Read Chapter 23: The Gambler's Fallacy

The safehouse Zoe had found was a hole-in-the-wall shithole above a shuttered seafood restaurant two streets back from the port. The windows were painted shut. The mattress on the floor smelled like diesel and old sweat. Alex didn't care. He sat with his back against the wall, a bloodstained towel pressed to his shoulder, and watched Zoe work her phone like it owed her money.

"He's not answering," she said, thumb jabbing the screen again.

"Then we go to him." Alex shifted, grimacing as the movement pulled at the graze. The left side of his face felt tight and raw. He hadn't looked in a mirror yet. He wasn't sure he wanted to. "Where does he run his operation?"

"Basement of a cigar bar on Rue Grimaldi, but you're not walking in there with that face and that shoulder. You'd last thirty seconds." She pocketed the phone and grabbed her jacket. "I'll handle it."

"You'll handle a loanshark the way you handled the kill-switch?"

The words came out harder than he'd intended. Zoe froze at the door, back to him. The silence stretched long enough that Alex heard the hum of an ancient refrigerator and, somewhere outside, the distant scream of an engine downshifting on the circuit.

"That's fair," she said quietly. Then she turned, and her face had gone cold and businesslike. "He owes me. I've been feeding him inside information from the casino for two years. Clean intel, solid marks. I've never called in a single favor. Now I'm calling in all of them. Stay here, keep pressure on the wound, and don't bleed on anything I have to return."

The door clicked shut behind her.

Alex counted to sixty, then stood. The room tilted, and he grabbed the edge of a cracked formica table until the spin settled. His shoulder throbbed. His face burned. He crossed to the window and peeled back a corner of the paint-sealed shutter. Below, Zoe crossed the street in quick, purposeful strides, her silhouette stark under a sodium lamp before she vanished around a corner.

He waited. That was the worst part. Not the pain, not the uncertainty about the transfer, not even the image of Viktor's smug, reconstructed face on the phone. It was the waiting. Alex had spent the better part of his life learning to read people across a baize table, and he'd never once met a client who improved the longer you looked at them. Every minute Zoe was out there was a minute for something to go wrong.

At the forty-minute mark, his phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number, no preamble: *Rear alley. Come alone. Bring the ledger if you want to keep breathing.*

He checked the SIG he'd taken off the guard in the vault. Two magazines left. The wound in his shoulder had stopped seeping, but the muscle screamed when he lifted his arm to holster the weapon under his jacket. He took the stairs one at a time, keeping the good hand on the rail.

The alley behind the building reeked of rotting fish and brine. A single floodlight buzzed above a steel service door, insects pinwheeling in its cone of light. Zoe stood near a dumpster, arms crossed, jaw set. Beside her was a man Alex recognized from grimy casino back rooms: Pascal Moreau, the loanshark who ran the port district's floating debts. He was built like a retired boxer gone to seed—soft middle, hard eyes, hands that had probably broken more fingers than Alex had dealt cards.

"You've got nerve, Renault," Pascal said, no greeting. "Walking into my district with a casino syndicate hunting you, asking me to shelter you like we're cousins."

"I'm not asking for charity."

"No. You're asking for a lot more than that." Pascal pulled a cigar from his breast pocket, bit the end off, and spat it into the gutter. "Zoe here's called in her marker. That's significant. But it doesn't cover what you're going to need tomorrow."

Alex kept still. "Which is what?"

"A way off the rock before Viktor's people find you first. A discreet vehicle, a doc who won't ask questions about that burn on your face." He pointed at Alex's cheek with the unlit cigar. "And a car that can get you to the airport ridge before dawn without a single camera picking you up. That's a package deal. Her debt covers maybe half of it."

Zoe stepped between them. "Pascal—"

"Don't." Alex put a hand on her arm, gentle. He kept his eyes on Pascal. "What's the other half?"

The loanshark lit his cigar with a match, the flame briefly illuminating a face carved from years of bargains and broken promises. He took a long drag, let the smoke curl out of his nostrils, and then said: "Word reaches me you're looking to catch a flight. A specific one. Gibraltar shell, registered to a holding company that does business with some old friends of mine."

