The hotel suite on the eighth floor of the Hotel Crillon-Beaumarchais had been booked under a name absent from every registry the public could access.
Margaux had checked in two days ago. She had paid in cash. She had walked through the lobby in a black wool coat that hid the brace at her left wrist. She had taken the elevator to the eighth floor, locked her door, drawn the curtains, run a bath, drunk one glass of cold water from the suite's marble counter, and lain down on top of the made bed without removing her coat.
She had been asleep since.
The third statue arrived at four-twelve in the morning, Paris time.
It came up the service stairs from the parking garage. The garage cameras caught it on the lower level moving past a row of parked vehicles. The seventh-floor landing camera missed it. The eighth-floor hallway camera missed it too. The hallway carpet showed the impression of its weight in the fiber, but the cameras showed an empty corridor.
