Read Chapter 20: The Race of Fire

The heat off the tarmac warped the skyline ahead, the harbor glittering like a promise Monaco couldn't keep. Lap twelve. Jack’s hands were steady on the wheel, the spare car finally feeling like an extension of his own spine. He’d caught Steiner’s gearbox twice through the Swimming Pool, but the Austrian’s straight-line speed was filthy—Rivière money poured into that engine like jet fuel. Jack braked late into the chicane, rear stepping out, catching it with a flick of opposite lock.

“Stay patient,” he muttered to himself, the only voice left in his helmet. The team radio had been dead for twelve laps. He was a ghost in a red car, running his own race.

Then the power vanished.

Not a stutter. Not a fuel surge. A clean, absolute severance of thrust, as if someone had reached into the engine bay and pulled the plug. Jack’s head snapped forward against the HANS device as the car decelerated with brutal, mechanical resistance—not braking, but *binding*. Something had seized.

He kept both hands on the wheel, instincts firing. Get off the racing line. Get to runoff. The tunnel exit was fifty meters ahead, the bright slash of daylight beyond it. He flicked the car right, tires howling as he fought the locked rear axle onto the narrow escape road at the exit of Tabac.

Then the smell hit.

Electrics, burning. Ozone and cooked insulation. Through the clear visor, Jack saw a wisp of smoke curl from the bodywork behind the cockpit, thin and gray. Then orange.

The fire came fast. A sheet of it along the left sidepod, licking up toward the airbox, fed by something that wasn't fuel—it was too eager, too chemical. Hydraulic fluid. Magnesium.

Jack’s hands were already on the steering wheel release. The marshals were running, fire extinguishers in hand, but they were too far. He unclipped his belts, planted both feet, and launched himself out of the cockpit, rolling onto the hot asphalt in his nomex suit.

He landed hard, shoulder taking the impact. Heat washed over him, acrid and brutal, and he scrambled backward on his palms until the barrier stopped him. Twenty meters away, his car—his beautiful, untested, unverified spare car—was a roaring pyre of red and orange and black.

The world went silent for a moment. The crowd’s gasp was a wave, swallowed by the crackle of the blaze.

Jack leaned against the TecPro barrier, lungs dragging in thick air, helmet still on. His hands were shaking. Not from fear—from rage. He’d checked the bleed valve. He’d checked the floor pan. He’d checked every system the engineer had pointed at with a guilty glance. But you can’t check everything. Not in twenty-four hours. Not when the team has a manplanted in every shadow.

He looked up.

The big screen opposite the harbor showed his burning car. Then the camera cut to the pit wall, where Morini stood with his headset around his neck, expression flat and unreadable. Then the camera swung again, up and right, to the VIP box high above the start-finish straight.

Philippe Rivière stood at the glass, hands in his pockets, perfectly composed. A small smile curved his lips, the kind a man wears when watching a problem tidy itself away.

Jack’s glove creaked as his fist tightened around the barrier. He didn’t look away. He made sure Philippe could see his face clearly. He pulled his helmet off, let the Monaco air hit his sweat-slicked hair, and stared up at the glass box.

*You just tried to kill me in front of two hundred million people.*

Philippe’s smile didn’t waver. He raised one hand, a small, almost dismissive gesture—he might have been waving to a fan. Then he turned away, disappearing into the shadows of the box.

A marshal reached Jack, pulling at his arm, shouting something about the medical center. Jack let himself be led. His legs were unsteady, but his mind was cold and clear. The forensic trail was on his person—the tracker fragments in his pocket liner, the modified valve cap in his sock. If they searched him now, he was done. If he presented them now, they’d be dismissed as debris from a rookie's paranoia.

*Not yet.*

He ducked under the marshal’s arm, turning back toward the burning car. The fire crews had it under control now, smothering the blaze in white foam. The wreckage was a blackened skeleton, carbon fiber erupting in pale strands like bone.

“My engineer,” Jack said to the marshal, his voice hoarse. “I need to talk to my engineer.”

The marshal nodded, guiding him along the barrier toward the pit entry. Mechanic boots thundered toward him—Rinaldi was the first to arrive, face pale beneath his cap, eyes wide.

“Jack—what happened?”

Jack studied him. Rinaldi’s shock looked real. Or he was a better actor than the man from Nice.

“Tell them it was a fuel leak,” Jack said, low enough that only Rinaldi could hear. “Tell them I smelled fuel two laps out. That’s the story.”

Rinaldi blinked. “But… the telemetry will show—”

“The telemetry will show whatever the team says it shows.” Jack grabbed Rinaldi’s shoulder, squeezing hard enough to make the mechanic wince. “You were there. You saw me check the car. You saw me find nothing.” He leaned in, voice dropping to a razor’s edge. “But I know what I didn’t find today, Rinaldi. And I’m still breathing. That makes me a problem they can’t burn away.”

Rinaldi’s face went grey.

Jack released him and walked toward the pit lane, leaving his burning career behind him in a smear of smoke against the Riviera sky. Behind him, the race continued—Steiner’s red-and-gold car streaking past the start-finish line—but it felt like a different world. Somewhere far below Monaco, a decision had been made. And Jack had chosen to walk into the fire alive.