Claire's POV
Monday arrived with the specific weight of a day that had been waiting since Friday.
I felt it when I woke — the particular alertness of someone whose mind had already been working before the rest of them caught up. Delacroix. The consolidated file. The three envelopes in the evidence sleeve. Everything we had built across the weekend at the kitchen table now assembled into something that was either going to hold or wasn't.
It was going to hold.
I was certain of it the way I was certain of things I had examined from every angle and found no weakness in. The April gap, Arnaud's statement, the chain of custody, the photographs of the handwriting side by side. Four days of work distilled into a document that Sébastien had called on Sunday evening — interrupting a moment where
