Private Monaco

Chapter 73

We didn’t speak as I followed the road up the Utelle Valley. The Ford Kuga’s engine strained against the steep inclines and its tires churned up gravel from the surface. The clatter of loose stones against the chassis and the growl of the engine were the only sounds as we climbed higher up the mountainside.

The headlamps sliced a wedge of light into the nothingness of night. I stuck to the center of the road, avoiding the sheer drops and hairpin turns, the deep ravines spanned by narrow bridges.

I remembered how close we’d come to death on this mountain, and how narrowly we’d escaped the bullets sent our way by the men who’d made Sci and Mo-bot targets. Seeing them in hospital had shaken me and reminded me just how vulnerable we all were. Skill and luck had been my allies then, but what would happen if they deserted me?

“What if there’s someone there now?” Justine asked, bringing me out of my maudlin self-reflection.

“Then we’ll turn back,” I replied.

Chevalier had told us the place was deserted by the time the police had arrived.

“I won’t let anything happen to us,” I assured Justine.

She smiled at me. “I don’t need you to protect me, Jack. You know that. I just wanted us to have a plan.”

“I...” I hesitated. I wasn’t sure what she was getting at.

“You don’t have to carry the responsibility for saving me,” she explained. “I’m my own person. I can assess risk for myself and if I make a mistake, it’s on me to fix it.”

“Is this a rage against the patriarchy?” I asked. “Because I’m not your white knight. I don’t view it as me saving you. I see it as us saving each other. We look out for each other because we both care. Equality.”

She looked a little contrite. “I guess. I just wanted to be clear, I don’t want you carrying me as well as everything and everyone else.”

“If you’re carrying me and I’m carrying you, no one’s carrying a burden,” I said.

“Confucius?”

“Jack Morgan,” I replied with a smile.

I got what she was saying, but there was no way I was going to stop protecting her. It was ingrained in me to look after others, but I wasn’t going to press the issue. She looked after me too, so did Sci, and Mo-bot. I’d lost count of the number of times my life had been saved by others. It wasn’t an admission of weakness; it was a recognition of the hazards we faced in our line of work.

We were almost at the farm, so I pulled over at the next turnout and killed the engine.

“We go on foot from here.”

I’d changed into jeans, a T-shirt and a lightweight racer jacket, which I fastened against the cool wind blowing up the valley. Justine was in black trousers and a matching rollneck. We set out through the trees toward the farmhouse.

I stayed alert for any signs of patrols or sentries, but there was nothing except the unpredictable sounds of nature. An owl, something scurrying in the undergrowth, branches creaking, leaves rustling.

We moved quickly toward the cobblestone courtyard, and I saw Justine eye the building where she’d been held hostage. The door was open, but neither of us moved toward it. Instead, we headed for the main house, its roof partially burned by the incendiary drones Sci had rigged and dropped during Justine’s escape. There were no signs of life, no vehicles in the yard and no lights or indications of activity in the building. The front door stood open.

I went first, using a small torch to light our way. It pushed back the shadows to reveal a largely empty property.

There was no art or decoration of any kind. Just plain painted walls and functional furniture. The main living room was full of bunks, which were all unmade, and a couple mattresses had been tossed on the floor.

The kitchen contained a large farmhouse table surrounded by more than a dozen chairs, and I pictured Justine’s abductors in here together, eating, laughing and joking, or perhaps grimly plotting murder, while she was trapped in the small store outside. What pushed men like them to normalize such evil?

We continued through the house, moving upstairs to find more bunks and finally the master bedroom with one king-size bed. I guessed this was where Roman Verde slept, a perk of leadership.

The bed was unmade and the closets were bare, but when we checked the bathroom, we found evidence of a fire that was nothing to do with the burned roof because the ceiling above was still intact.

A small metal trash can stood in the center of the room, its sides blackened. I looked in the can and found the charred remains of papers. Most had burned to ash but a few might be recoverable.

Carefully, I gathered as many fragments as I could, and held them gently in a stack.

“I think this is it,” I said. “The cops must have taken everything else for analysis, or there wasn’t anything here when they were looking. I don’t think we’re going to find anything else.”

Justine nodded.

“We should go.”

“Happy to,” I replied.

She’d masked it well, but I could tell the return to the place where she’d been held prisoner had been hard on her.

“You’re safe,” I assured her, as we left the room.

“I know,” she said, but I didn’t feel the tension leave her until we were in the car, heading down the mountain.