“Who sent this?” I whispered to myself.
The glow from the phone lit up my face. The message still burned on the screen: “Stop looking for the necklace. You’re not built for this.”
I tried calling back. It rang once, then cut off. Tried again. This time, the line was dead. Whoever had sent the message was careful. No contact name, no details. Just a dead number.
The next morning, when I entered my office, Paige leaned in from her desk. “You’re making that face again.”
“What face?” I muttered.
“The one you make when someone just threatened to kill you.”
I pushed the phone toward her. She read the message, her eyebrows lifting.
“Creepy,” she said. “Looks like someone knows exactly what you’re doing.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Too close for comfort.”
I leaned back in my chair, eyes fixed on the ceiling. My mind spun.
Who had the code to the Sheikh’s safe?
As far as I knew—only two people. The Sheikh himself. And his wife.
Not the staff. Not the guards. Not Lola.
Just the Sheikh. And her.
I tapped my fingers against the desk. Could she have done it?
Was she angry at him? Had something cracked between them?
A necklace like that—it wasn’t just money. It was history. A symbol of his power, his pride. If his wife had taken it, the reason had to be personal. Revenge? Anger? Or something darker.
But then another thought slipped in.
The safe showed no signs of being forced, which made me think the thief must have known the code.
But then again—maybe a real professional could open it without the code, and without leaving a single scratch.
If the thief really is someone inside the house, as I fear, they could have planted a tiny spy camera to capture the Sheikh or his wife punching in the numbers.
Or perhaps there’s a hidden flaw in that model of safe—something only a skilled thief would know how to exploit. A weakness that could let them open it clean, without breaking a thing.
That being said, this safe wasn’t a toy. It wasn’t the kind of thing a basic thief could crack with a crowbar and a stethoscope. No. It needed skill. It needed time. It needed someone who knew exactly what they were doing.
So—who could force a safe like that?
I stood up and started pacing. Paige’s eyes followed me.
“You’re going in circles,” she said.
“Exactly,” I muttered. “That’s what this case is. A circle.”
I stopped, staring at the screen where the CCTV footage was still paused.
The hooded figure. Black car. Foreign plate.
“Who the hell are you?” I whispered.
I zoomed in on the frame, trying to catch something. The way he walked. The way his shoulders moved. Anything. But the image was blurry. The hood did its job—no face, no hair, no features.
Paige crossed her arms. “We need to find that car.”
“Easier said than done,” I said. “It looks like a Mercedes E Class, but I am not sure. And the plate is half-blurred.”
“You think it’s a pro?” she asked.
“Not sure. Either a pro or an insider,” I muttered. “Too calm. Too smooth. Twenty minutes inside, then out. No alarms. No panic.”
“And no one on staff mentioned it,” Paige added.
“That’s what bothers me most,” I said. “If they didn’t see him, that’s one problem. If they saw him and stayed quiet—that’s something else entirely.”
Fortunately, I knew a guy. For the right price, he could trace a car anywhere in the city. Somehow, he had access to every CCTV feed in town.
He was greedy, untrustworthy—but he was my only option. I called him, and by the afternoon, I was at his flat.
“Do you have the money?” he asked the moment I stepped inside.
I slid an envelope halfway out of my jacket. Inside was $10,000. His eyes lit up, and a slow, greedy smile spread across his face.
“Let’s start the hunt.”
His office was a cave of screens—four of them mounted above a desk dominated by a single computer. I handed him my phone, showing the footage from the Sheikh’s house: the black car pulling up in the night.
We began the search. Street after street, feed after feed, we tracked the car east, toward the city center. Two hours of rewinding, scanning, and cross-referencing.
Each time the car reappeared, we marked its trail, building a map of its path.
Finally, we narrowed it down to a single street. The car entered—but never came out. It must have parked inside a building.
Problem was, the crucial camera was blocked by a delivery truck. We couldn’t see which one.
Progress, yes. But I was still frustrated.
Sam, the so-called CCTV wizard, glanced at me and said, “Let’s go back in time.”
I frowned, then realized what he meant.
