Mrs. Hart.

"He did not know it was Julian," Rhys said. "Conrad's people arranged the file. They called it a suicide with no cause. But last night, when you told him he was wearing your husband's cologne, he went home and looked at his daughter's old notebooks." A pause. "The same cologne is on the pages."

Elara closed her eyes.

"He released us an hour ago," Rhys finished. "He asked me to tell you he is sorry."

Nobody spoke for a long time. Somewhere downstairs a customer laughed and the bell above the bakery door rang.

Elara set the stack of notebooks on the table. She took the cassette from her pocket and laid it beside them.

"I need you to hear something."

They listened in silence. Lucille's voice filled the little kitchen, warm and tired and fond, and Elara watched Rhys's face as the tape spoke the words she had been unable to say aloud. She is the one who told Conrad where the atelier was.

The tape clicked off.

"She is seventy-one years old," Priya said at last, very quietly. "She nearly died in a fire for you. She carried that enamel box for twenty-five years."

"I know."

"A woman who would do that—"

"Could also have done the other thing," said Edmund, from the window. His voice was flat. "I have been a coward for twenty-five years. I know what it looks like when someone spends a lifetime paying for a single mistake."

Elara met his burned, tired eyes.

"She walked out of the hospital with him," she said. "Willingly."

"Yes."

"Why?"

Nobody had an answer.

She stood and went to the window. Below, the street had gone blue with twilight. A boy cycled past with a baguette under his arm. A woman in a green scarf unlocked a flower stall. It looked like any evening in Paris. It looked like a place where nothing had ever burned.

"I want to hate her," Elara said. "I tried, when I heard the tape. I stood in that vault and tried. It did not take."

Rhys came to stand beside her. He did not touch her. He simply stood there, a warm silence in the cold glass.

"She was the only person who loved me when I had nothing," Elara said. "Whatever she did, she did it twenty-five years ago, and she has spent every day since making up for it." Her voice cracked. "I need to hear it from her."

"If she contacts you," Rhys said, "we will find a way."

Elara's phone buzzed on the table.

She went still.

Across the kitchen, five faces turned toward the screen. The number was unknown. A single message glowed on it.

Elara picked it up. Her hand was not quite steady.

Forgive me, ma petite. I am a coward and an old fool. Pont des Arts, midnight. Come alone. Bring the tape. He is listening to everything I say, except this. Trust me one last time. — O.

"It is a trap," Rhys said at once.

"I know."

"Elara."

"I know." She put the phone down very gently and looked at the little enamel box on the table, with its faded blue irises and its empty velvet lining. "But she has never once lied to me about whether she loved me. And if I do not go, I will spend the rest of my life wondering what she would have said."

Outside, the church bells began to strike nine.

Three hours.