Read Chapter 18: Confession

The fire had burned low by the time Luc stood. The others had drifted to their corners of the chalet—Nadia pretending to read by the window, Viktor sprawled in an armchair with his eyes half-closed, Marcel picking at the label of a wine bottle he hadn’t opened. Pierre remained at the table, his coffee long cold, his hands flat on the wood as if trying to still the tremor in them.

Luc crossed the room slowly, not as an accusation but as a presence. He pulled out the chair across from Pierre and sat.

“You knew him,” Luc said. Not a question.

Pierre’s jaw tightened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The man in the snow. Back by the treeline. You knew him.”

Pierre’s eyes flicked to the others, then back to Luc. “I don’t—”

“Don’t.” Luc’s voice was low, almost gentle. “I found the body. I saw the face. And I’ve seen you look at every door in this chalet like it might open onto something you’d rather not meet. So let’s not waste time on your first lie.”

The room went quiet in the way rooms do when everyone pretends not to listen but hears everything. Nadia’s page didn’t turn. Viktor’s breathing changed—shallow, alert.

Pierre swallowed. His hands curled into fists on the table. “He wasn’t supposed to be here.”

“Who was he?”

“A critic.” Pierre said the word like it tasted sour. “Food critic. He came to the lodge two winters ago. Wrote a review that nearly killed my business—called my kitchen dirty, my staff incompetent, my food ‘an insult to the region.’ I lost three contracts in a month. The insurance nearly doubled.”

“So you threatened him.”

Pierre’s eyes flashed. “I *confronted* him. Told him if he ever stepped foot in my valley again, he’d regret it. But I didn’t—” He stopped, pressed his palms flat against the table. “I didn’t crash anything. I didn’t kill him. I don’t even know how he got here.”

“When did you see him last?”

“Before the avalanche. The morning of.” Pierre’s voice dropped. “He was at the lift station in Chamonix. Different coat, different hair, but I’d recognize that face anywhere. He’d put on weight, looked older. He saw me too. Then he was gone.”

“Did you speak?”

“No. He made sure of it. Turned and walked into the crowd like a ghost.”

Luc leaned back. He studied Pierre’s face—the twitch at the corner of his mouth, the way his eyes kept seeking the window, the sweat gathering at his temples. Fear. But not the fear of a guilty man caught out. The fear of someone who’d been holding something hot and finally set it down.

“A food critic,” Luc said slowly. “That’s the story you’re giving me.”

Pierre’s voice cracked. “It’s the truth.”

“Critics don’t usually travel under false names to remote mountain lodges,” Camille said, appearing at Luc’s shoulder like she’d materialized from the shadowed corridor. Ali followed a step behind, arms crossed, face unreadable.

Pierre looked between them, realizing too late how many people had been listening. “I don’t know what name he used here. I don’t know why he came. I only know what he did to me.”

“And you never thought to mention this when Luc told us about the body?” Camille’s voice was steel wrapped in silk. “When Viktor was pointing fingers and the rest of us were deciding who to trust?”

“I thought—” Pierre’s hands shook. “I thought if I said anything, you’d think I did it. And now you do.”

Luc watched him. The man wasn’t a good liar—that much was obvious. His tells were loud: the over-explaining, the defensive posture, the way he’d given up the food critic story almost immediately once Luc pushed. Either he was telling the truth and terrified, or he was a better actor than Luc was giving him credit for.

But there was something else.

“The receipt,” Luc said quietly. “In the body’s boot. It had Nadia’s name on it.”

Pierre blinked. Confusion, not calculation. “I don’t—what receipt?”

“Fuel receipt. From the depot in Saint-Gervais. Dated two days before the avalanche.”

“I don’t know anything about that.” Pierre’s voice was steady now. Steadier than it had been all night. “I never touched his body. I didn’t go near the treeline. I’ve been cooking or in my room since we got here. Ask Camille—she saw me in the kitchen the whole morning we found him.”

