Read Chapter 28: The Wire

The Monte Carlo police station smelled of stale coffee and bleach. Jack had been sitting on the hard plastic chair for twenty minutes, the recorder burning a hole in his pocket, rehearsing the words he’d say. *My name is Jack Turner. I have evidence of murder. I have a confession.*

Detective Barthes finally appeared — a lean, gray-faced man with a cavalry mustache and eyes that moved too slowly over Jack’s face. He gestured Jack into a windowless interview room and closed the door with a click that felt final.

“Mr. Turner.” Barthes sat across from him, folding his hands. “You’re a hard man to find. Half of Monaco wants your head on a platter, and the other half wants to put you in a cell first.”

“I’m here to clear my name.” Jack placed the recorder on the table between them. “That’s Philippe Aethel’s voice. He admits to ordering Luca Valente’s murder. He admits the sabotage on my car. It’s all on there.”

Barthes didn’t reach for the device. He just looked at it, then at Jack, and something in his posture tightened — not surprise, but recognition. The kind of recognition you get when someone hands you a grenade and you’ve already seen the pin pulled.

“Where did you get this?” Barthes asked.

“From the man’s mouth. Last night. At the casino.” Jack pushed the recorder closer. “Play it. You’ll hear everything.”

Barthes picked it up. Turned it over in his hands. Then he let out a long breath and set it back down, nudging it toward Jack so gently it might have been an apology.

“Mr. Turner,” he said, “I’m going to need you to stand up and place your hands behind your back.”

Jack’s stomach dropped. “What?”

“You’re under arrest for sabotage of team property, fraud, and interfering with a police investigation. You have the right to remain silent.”

“Wait — *sabotage?* He just confessed to murder on that tape! There’s a dead man’s voice on there and you’re arresting *me*?”

Barthes was already on his feet, producing handcuffs with the practiced ease of a man who had done this a thousand times and lost sleep over none of them. “You think I haven’t seen forged audio before? You think a man in your position — publicly disgraced, owing debts, caught on camera in restricted areas — can walk in here and hand me a fairy tale?”

“It’s not forged. It’s real. Test it.”

“I will.” Barthes snapped the cuffs around Jack’s wrists. “But you’ll be waiting in a cell while I do.”

The door opened. A uniformed officer stepped in, young, nervous, glancing between Barthes and Jack like he’d walked into a film halfway through. “Detective? We have a situation at the front desk. Woman demanding to see Mr. Turner. Saying she has proof of his innocence.”

Barthes frowned. “Who?”

“Says her name is Sophie Marchand.”

Jack’s heart seized. *No. Not her. Not here.*

“Handle it,” Barthes said. “I’m processing the prisoner.”

The officer hesitated. “She’s… quite insistent, sir. She’s already called the local news. They’re outside.”

Barthes’s jaw twitched. He looked at Jack, then at the door, calculating. “Fine. Watch him.” He shoved Jack into the chair and strode out.

The young officer stood by the door, trying to look stern. Jack sat very still, breathing slowly, the cuffs cold against his wrists. He could hear shouting from the front desk — Sophie’s voice, sharp and theatrical — and then the sound of cameras clicking, the glare of news lights bleeding through the corridor.

“What’s your name?” Jack asked quietly.

The officer blinked. “Durand.”

“Durand. Do you know what Philippe Aethel did to Luca Valente?”

The officer’s face went blank — too blank, the kind of practiced neutrality that meant he did know, or at least suspected. “I’m not discussing that.”

“You don’t have to.” Jack leaned forward slightly. “Just think about it. Who benefits from me sitting in a cell tonight? Who benefits from a dead driver staying dead?”

Durand’s Adam’s apple bobbed. He glanced at the door.

Sophie’s voice rose — something about police corruption, about a vendetta, about a world champion covering his tracks. And then, louder, a crash. Glass shattering. The unmistakable sound of a camera hitting the floor.

Durand spun toward the noise.

Jack moved. Not fast — fast would draw attention — but smooth, rolling off the chair toward the door, yanking it open, and slipping into the corridor while Durand was still processing the chaos at the front desk. He didn’t run. He *walked*, shoulders squared, head down, the way you walk when you belong somewhere and have no reason to hurry.

The station was a maze of identical corridors. He turned left, then right, following the smell of fresh air. A service exit hummed at the end of a narrow hallway, an EXIT sign glowing green.

Behind him, Durand’s voice: “He’s gone! The suspect is gone!”

Jack shoved through the service door. Alarms blared immediately — cheap, piercing, the kind that echoed off every stone wall in Monte Carlo. He hit the alley running, feet slapping wet cobblestones, the recorder still in his pocket.

He didn’t stop until he was three streets away, lungs burning, crouched behind a dumpster outside a shuttered restaurant. The sirens were already thinning out — police searching the wrong direction, somebody’s radio crackling with descriptions of a man in a black jacket who had nowhere left to run.

He pulled out his phone. One bar of signal.

He dialed the only number he trusted.

“Jack?” Sophie’s voice, breathless. “Are you out?”

“Yes. Thanks to you. And the glass you threw.”

“The camera was already broken. I just made it louder.” A pause. “Jack, it’s worse than we thought. Barthes — he’s not just dirty. He has a file on you. Marked. Someone flagged you the moment you stepped foot in the principality.”

“Aethel.”

“Probably. But someone else too. Someone who knew you’d run to the police.” She hesitated. “Jack, the story breaking now — it’s not just that you sabotaged your own car. They’re saying you threatened Aethel. That you tried to extort him at the casino. There’s a recording of *your* voice making demands.”

The blood drained from Jack’s face. “What?”

“Last night, at the casino. They had you on their own wire.” Her voice cracked. “You’re not just disgraced, Jack. You’re a fugitive now. Wanted for extortion, sabotage, and obstruction. They’ve got you boxed.”

Jack pressed his palm against the cold stone wall. The recorder sat in his pocket, heavy as a stone, holding the only truth he had left.

A truth that had just become worthless.

“Where’s Emile?” he asked.

“Still in your room. But they’ll find him soon. Jack, what are you going to do?”

He looked up at the rooftops of Monte Carlo silhouetted against the night sky — the floodlit curve of the casino, the glitter of the harbor, the track where he’d almost died and where Luca Valente actually had. Somewhere down there, Philippe Aethel was drinking champagne and counting him out.

“I’m going to find the only cop in Monaco who isn’t on his payroll,” Jack said. “Or the only journalist who isn’t bought. And if neither exists —” He stopped. Swallowed. “Then I’ll do this the only way I have left. I’ll go where they expect me to hide, and I’ll make them come to me.”

“Where’s that?”

Jack’s eyes fell on the distant silhouette of the Fairmont hairpin, the slow curve where speed turned to tragedy.

“The place where Luca died,” he said. “The one place nobody’s watching.”