Murder in the Sentier

Friday Night

SOMETHING CHIRPED NEAR AIMÉE’S ear. Groggy, she reached out. Warm skin. Crisp sheets. She blinked in the darkness. Now she remembered where she was. And the glow she’d felt afterward. Still felt.

She reached for her cell phone and Etienne’s citrus scent rose from the skin of her hand. Too late. She’d missed the call but there was a voice message. Her Tintin watch said ten o’clock.

She rolled from the bed and tiptoed over the sisal rug, down the long hall, toward the kitchen. They’d never made it in here for dinner.

She was starving and thirsty. Where were her clothes? She found the cat suit in a heap on the floor, her bag and shoes under a chair. She’d check her messages, drink some water. Then get some for Etienne and crawl back in with him.

She couldn’t find a glass in the dim kitchen or drinking water, but did find a bottle of champagne. A nice, frosty Veuve Cliquot. Leaving it on the counter, she searched for glasses. She stumbled through café -style louvered swinging doors into a pantry.

The pantry counter was loaded with stacks of dishes, a polished silver coffee set, and an answering machine. She found glasses in a cupboard. Beside her, the machine clicked on without ringing. Odd. But she knew you could bypass ringing if you just wanted to leave a message.

“You’re late, Jules!” said a raspy voice.

She froze.

Jules? Jules Bourdon?

“The café off Place Ste-Foy. Bring Figeac’s son. And hurry …Nessim’s with me.”

Click.

Footsteps came from the kitchen. Was Christian here?

“Tonton?” asked Etienne. “Are you back?”

She was about to answer.

And she went rigid with fear. With a sickening certainty she realized who Etienne’s tonton, his uncle, was. Jules.

She crouched down in the dark pantry and put her finger on the erase button. A quick whoosh and the message was gone. She half-crouched below the swinging door.

She saw Etienne’s rumpled hair silhouetted against the backlit stove, the gleaming of the champagne bottle in his hand.

Had she misunderstood. Was she wrong—all wrong?

Ready to rush into his arms, she saw the barrel of a .357 reflected in the silver surface of the coffee pot.

Through the slats in the shutters, she saw him staring at her bare feet, the gun aimed right at her as he shoved the door open.

She slammed the door closed on his hand. He yelped, the gun flew away, and the champagne bottle clattered to the floor.

She rushed out.

“Salope!” he yelled, grabbing for the gun with his other hand.

She clubbed him with the champagne. A loud crack and he slid to the floor. She heard a yelp, then he grabbed her ankle. Twisted it. Pulling her off balance and slamming her into the cabinet.

She righted herself and kicked him hard in the head.

Panting, and terrified that Jules would return before she could find Christian, she grabbed dish towels and bound Etienne’s wrists and ankles with them. Then she stood back, wondering how she could have slept with him. But she had.

Another smart relationship choice! She pulled him to the laundry porch by the ankles, shoved him out there, and locked the door.

As she picked up the .357 she wondered if it had killed Jutta and Romain Figeac. She struggled into her PVC cat suit, and in the hallway found a red leather zip-up jacket. She pulled on the jacket, stuck the gun inside her leather backpack, and slipped into her shoes.

Then she went to look for Christian.

The long hallway led to a series of old offices, closed off by glass partitions.

A low moaning came from the fourth one.

She saw a needle in an aluminum kidney-shaped tray and Christian standing beside it. His eyes rolled up in his head and she was just in time to catch him before he fell to the floor.

Just her luck! They’d been giving him dope. Etienne had probably kept Christian here since she’d last seen him, the liar.

Christian was tall and heavy-boned for such a thin person.

“Don’t check out on me, Christian. Move. You have to walk.”

She hooked her arm under his and tried to help him. At the same time, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed 18 for the paramedic-trained pompiers. “My friend’s OD’d, what do I do?” she asked.

“Keep him walking until we get there.”

She gave them the address.

“We’ll meet you on Boulevard de Sébastopol.”

She prayed Christian could hold out and that they’d make it to the street before Jules came looking for him. She made him walk.

He kept nodding out, his breathing stopping then slowly starting.

On the landing she paused and listened. She took the back stairs just in case. Narrow winding rusty ones. And all the while she kept talking to Christian, making him move his feet, and slapping him awake.