We rewound the footage to just before the car arrived at the Sheikh’s house and searched for the path the car took to get there.
We quickly saw that the car came to the Sheikh’s house using the same road it used to leave it. The same route in, the same route out.
When we checked the final street, this time, the truck was gone. And there it was—the car pulling into the underground parking of a building.
I wrote down the address and left immediately.
I arrived at the building dressed for the part. An orange safety vest, the kind road workers wear, a pen in hand, and a clipboard stacked with papers. I looked official enough to pass for someone who belonged.
I paced slowly in front of the garage door, scribbling fake notes, examining the walls, the glass, the heavy steel entrance. No one questioned me. When the door finally opened and a sleek red Ferrari purred out, I slipped inside before it closed.
The place was a shrine to excess—Porsches, Lamborghinis, Maseratis, Rolls-Royces. Dubai, the land where parking garages could pass for car shows. But I wasn’t here to admire. I was hunting.
And then I saw it. The black Mercedes E-Class. Same shape, same profile, and the license plate could totally match the half-blurred license plate I’d seen on the CCTV. Parking spot A-088. My pulse quickened.
That’s when I noticed him—a security guard, walking straight toward me. Cameras dotted the ceiling. “Shit,” I muttered. I’d been too focused on the car to think about them.
“Hi, sir. What are you doing?” he asked.
I pulled a card from my pocket, keeping my tone cool. “Private investigator. Stolen vehicle case. And as of right now…” I pointed at the Mercedes. “…case solved.”
The guard frowned, suspicious. I leaned into the lie, scribbling on my clipboard without even looking up.
“Can you give me the name and flat number of the owner of this spot?”
He shook his head. “No. I can’t do that.”
I fixed him with a look—half bored, half annoyed. “I don’t have time for games. My client wants this handled discreetly. If you don’t cooperate, I’ll have to call the police. They’ll storm the place, tow the car, block the garage. Lots of noise. Lots of unhappy residents. Do you really think your boss will enjoy that headline?”
The guard hesitated. I pressed harder, pulling my phone from my pocket. “Fine. Your call. I’ll get the police involved. When your boss asks why this could have not been handled quietly, I’ll make sure he knows it was you who refused to help.”
I started dialing. The guard’s face tightened. “Ok, ok! Stop. Please. I don’t want any trouble.” He swallowed. “But I can’t give personal information.”
I kept the phone to my ear. “You don’t want trouble. I don’t want wasted time. Just give me the flat number. No one will ever know it came from you. My client gets closure, and you get a quiet night.”
He caved. We went to his small office, screens flickering with security feeds. After a moment at his computer, he whispered the details. Flat 2304. Name: Salma Al Suwaidi.
I thanked him and left quickly. On the street, the name echoed in my head. Al Suwaidi. The Sheikh’s wife’s family. My gut twisted.
Then my phone rang. It was Ben Labna. His voice was sharp. “Come to the Sheikh’s house. Urgently.”
When I arrived, Ben Labna led me straight into the Sheikh’s office. The Sheikh’s expression was dark, his jaw tight, his eyes blazing with restrained fury.
He didn’t speak a word. Instead, he shoved a photograph and a folded note across the desk toward me.
The photograph showed the stolen necklace, unmistakably real, lying beside yesterday’s newspaper—an image that could only have come from the thief himself.
The note was short, but cruelly sharp: the necklace, it said, had been commissioned by the Sheikh as a gift for his wife, meant to be revealed at their Grand Anniversary celebration. The thief had stolen it before the Sheikh could present it. The message ended with a taunt:
“The Sheikh cannot protect what he owns.”
For a moment, I was stunned. When I lifted my eyes, the Sheikh’s face was crimson with rage. He exploded.
“All the guests!” he thundered. “All the guests of the Grand Anniversary have received this picture and this note! Do you understand? Every single one of them!”
His voice shook the room. “Now the whole city knows! My reputation—can you imagine the damage?”
I had no words. The truth sank in heavy and cold: the thief wasn’t just stealing. He was staging a performance. This wasn’t a crime hidden in shadows—it was a spectacle. And we were trapped at the center of his show.