Alex felt his pulse tick up. "You know about the flight."

"I know about everything that leaves the port, Renault. I've had boats and planes running product through Monaco for twenty-five years. When a man like Viktor Dubois files a last-minute flight plan under a shell company that hasn't moved in a decade, I notice." Pascal took another drag, eyeing Alex through the haze. "I notice, and I wonder what's on that plane that's so important he's running before the race crowds even clear the stands."

The cigar smoke hung in the stagnant air. Alex heard the distant hum of the circuit, the muted roar of engines still taking practice laps under the lights. Inside his jacket, the ledger felt heavy against his ribs. He hadn't opened it yet. Somehow, he'd been afraid to—afraid that whatever was inside would explain just how deep Viktor's betrayal went.

"The ledger stays with me," Alex said.

"I didn't ask for the ledger." Pascal smiled, and it wasn't a warm expression. "I'm asking for something else. I want to know what's on that plane that's worth more than your life."

Alex looked at Zoe. She gave a small, tight shake of her head—don't trust him. But the clock was running. Sunrise wasn't far off, and that was Delacroix's deadline. Viktor was scheduled to leave tomorrow evening, slipping out of Monaco with whatever secrets the ledger protected. Alex was bleeding, his crew was scattered, and the money was gone.

"The plane probably isn't carrying cargo," Alex said slowly, working it out as he spoke. "Viktor wouldn't risk a last-minute flight plan for a shipment. He'd use a truck, a boat, something less visible." He paused. "It's carrying passengers."

Pascal's eyes gleamed. "Go on."

"Viktor's getting out of Monaco for good. He engineered this whole operation—used my crew as fall guys, set me up to grab the ledger, made it look like a robbery gone wrong." The pieces clicked into place with a sickening finality. "He's not running from the casino. He's running from whoever's higher up. He's got something on them, something in that ledger, and he's going to sell it to the highest bidder on the other side of whatever border he's crossing."

Pascal laughed, a low, ugly sound. "You think you're clever, Renault. You're not clever. You're just catching up." He dropped the cigar and ground it out beneath his heel. "I don't want your ledger. I want something else. When you catch Viktor, I want a name. The name of the buyer he's delivering to. That information's worth more to me than your weight in gold."

Alex had no intention of honoring that deal. But he didn't need Pascal to know that. "Deal."

Pascal extended a hand the size of a dinner plate. Alex shook it, ignoring the pain that shot through his shoulder. The loanshark's grip was brief, businesslike, and then he pulled out a key and pressed it into Alex's palm.

"Number seven, Rue des Pêcheurs. Second floor. There's a medical kit in the bathroom and fresh clothes in the closet. You stay there tonight. Tomorrow at sunset, I'll have a car waiting at the south end of the Quai des Artistes. Black Peugeot, no plates, full tank." He turned to leave, then paused. "One more thing."

"What?"

Pascal looked back over his shoulder, his heavy features unreadable. "You said the plane's carrying passengers. You're right. But it's not carrying who you think." He started walking, his voice drifting back through the dark. "Viktor's got a guest booked on that flight. A guest he's been keeping in a safehouse outside Nice for six years. Thought you should know before you go charging in with that pistol."

Alex opened his mouth to ask who, but Pascal was already gone, swallowed by the shadows at the end of the alley.

Zoe moved closer. "What the hell was that about?"

Alex stared at the empty space where Pascal had stood. The air was still thick with cigar smoke. His burned face throbbed. Somewhere in his chest, something cold and familiar settled into place.

It was the same feeling he'd had at the card tables years ago when he'd watched Viktor sit down across from him and knew the game had been rigged before the first hand. But now the stakes were larger than money.

"I don't know," he said slowly. "But I'm going to find out."

He thumbed the rough cloth of the ledger's cover through his jacket, feeling its weight, its secrets. One thing was certain: Viktor hadn't just been running from the fallout of the heist. He'd been running the whole time, and whatever was on that plane was the reason he'd engineered everything from the very beginning.

And Alex had a feeling he wouldn't like what he found when he caught up.