Read Chapter 15: The Escort

The first thing Camille registered was the cold. A draft cut through her apartment like a knife, lifting the curtain beside the shattered window. Glass glittered across the tile floor, catching the pale morning light, and there, among the shards, lay a brick wrapped in brown paper.

Her heart hammered against her ribs. She stood frozen in the doorway of her bedroom, still in her sleep shirt, barefoot on the cold floor. The window—a small one above the kitchen sink—had been intact when she'd come home last night. She'd locked everything. She always locked everything.

The paper around the brick was tied with twine, the kind you'd find in a hardware store. Her hands shook as she knelt and worked the knot loose. The message inside was printed, not handwritten, in block capitals on a plain sheet of white paper.

*GO HOME.*

Three words. Two syllables each. A simple, clean threat.

She read it twice, then a third time, as if the words would rearrange themselves into something less sinister. They didn't.

Julien was still asleep in her spare room—the room she'd given him the night before after the vineyard, when they'd both been too raw to separate. He hadn't touched her, hadn't tried. But he'd asked to stay, and she'd let him, and now there was a brick through her window and a note telling her to leave.

Her first thought was his ex-girlfriend. The woman whose name he'd never spoken but whose shadow lingered in the way he tensed whenever Farrow mentioned her. A possessive ex. That fit the profile. That was a story she understood.

Then she thought of the journalist. The Friday deadline. The messages that kept arriving like clockwork, each one more pointed than the last.

She took a photo of the note with her phone, careful not to smudge anything. Then she swept the glass into a dustpan with shaking hands and taped a plastic bag over the broken pane. The wind whistled through the gap.

In the living room, she heard a mattress creak. Then footsteps. Julien appeared in the doorway, sleep-mussed and squinting, wearing the t-shirt and joggers she'd lent him.

"Camille? You're up early—" He stopped. Looked at her face. Then at the brick on the counter, the note beside it. "What the hell is that?"

She told him. Her voice came out steadier than she felt. When she finished, he crossed the room in three strides and took the note from her hand, reading it with a scowl deepening on his face.

"This isn't about you," he said. "This is about me."

"Or about the journalist who's been threatening me for weeks." She crossed her arms. "Or about your ex-girlfriend, who apparently has a history of—"

"Claire wouldn't do this." He said the name with a flatness that suggested he'd rehearsed it in his head many times. "She's dramatic, but she's not—she wouldn't send a *brick* through a window. That's not her style."

"Then who?"

Julien didn't answer. He was staring at the note again, turning it over in his hands as if the paper itself might confess.

---

Delacroix's office smelled like coffee and desperation, the two competing for dominance in the cramped space above the club's administrative wing. Camille sat across from the coach, the note sealed in a ziplock bag she'd borrowed from the kitchen. Julien stood by the window, arms crossed, radiating tension.

"I've made calls," Delacroix said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Three bookmakers in Marseille have stopped taking action on our matches. Local gambling interest has doubled since the suspension news broke. But this—" He nodded at the bag. "This isn't your typical fan behavior."

"Then what is it?" Camille asked.

Delacroix exchanged a glance with Julien, and something passed between them that she couldn't read. Finally, the coach sighed.

"The match you head-butted your way out of, Julien—the odds were heavily stacked for a win. When you got sent off and the team lost, a lot of money changed hands. The wrong way."

Julien's jaw tightened. "You're saying gamblers lost money because of me."

"I'm saying that when desperate people lose money, they look for someone to blame. And you're an easy target." Delacroix leaned forward. "There's a syndicate operating out of Perpignan. We've had run-ins before. They don't threaten players directly—too public. But those close to the players? Medical staff, family, girlfriends? That's a different story."

Camille felt the blood drain from her face. Girlfriends. She wasn't Julien's girlfriend. But she was close to him, visible, at the training ground every day, at matches, at the vineyard.

"I need to report this," she said.

"Do it." Delacroix pushed a card across the desk. "Inspector Barnier. He's handled our cases before. Tell him I sent you."

---

The police station in Toulouse smelled of floor wax and stale cigarettes. Inspector Barnier was a tall man with a gravelly voice and the tired eyes of someone who'd seen too many versions of the same story. He read the note, examined the brick, and made notes in a spiral notebook with a pen that was running out of ink.

"Single target, repeated message, no escalation of violence yet." He looked up at her. "You said you've received other threats? Via email?"

"The journalist. I've been corresponding with someone who's been pressuring me about my credentials. But he's never suggested physical harm."

Barnier's eyebrow rose. "Credentials?"

Camille's stomach twisted. She'd opened the door without meaning to. "It's a professional matter. Unrelated to the rugby situation."

"If you say so." He didn't sound convinced. "We'll increase patrols near your apartment. Change your routine. Don't walk home alone. And if you receive anything else—anything at all—call this number directly." He slid another card across the desk.

She took it, nodded, and tried not to think about the fact that she'd just lied to a police officer.

---

Outside the station, Julien was waiting on the steps, hunched against the wind with his hands shoved in his pockets. The cast on his arm was stark white against his dark jacket. He'd refused the sling the surgeon gave him; too vain, he'd said.

"Well?" He pushed off the wall and fell into step beside her.

"Patrols. A contact number. The usual." She didn't tell him about the credentials question. Some lies were easier to maintain than others.

He walked with her in silence for a block before speaking. "You should stay somewhere else tonight. Or I can stay with you again."

"I can take care of myself."

"I know you can." He stopped, turning to face her. "But you shouldn't have to."

For a moment, the noise of the city faded—traffic, voices, the distant rail of a train. There was only Julien, looking at her with that intensity he reserved for the pitch, his grey eyes fixed on hers.

"You think the gamblers are behind this?" she asked.

"I think someone wants me to break." His voice was low. "I've been breaking all season. They're just trying to speed up the process."

"This isn't about breaking you, Julien. It's about—"

"It's about sending me a message through the person closest to me." He stepped closer. "That's what they do. They find the soft spot and they hit it."

Camille felt her pulse quicken. The space between them seemed to shrink, charged with something unspoken. She should step back. She should remind him that she wasn't his soft spot—that she was a professional, that the boundary between them existed for a reason.

But instead, she held his gaze.

"Then we hit back," she said. "We don't stop. We don't run."

Julien's mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "You sound like me."

"I sound like someone who's tired of being threatened." She turned and started walking again. "Come on. I need to buy groceries, and I'm not doing it alone."

He caught up in a few long strides, and for a moment, they were just two people on a street in Toulouse, walking south toward the market, side by side.

But beneath her calm surface, Camille's mind was churning. She'd told Julien about the brick, about the gamblers, about the police. There was one thing she hadn't told him—hadn't told anyone—and its weight pressed against her more heavily with each passing hour.

The journalist's deadline was Friday.

Today was Wednesday.

And she was running out of time to control a story that was about to blow up in her face.