By the time the pompiers arrived, they’d made it to the boulevard and Christian’s eyelids were fluttering. The blue-suited crew took over, tying him down in their ambulance van and giving him a shot of Narcan, the junkie jaws of life. He struggled to sit upright and almost gave one of the crew a black eye.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“Christian, you’re safe,” she said.

“We’ll stabilize him at the hospital,” the paramedic said, getting an IV going in Christian’s arm. The emergency van took off.

IN THE café’s tarnished wall mirrors, Aimée watched the two men, huddled in conversation. She didn’t know which was Nessim,

Michel’s uncle. She remembered what she and René had found out about his laundering of profits and false bankruptcies.

Where was Jules?

Too bad she couldn’t see their mouths well enough to read their lips. The heavyset one, wearing wire-framed glasses and with a tonsure of graying frizzy hair, drew with his finger on the table. The man across from him, completely bald, nodded his head from time to time.

A certain urgency permeated the late evening crowd, mostly habitues of the quartier. Conversation buzzed at the crowded zinc bar, while the miniskirted cashier with the beehive hairdo made change and shouted orders back to the kitchen through the dense haze of cigarette smoke.

A harried waiter leaned across her table. He whisked aside crumbs, wiped the marble top with a blue cloth.

“Un café noir,” Aimée said.

He cocked his head and disappeared.

Outside, in the narrow street, Aimée saw droplets of water fall on carts parked on the broken pavement. A fitful July rain danced and skirted the façades, teasing Parisians anxious for the arrival of a tepid August that still seemed too far off. Trucks blocked access to the small square.

She surveyed the small Bar Tabac. An Asian man, his cell phone on the table, took orders from a fabric catalog; two shop girls picked at an Auvergnat salad; an older blond hooker she’d seen on Saint Denis ate choucroute, part of the day’s Alsatian sausage special, and kept an eye on the racing results flashing on the télé perched above the bar.

Aimée realized the place stretched from one street to the other; the bar side fronted busy rue d’Aboukir while the restaurant tables opened to narrow rue Ste-Foy. The women, with their clients, disappeared into Passage Ste-Foy, a covered alleyway wedged between peeling buildings. And right across from her table. Perfect for a getaway, Aimée thought.

She watched the two men. Friar Tuck shook his head, pulled a notebook from his pocket, and wrote something. Aimée couldn’t see the other man’s reaction since the waiter had appeared with her café noir and blocked the mirror.

When she could see again, they’d stood up, their chairs scraping the linoleum, and were headed out the glass doors. Aimée took a gulp of espresso and threw some francs on the table.

They paused in front of the old stone portal of the passage by the Roseline sign. She couldn’t see their faces, only their black suit jackets beaded with rain and the frizzy-haired man’s fist pounding his palm. And then the other man violently shook his fist.

Aimée pulled the leather jacket’s collar up for protection against the rain and turned to study the café window. Men clustered in doorways, leaning on their hand trucks and smoking. She tried to appear nonchalant as rain beat down, avoiding a tall African woman in blue leather hot pants sashaying into the passage.

And then they were gone. One man walked toward the square and the other disappeared into the passage.

Whom should she follow?

The heavyset man took off down the street in a waiting black Peugeot.

She slipped into the graffiti-covered sandstone passage. A blackened crust of grime coated the damp walls. Drainpipes leaned crookedly, loose electric wires trailed from the ceiling. The passage opened to an unroofed area lined with green garbage bins, then forked toward some stairs, mounting to vestiges of the ancient ramparts.

On her left was an entrance to the crumbling, flaking stairway. A musty coldness hit her. The stairs sagged and creaked as she mounted them. She heard moans from behind doors, and over the passage roof came the whine of sewing machines.

From a coved window on the small landing she saw the man’s shiny bald dome in the apartment across the way. Instead of a light well where the buildings joined, there was open space. In medieval times, she imagined neighbors conversing with each other across the way or the king’s men leaning out and throttling their enemies.

The bald man turned. And before she could duck, he saw her staring at him. She moved aside.

Opposite her, a door opened. Inside the room, a man combed his stringy hair with his fingers before a cracked mirror. His false teeth on the cheap dresser caught the light.

“Adieu, chéri,” the pute said, tucking franc notes into the tiny pocket of her blue leather hot pants. She shut the door, showing no surprise at seeing Aimée on the landing.

“My horoscope today said quick and easy.” She rolled her eyes. “Not even slow and hard!”

Aimée controlled her shudder at the thought of the old man.

“Know him?” Aimée gestured across the window to the bald man. “Over there.”

