“By about twelve hours. Not sure when I’m going home now, but I’m hopeful in the next week. I . . . lost my passport, so I’ll need the embassy to replace it before I can leave. The police are still reviewing the surveillance and checking to make sure my story holds up. They think Seb kidnapped Angela, took her underground, then went back above to purchase cigarettes from the tabac. The time frame is narrow, but it points to holes in his original alibi. I’m hoping for news tomorrow.”

Chang takes my hand in hers. “That’s a good plan. Once I learned you were here, I had to come and verify you were in one piece. You can take care of yourself now, Shayna—it’s okay to. You know that, right?”

A small smile spreads across my chapped lips. “Yes, I know now.”

“Good girl. Well, we certainly got the adrenaline rush I wanted, didn’t we?” Chang smirks. She gives my hand a kiss. “Let’s get going. No sense in staying close to the beehive.”

“I’m . . . I can’t go anywhere, Chang.”

“Of course you can. I posted your bail.”

“You posted fifteen thousand euros?”

Chang reaches through the bars of my cell and slides a hand under my chin. “You’ll pay me back when you become a big-shot doctor. Or judge. Or deejay.”

Tears stream down my face as the guard approaches from behind her. He unlocks my holding cell, and Chang wraps me in her arms.

I sign several forms with carbon copies attached, each one stating I’m in charge of all my faculties and will return when summoned. My translator, Jean-Luc, elucidates each clause, careful to explain the sentences I stumble over; he sails through the pages with all the levity he showed when I first found him at the café beside the Sorbonne.

After I was fingerprinted, both he and Valentin spoke to me together in my cell, and Jean-Luc stayed close by to write out his reports. The United Nations had been working with the police to curb trafficking, but Jean-Luc’s assignment to monitor me was strictly need to know. As Valentin explained, he began reexamining Seb as a suspect, as more than the grieving boyfriend, when the morgue director saw us leave together on Monday, despite Valentin warning me to avoid strangers. Valentin had learned of Seb’s dishonorable discharge, but it was only after he dug further and discovered Baptiste’s death and Seb’s personal interest in the catacombs that he became concerned. The note that Valentin slipped under Angela’s door was meant to encourage me to stay put while the police tracked down Seb and brought him in for questioning.