Chapter Three: The First Equilibrium Seal

Wearing gloves, Luo Jing removed a lead-foil packet from the champagne bucket's double base. It held not the Heart of Blue Flame, but its tracking chip. Su Qirong laughed. “Is this your recovered diamond?” Lin Yan exhaled. “No. It's how they fooled the insurance system. The real stone left the building before the four o'clock refill, not after yesterday's escorted transfer.” Luo checked when the signal had first appeared on the forty-sixth floor. At 3:12 p.m., insurance tracking had vanished for ninety seconds. When it returned, it remained inside Chenghai Center. Those ninety seconds coincided with a fire-safety test that closed the building's metal shutters.