“Not as a client but … ” the pute said, her voice trailing off.

Aimée hoped she invited a confidence. She folded a hundred-franc note and gingerly slipped it into the woman’s already stuffed pocket.

“As my landlord,” the woman continued, as if there’d been no pause. “The salaud’s raising our rent and won’t even fix the hall lights. At night, with my johns, I have to use a flashlight.”

“His name?”

“You a flic?”

It was Aimée’s turn to roll her eyes. “Would I hunt small fry like this?”

“Didn’t think so, but then you could be some new type of undercover,” the woman said.

“People hire me,” Aimée said. “Kind of like you. Every job isn’t picture-perfect or smooth sailing but it keeps my interest.” She smiled. “I get bored easily.”

“You mounting a sting?”

He must be a bigger fish than she thought.

Aimée looked down to cover her surprise. The woman’s turquoise platform heels were worn down on the sides. She pounded the cobbles, all right.

“Mais could I tell you even if I wanted to?” Aimée said.

The pute grinned. “Just get Nessim Mamou into hot water … maybe it will warm him up.”

So that was Nessim, Michel’s shady uncle. “I’m looking for Jules, his partner.”

The prostitute shook her head.

“Distinguished, white-haired mec, nice tan.”

The woman nodded. “He’s around.”

She saw Nessim scurry through the passage. Aimée walked down the stairs, and past the overflowing green bins of garbage marked PROPRIÉTÉ DE PARIS.

She strode over the pitted cobbles, toward the punch of machines coming from the rear courtyard, as if she knew where she was going. She didn’t. Her teeth ached from clamping down so tightly. But attitude counted, especially in the Sentier.

She’d lost him.

Reaching the last courtyard, the one with a faded sign saying WASNARD, she veered to the left. She mounted the curved wooden stairs, the treads of which were grooved and worn. A cotton taste filled her mouth. Dry and bland. What if someone asked her why she was here? She had to think of something quickly. And she had to find out where Nessim Mamou had gone.

Above, the punching noise of machinery grew louder. Voices, in what sounded like Chinese, pattered from an open window. She peered closer. Across the well, open windows spiraled upward along the path of the stairs. Opposite her, one was cracked open. A dark-skinned man, his hair tied back, fed cloth into an industrial sewing machine. She could see mattresses behind him stacked against the walls.

Did these workers sleep here? Sprawl after work on the floor in buildings little changed from the fifteenth century?

The solid door opened in front of her and a muttered curse caught her before she could move. Several faces looked up from the pressing machines.

“What are you doing standing here, eh?” Nessim asked. With his long face and jowly cheeks, he resembled a basset hound. His brown suede jacket enhanced the effect, she thought.

“Monsieur, I’m looking for …”

“The showroom’s downstairs,” he interrupted, edging her toward the staircase.

“But you’re the patron, of course,” she said, managing a smile. Widening it and winking. “C’est dur. You’re a hard one to catch up with.”

“Like I said …” His eyes narrowed, looking her up and down. Sizing her up. Good thing she had the leather jacket on.

“I’m a location scout for Canalt + film,” she said, improvising.

“The cinema?”

“A historical production, a made-for-TV drama,” she said, injecting a world-weary tone into her voice. “You know, a sixteenth-century vehicle for Depardieu, his favorite kind. Good thing he plays the king, he’s gotten immense.”

In the dim light, she saw the man grin. Then frown. He had an olive complexion and wore gold chains around his neck.

“Why here?” he asked.

Good point, she thought, standing in this peeling arched hallway, plaster crumbling onto the weather-beaten tiles and pigeon droppings coating the opaque glass. The sweatshop crew watched them.

“Cutting corners on a fast production schedule,” she said, her voice lowered. “We plan to use parts of the Sentier, filming at night and on weekends when it’s empty. Paris can be a cheap location with a local crew.”

The man nodded. Cheap and quick, he understood.

She glanced around. “After all, the old wall of Paris ran through here, didn’t it?”

She was making this up as she went along. But she remembered from her school days that Charles V had built battlements that crossed the present-day Sentier.

He liked that, she could tell. Maybe she’d just made a friend.

“Come with me to my office.”

He locked the door with a slender long-handled key and gestured for her to go ahead. Now no one could see them.

She stuck Etienne’s gun against his ribs. “Let’s meet Jules instead.” He tried to sprint past her but she stuck her foot out and tripped him. He crashed into the stone wall. She put the gun to his temple, rolled back the trigger.

