The cargo plane broke through the clouds. Paris was raining.
No windows in the hold, only a swaying red light that fractured Alex's profile. Eyes closed, his eyelashes cast tiny, trembling shadows on the metal wall like fragile wires about to snap. I crouched by a refrigerated container, slotting the last piece of C-4 into a hidden compartment of my camera bag—Ash's parting gift, thumb-sized, enough to silence a room forever.
"How long?" Alex's voice was swallowed by the engine roar.
"Thirty minutes. Charles de Gaulle North Cargo." I zipped the bag. "Then the Marais. Find that 1856 Fleurs du Mal."
He opened his eyes. Coordinates flickered across his pupils like TV static. Sophia's memory replayed inside him: Parisian cobblestones, the smell of mildewed paper, the rustle of Latin cipher keys between fingers.
"Her last known location was 27 Rue des Rosiers," he said.
"I know." I slid a Swiss Army knife into my boot shaft. "The question is, who bought her out, and why she vanished."
The rain thickened as we landed. Customs scanners were fooled by the lead-lined box holding our jammer. A rented Peugeot 208 waited by a warehouse back door, its wipers twitching like Parkinson's sufferers all the way into the city.
The Marais at 4 AM was an abandoned labyrinth. Yellow streetlights reflected in puddles littered with torn posters. I parked by a hydrant outside Rue des Rosiers, killed the engine and lights. Number 27 was a 17th-century brick building. A black iron door, its lintel carved with a unicorn entwined in vines. A new brass plaque hung on the handle:
LIBRAIRIE DES OMBRES
Beneath it, a small Ω symbol daubed in red paint.
Alex's breathing hitched.
"The chip... it's warm," he pressed his neck. "She was here. Recently."
I pulled on latex gloves, picked the lock with a hairpin. The door groaned like an old man's joint. The scent of damp parchment and faint iron-rust blood washed over us.
No lights inside. The only illumination came from a bar's neon sign across the street, refracted by rain into bloody ripples. Bookshelves rose like silent tombstones. My flashlight beam swept spines in Latin, French, Arabic, finally stopping on a glass display case at the back.
The case door was shattered.
Empty inside. Only an indentation remained where Les Fleurs du Mal should have been. Dark brown fingerprints, dried, smudged the glass shards.
Alex knelt, fingers tracing the floorboards. A drop of liquid hit his hand. Not rain.
Blood. Falling from the ceiling like slow-motion black rain.
I looked up.
Sophia Lefèvre hung from the ceiling fan, an old telephone cord wrapped around her neck, toes dangling. Her gray hair was still in a neat bun, but her mouth had been slit into a grotesque smile.
A low whine escaped Alex, like a kicked pup. His pupils dilated violently as Sophia's final moments flooded his retinas:
—Night. The shop door forced open. Three figures in raincoats.
—She clutched Les Fleurs du Mal, backing towards the stairs.
—A flash of a blade. The Latin cipher page ripped away.
—A final glimpse: the spinning ceiling fan.
I clamped a hand over his mouth, dragging him behind the counter. Faint footsteps sounded on the stairs above, cautious as a cat testing rotten wood.
I drew the Glock, thumbed off the safety.
"Two," I breathed. "Raincoats. Metal studs on the boots."
Alex's right hand began to tremble uncontrollably, knuckles white—Viktor's combat memory seizing control. I pressed my thumb to his wrist artery, counting softly: "One. Two. Three."
The tip of a boot appeared at the stairhead. A stud glinted.
I squeezed the trigger. The suppressor coughed. The boot's owner folded at the knee, tumbling down the stairs like a marionette with cut strings. The second man reacted fast, spraying bullets. Shelves exploded. Dante's Inferno rained paper snow.
I rolled to the counter's other side. Alex was already moving, a brass paper knife in his hand—too fluidly for a scientist. Guided by Viktor's muscle memory, he flowed like a ghost across the floor. The blade sliced air, puncturing the second man's neck artery.
Blood sprayed across a Latin dictionary, the letters momentarily vivid.
Silence.
Only the rain now, and the fan's slow, rhythmic creak.
Gasping, I stood and walked to Sophia's body. Clutched in her stiff fingers was a blood-soaked card. I pried it loose. Her own handwriting:
"Page 13. Line 13. 13th letter."
I grabbed another, ordinary copy of Fleurs du Mal from the counter—cover worn. Page 13, Line 13. A single word circled in red:
"Mémoire"
Memory.
Alex stood in the spreading blood. Rain drifted through the broken window, dampening his lashes.
"She left a key," he whispered. "But the door isn't open yet."
I tucked the card into my waterproof chest pouch and looked back at the fan.
Sophia's body swayed gently in the dim light, like a book refusing to close.
"Then we keep looking," I said. "Until we break it down."