The War Begins with a single phone call that Victoria will never forget.
She was in her office at the museum, surrounded by papers and photographs and the accumulated evidence of a week that had changed everything, when her phone rang. The voice on the other end was unfamiliar, cold, professional in a way that made her skin prickle.
“Ms. Hartwell,” the voice said. “We need to meet.”
“Who is this?”
“That doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve been asking questions that have attracted attention. Questions that certain people would very much like you to stop asking.”
Victoria set down her pen. “Is this a threat?”
“It’s information,” the voice replied. “A gift, from someone who thinks you deserve to know what’s coming before it arrives. You have been investigating the art theft network, working with Harrison Blake and Maren Blackwood, building a case that you believe will expose decades of fraud and return stolen property to its rightful owners. That case is real. But the people you’re investigating are more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”
“And you’re telling me this because…?”
“Because the case is about to be destroyed. Not by the people you’re investigating, but by someone else. Someone who has been watching your investigation from the beginning, waiting for the right moment to act. They don’t care about exposing the network or returning the art. They care about something else, something hidden, something that has been waiting for exactly this moment.”
The line went dead.
Victoria sat in her office for a long time, looking at the phone in her hand, trying to understand what had just happened. Someone had warned her. Someone who knew about her investigation, who knew about the network, who knew about things that she had only begun to discover herself. And they had told her that she was in danger, that her case was about to be destroyed, that there was something else going on that she did not understand.
The war, it seemed, had begun. And she was only beginning to see the shape of the battlefield.
She called Sebastian, but his phone went to voicemail. She called Harrison Blake, and was told that he was unavailable, that he would call her back. She called Maren Blackwood, and the line rang and rang with no answer.
And then she received the email.
The email was from an address she did not recognize, and it contained a single attachment — a photograph of Sebastian Crane, taken that morning, bound and gagged in a chair in a room she did not recognize. His face was bruised, his expression was pained, and beneath the photograph was a single line of text.
Tell Victoria to stop. Or this happens to everyone she loves.
The war had begun. And Victoria understood, for the first time, exactly what she was fighting against.