“Where’s Jules?”

He was breathing short and quick. “He didn’t show up.”

“Why?

Nessim tried to twist away but she pinched a nerve in his neck and he went stiff with pain.

“That’s just for appetizers.” She pinched harder.

“I don’t know,” he gasped.

“You’re Michel’s uncle Nessim, aren’t you?”

Surprise painted his face. He nodded.

“That’s another reason I don’t like you,” she said. “But you’re going legit soon. And all your little sweatshops, too. The ones with poisonous equipment that give people TB.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I didn’t like all those fake credit guarantees by the Kookie Mode company, which fronted for Michel’s supplies, and the ordered merchandise that they never paid for, and then their filing for bankruptcy. You face seven years in Frésnes.”

“I’ll be a poor man …”

“But a happy one,” she said. “Where’s Jules?”

He shook his head.

“He was late. Before our appointment, he was meeting those old radicals.”

“Action-Réaction?”

He nodded, his eyes fearful.

“Stay here for awhile.” She shoved him into a dark alcove, and, grabbing pink plastic twine from boxes in the hall, twisted it around his wrists and ankles just as she had tied Etienne. Tight. She was getting good at doing this with a gun in her hand. “Think about how good you’ll feel starting a new life after giving Michel that building with all new electric wiring.”

She slipped Etienne’s gun back into her backpack. Nessim’s eyes popped. He started shouting. She pulled off his shoe, slipped off his dirty gray sock, and stuffed it into his mouth.

SHE WALKED quickly toward Action-Réaction, taking a short-cut through another passage.

From the far end of the dim, deserted passage came the sounds of the shops’ closing up: the emptying of garbage, locks clicking. Suddenly a whizzing sliced by her ear and the half-silvered long mirror in front of her shattered.

A bullet … she ducked, fell over a trash bin and scrambled over the floor. A sharp pain sliced her calf then raced up her thigh as a glass shard cut her. Cloth and material scattered over the uneven tiles. Feathers and bits of fiberfill sprayed over her, like snow in July. She clawed her way over the damp material and leaned against the passage wall.

No time to catch her breath. Ahead of her the metal grate over the passage exit had been locked!

Footsteps pounded in the distance.

She pulled herself up on the protruding water pipe that snaked over the stone wall. As she dug her toes in where the pipes joined and gripped the rusted metal supports, she wished she was wearing high-tops instead of Manolo Blahnik heels. Every toehold hurt. But the only way out was over the passage’s glass roof.

The tinted, metal-framed glass peaked above the locked passage. Grayish blue light dribbled over the dark storefronts, creating a webbed pattern on the tiled floor. The rusted fire escape at the far end was broken; she had no option.

She clutched the stonework, feeling the pipe sway dangerously below the oval mezzanine window that overlooked the passage like a balcony. Two floors rose above her. Below in the shadows, she heard the metallic click of a door.

She shimmied up the stone, reaching and pulling herself to the next window ledge, which was dusty and sharp. An ominous crack came from the pipe and she climbed faster, searching for toeholds, panting and praying. She tried not to look down but every few meters her grip slipped and her eyes locked on the dirty tile below.

Power tools, glass rectangles, and metal rods filled the walkway skirting the glass roof. She jumped onto the walkway, landing by a bucket of plaster, hammers, and saws. She stood and tried the window handle. Rusted shut. No way to get out.

Thuds and pounding shook the water-stained door on her right.

Whoever it was had made it up here by the stairway while she’d had to do it the hard way.

She reached into the pack for the .357 and used it as a hammer against one of the panes in the heavy glass roof. The several-meter-thick glass didn’t even chip. She didn’t want to waste bullets so she put back the .357 and picked up the nail gun at her feet, flicked the switch, and shot nails into the glass, which veined into rivers of tiny cracks, sparkling in the dim light. Panes quivered and then shattered.

Stooping, she was about to crawl through the hole she had made when an arm caught her and spun her around.

Gisela’s face glistened.

“Like I said, I’m good at following up,” she said, pointing a Beretta, like Aimée’s, at her. “They belong to me. My mother died for them.”

“The diamonds? Your mother committed suicide because her political convictions crumbled and she couldn’t take prison anymore,” Aimée said. “But wherever they are, you’re welcome to them. Ask Jules.”

“You’re lying about my mother,” she said. “Jules was supposed to be at Action-Réaction but he’s not there.