Camille’s lips pressed together. “He was in the kitchen,” she admitted. “Making breakfast. I was there from six to eight.”

“The body wasn’t fresh,” Luc said. “Could’ve been staged anytime after the avalanche.”

Pierre’s face went pale. “I didn’t do it. I swear it. On my mother’s grave.”

Luc held his gaze for a long moment. Then he nodded, slow. “Okay.”

Pierre let out a breath that carried the weight of a held confession. He sagged forward, elbows on the table, face buried in his hands. His shoulders shook once, twice, then stilled.

Luc stood. He caught Camille’s eye and tilted his head toward the corridor. She followed. Ali stayed behind, a silent guard over the trembling chef.

In the narrow hallway, out of sight of the main room, Camille leaned in close. “He’s lying about something.”

“Probably.” Luc rubbed the bridge of his nose. “But not about the critic. That part felt real.”

“So who was Voss, really?”

“Voss was a con man,” Luc said. “Ran insurance frauds, identity thefts, a few high-end grifts. He’d pose as a critic, an investor, a buyer. Whatever got him access to rich people in isolated places.”

Camille’s eyes narrowed. “And this lodge is full of rich people in an isolated place.”

“Exactly.” Luc’s voice dropped. “Pierre was a mark. Nadia or Viktor could’ve been a mark too. Or all of them.”

“So Voss came here to work someone, and someone got to him first.”

“Or Voss was working with someone and they turned on him.” Luc met her gaze. “The receipt in his boot—why would the killer plant Nadia’s name unless they wanted us to find it?”

“To cast suspicion.”

“Or to give us a lead.” Luc shook his head. “The body was staged. Positioned like a lost skier. But someone went to the trouble of dressing him in clothes that don’t match, leaving a receipt that points elsewhere. That’s not panic. That’s a message.”

Camille was quiet. Then: “You believe Pierre?”

“I believe he’s scared.” Luc’s voice settled into something quieter, more certain. “He’s scared of whoever did this. Not of being caught. Of what comes next.”

“Because the killer is still here.”

Luc didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

They walked back into the main room. Pierre had straightened, his hands wrapped around his cold coffee cup like it was the only solid thing left in the world. Nadia had finally set down her book, watching the group with an expression Luc couldn’t quite name. Viktor was pretending to be asleep, but his breathing was too even, too controlled.

Marcel stood by the window, looking out at the snow-drifted darkness. His hand rested in his pocket.

Luc catalogued all of it. The fear, the lies, the small silences where truth should be.

Pierre had admitted to knowing Voss. That was real. But he’d given the story up too quickly once pushed, which meant he’d been waiting to tell it—preparing it, polishing it. A rehearsed confession, offered when the pressure mounted. The core might be true, but the details had been sanded smooth.

“Get some rest,” Luc said to the room at large. “Tomorrow we try the signal fire again.”

No one moved for a long moment. Then Pierre rose, set his cup in the sink, and disappeared down the corridor. Nadia closed her book. Marcel left the window without a word.

Luc sat alone by the dying fire, watching the embers pulse and fade. His father’s photograph was a weight in his inner pocket, the scarred man’s face a question he couldn’t answer. He thought about Pierre’s shaking hands, about Viktor’s studied indifference, about Nadia’s carefully blank expression.

Someone in this chalet was a killer. And someone was a liar. And Luc was starting to suspect they weren’t the same person.

He pulled the photograph from his pocket and looked at it one more time. His father’s young face, the scarred man beside him, the controlled burn mark on the jacket—the same mark he’d seen on Viktor’s coat in the boiler room. Same pattern, different jacket. A symbol. A connection. A thread he couldn’t pull without the whole knot coming loose.

He tucked the photo away and listened to the wind howl against the windows.

The fire settled into ash. The chalet fell silent. And somewhere in the dark, a floorboard creaked.

Luc didn’t turn. He let the sound hang in the air, let whoever was watching know that he’d heard it, that he wasn’t afraid.

The creak didn’t come again.