Then were Gisela and Jules in this together?

“You killed Teynard,” Aimée accused her. “Why?”

“Jules said he was in the way,” Gisela told her.

So she had guessed right. Gisela and Jules were in league!

“Where’s Stefan?” Aimée asked.

“That’s where I’m taking you.”

Was Stefan in on this too? “Gisela, you think outwitting two terrorists who’ve evaded capture for twenty years …”

“Stefan’s gone soft,” said Gisela.

Then there would be only two against her, instead of three.

Aimée knocked the Beretta from Gisela’s hand into a sack of plaster.

Gisela grasped a long wrench, and Aimée followed its arc in slow motion as it sliced down toward her head. She ducked, pulled the nail gun up, and emptied it into Gisela’s thigh. Gisela’s screams resounded in her ears.

By the time Aimée could get sense from Gisela she knew she had to hurry or Stefan would be the next to die.

Tour-Jean-Sans-Peur … why hadn’t she thought of it before … Jutta and the renovation at Tour Jean-Sans-Peur! She made herself run. Narrow rue Sentier lay deserted. She tried to ignore the pain in her leg and the sticky feel of her own blood accompanying her strides.

A crescent of moonlight reflected on the cobbles of the tower’s courtyard. She climbed over the locked gate. The tower lay silent and dark, like a chess piece. Beyond the tower’s entrance was the adjoining school construction site. As she went closer, distant noises came from below the partially gutted tower—a measured scraping, like digging. Moving behind a small cement mixer and pile of sand, she pushed aside a plywood barrier.

Inside, an incandescent work light, yellow cable and wire trailing from it, illuminated a stone floor. An arc welder, and forklifts were parked by a cordoned-off ventilation duct. Several holes in the floor were taped over and crossed by rebar scraps she’d barely noticed last time. Frigid air rose from the subterranean depths. She pulled the red leather jacket tighter over her cat suit and headed to the stone stairs. The smell of old stone and powdered plaster filled the stairwell. The stair treads were piled with big suction disks, the kind used by glaziers to move glass.

She pulled Etienne’s .357 from her backpack and followed the scraping noise down the steps. Rusty-colored rebar of all different lengths poked out of the cement walls on the next floor. A gaping hole in the wall revealed a dimly lit tunnel. The scraping was louder now. She entered the curved, packed-earth tunnel.

Several bare bulbs lit the scene before her. Stacks of thick glass panes braced by a single two-by-four lined the vaulted stone walls. Ahead lay what looked like part of an abandoned Metro platform with an old cement control booth.

Suddenly, a deafening roar shook the walls. With the smell of burning rubber, a lighted train hurtled past. She jumped back as the squealing of brakes made her cover her ears. And that’s when she saw Stefan, chipping with a shovel at the tiled wall.

A hand grabbed the .357 from her, pushed her face to the cold tile, held it there.

“Nice of you to return this,” said Jules, Etienne’s uncle, gripping her arms and putting the barrel to her temple. The smell of cigars clung to him. “Your mother was thoughtful, too.”

“Showing off your mercenary technique?” Aimée asked, gritting her teeth, disgusted to think she’d found him mildly attractive when she’d met him in the Bourse. And then she’d slept with his nephew. The stupid things I do, she thought.

“Is my mother here?”

“You miss her, don’t you?” Jules asked, pushing her toward Stefan. He felt in her pocket and took the Beretta. Gisela’s Beretta.

Jules held both guns now.

Not only stupid, dead stupid.

Stefan’s knuckles on the shovel handle were bleeding. He looked tired and beaten. “Aimée, why didn’t you back off?” he asked.

Cold air rose from the dense earth. Crumpled Béghin Say sugar wrappers littered the cracked concrete. She thought back to the sugar spilled on her counter. A sweet tooth. “You broke into my apartment, but didn’t find anything,” she said.

Aimée looked at the curved arches, the platform, the small control booth, and saw how the lines intersected.

“If my mother was here with you, you’d know where to look for the diamonds,” Aimée said. “She switched them on Jutta, didn’t she?”

Aimée went on, not waiting for Jules to reply.

“But I know where they are now. You sent me the map.”

Jules grinned. “So enlighten me.”

“First, tell me where she is.”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t have waited twenty years to come back,” he said.

“That’s not why … Romain Figeac lured you to Paris. He spread word in Dakar that he’d found you. That he’d expose you.”

It was a good guess. Jules slapped her head, so hard she fell against a steel drum. Her whole body stung.

“Why do you think the diamonds are still here?” Aimée asked, gasping. “Wouldn’t she have taken them long since?”

“Your mother cut a deal with the flics and turned our group in,” Jules said. “Stefan and I got away. But when she got out of Frésnes, word was she never made it back here.”

Jules’s eyes shone with a calculating coldness.

“You’re digging in the wrong place,” she said, pointing to the area next to where the glass was stacked by the rusted metal lockers.

“Prove it,” Jules said.

“Look in my backpack.”

“Empty it, Stefan,” Jules said, kicking Aimée against the tile wall. Jules pulled out the notebook. “Show me.”

She turned the page to the one showing Emil and the platforms.

“See, the vaultlike lines are the same,” she said. “And there’s the treasure chest she drew. See what looks like an arrow? But it’s pointing the other way.”

Jules pushed her forward and threw down a pickax at her feet.

“Get to work,” he said. He’d started the small cement mixer, which made a grinding noise.

And with horror she realized that Jules would make them do the dirty work, then take the diamonds and cement their bodies into some hole.

“After twenty years, do you think there are any diamonds left? It’s crazy,” she said.

“Tell her, Stefan,” Jules said. He swatted Stefan with the gun.

“She told me … on the way to the safe house,” Stefan said, his voice rasping. “We thought the flics were following us from the cemetery. There was a traffic jam, and all this Metro construction. Jutta and Beate jumped out of the car and hid the diamonds here, buried, by the tower, in the wall. They were going to come back and move them. But then there was a shootout.”

“Why didn’t they hide them in the coffin, too?” Aimée asked.

Stefan shook his head. “At the cemetery, Jana convinced them she had a connection who could fence the diamonds. So only the bonds were hidden there. Those were enough for me. But Jutta became greedy.

“After the shoot-out your mother was scared. I figure that she must have moved the diamonds. Jutta spent twenty years, plotting to find them when she got out of prison. When she saw the construction, she figured you would know where your mother had moved them.”

Aimée’s pickax hit something hard. And when the hole gaped open, she saw the metal box.

“You left the death fetish, the yellow feathers, to scare Idrissa, didn’t you?” said Aimée.

“I learned a few things living in Senegal,” Jules said.

“Etienne cultivated Christian … became his broker,” she said. “But why?”

“Etienne’s a good boy, my sister’s boy,” Jules grinned. “Smart. He sent me a new passport, has a deal for the diamonds already in place.”

“Too bad he won’t be joining us.”

She took another swing and this time, the pick made a dull thud.

“Why?” Jules’s eyes narrowed.

She wanted to stall him. “I tied him up,” she said.

Jules turned and shot Stefan in the shoulder. He cried out and fell down.

“Pull the box out slowly,” Jules ordered her.

She wedged it back and forth, easing it out of the hole, but it felt light.

He’d shoot her next.

Jules shot the lock off, stooped, and opened the box.

Empty.

Aimée rammed Jules with her shoulder and dove to the dirt. Her leg hit the two-by-four and it came loose. She scrabbled up on her elbows and tried to get behind the stack of thick three-meter-high panes of glass. Each must weigh several hundred kilos, she figured. They’d deflect the bullets.

But the stack of glass wobbled. One pane tipped and fell on top of Jules with a loud, shuddering thud.

“Get this off … me!” Jules gasped. The glass glinted, pinning him on his stomach in the dirt. He was caught under the glass up to his shoulders. Short of breath, he waved his arms. “Help!” And then the next glass sheet teetered and fell with a jarring crash. His chest was being compressed as the sheets of glass, like shimmering dominoes, fell on top of him, making the earth and the stacks of metal lockers jump.

Stefan tried to crawl away but fell bleeding onto the tiles.

Aimée kept her head down and curled up in the space where the stack of glass had leaned against the wall.

Then the metal lockers toppled over, blocking her way, jamming her behind them. All she could hear was moans, as Jules slowly suffocated to death.

She couldn’t move, she was stuck.

Behind the old lockers was a hole in the crumbling cement wall, rebar sticking out. She tried to ease her way around them. And then Aimée knew. The backward arrow from the treasure chest pointed here.

Carefully, she reached in. She felt something damp and smooth. She pulled it out. The moldy smell from the Neufarama bag made her gasp, but not as much as what was inside.