The blinds in my office are open because I want Yusra to see the assembly floor when she answers. Subtle reminders that we still have a team.
"Our first pilot's ACL is gone." I keep his name out of the room. Everyone here has known it for six months. "We've signed a one-season replacement. Announcement Friday in Monaco, eleven sharp. Naomi, you have my notes."
It is not true yet. He burned my contract to ash in a shed in Texas and told me to drive home. It will be true by Friday or there will be no Friday worth standing up for.
Naomi's pen moves across her tablet, three taps, a flick. "Sponsorship optics?"
"Halliwell continues as principal."
"Will he be at Friday's conference?"
"He'll send his deputy."
"Joint photo or separate?"
"Separate."
Her eyes stay down. "Driver origin? Last team? Anything we can pre-seed with three or four trusted outlets to soften the morning?"
"None of it pre-seeds. We hold the name until eleven."
Now she looks up. She has been my press officer for four years and the only sound between us right now is the air conditioning. Her chin moves a fraction, an acknowledgement, and her pen returns to the tablet.
Across the table, Yusra has yet to open her laptop. She holds a paper folder against her thigh and her thumb worries the corner. When I glance at her she meets the glance and the look stays exactly two seconds longer than friendly.
"Yusra. Anything from the engineering side?"
"Telemetry," she says. "If the new pilot has historical data we should ingest it tonight. I would like seventy-two hours with his old onboards before the simulator on Wednesday."
"You'll have it tonight."
The corner of her folder stops moving. We have worked together for six years. She has never asked me a question whose answer she did not already half know. She lets this one stand.
Leo opens the door without knocking, two paper cups in his left hand, his right hand already raised in apology. Pale gray sweater. Loafers without socks. He looks like a magazine.
"Two minutes, ladies. Please."
Naomi smiles at him. Yusra's mouth stays flat.
"Hey, sis." He sets a flat white in front of me, keeps the other for himself, sits on the edge of the table. He has called me that since the summer I turned eleven and he decided big-sister was too long a word. The tattoo of our initials on his right wrist slides under his cuff when he moves his arm. "All good?"
"All good."
"Driver?"
"Friday eleven."
"You won't tell your own brother?"
"I won't tell my own Operations Director until Friday eleven."
He puts a hand on his chest, mock-wounded. "Ouch." His face softens into the smile that has sold us four sponsorships in two years. "You'd tell me if it was bad, right?"
"It isn't bad."
That is the first lie I have ever told my brother. It rolls off my tongue with a smoothness that frightens me more than the lie.
The balcony on the harbor side of the suite is wider; the balcony on the marina side is narrower and closer to the water. I take the narrow one.
Boats. Lights. I count them.
Forty-seven. The next one slips into a wake that shifts the angle of a yacht's running lamp — I start over. The salt is in my hair already. The watch on my left wrist says eleven thirty-seven.
Inside, I unpack one suitcase slowly — the action of folding shirts into drawers steadies my hands. The Mont Blanc goes onto the writing desk beside a fresh printed copy of the contract Jax burned in Texas. Forty-six pages. I had the sense to bring a copy.
My father's signet sits on my right hand. In Texas the crest had turned inward against my palm so hard the gold pressed a small white shape into the meat of my thumb. Tonight in Monte Carlo, alone in a room I am paying for with money the team does not have, I turn the ring around. The crest faces out for the first time in eight days. One small click of discipline released.
The phone vibrates: Naomi. I answer on the third ring because second would look anxious and fourth would look careless.
"Eleven sharp. Cold presentation. He arrives at ten forty, holds backstage. You introduce, he steps out, no questions taken on personal history."
"Agreed."
"And Claire." A short pause. "Try to sleep. Your face on Friday is the face of the team."
I keep the thought to myself, which is that my face on Friday will be the face of a woman who has spent eight days waiting to find out what he meant by the word interest.
Our bay smells of warm rubber and espresso and the faint chemical sweetness of carbon dust. The car sits on jacks, both rear wheels off, telemetry cables snaking from the engine bay. Two mechanics in red polos murmur over a tablet. Yusra stands at my elbow, earpiece in, planning the next ninety minutes the way she plans every ninety minutes of her life, which is to say without ever looking at her wrist.
Behind me, the pit lane is awake. Engines, the slap of trolleys, three languages within twenty feet. Pat-pat-pat of pneumatic guns from McKenna's garage two doors down.
The figure at the open garage door wears a worn brown leather jacket and a plain white t-shirt. No accreditation. The mechanics on the tablet stay over their work, because accreditation matters to gate staff, and gate staff matter to security: inside a garage at one hour to a press conference, what matters is who people recognize.
Yusra recognizes him.
Her chin moves one degree. The earpiece stays in her ear. She looks at me.
I lift my hand from the nose of the car. Two fingers. Then a small motion toward the back of the garage, where the engineers' bench is. She takes the cue without a word, gathers the two mechanics and the tablet, and the four of them step into the back room. The door stays cracked. That is also Yusra.
Jax walks three steps into the garage and stops at the front wing.
"Mrs. Eldridge."
"Thornton."
He looks at the car the way he used to look at cars. Then he lays four sheets of paper on the polished black surface of the engine cover. Stapled at the top left, single staple. The font is plain. The margins are wider than mine were.
"Section one." His voice is the same as it was in Texas. Low. Spaced. "I do not interview, comment, or speculate publicly about race strategy. Naomi has full authority over what I say to a microphone, in writing, or to a member of the press."
My eyes stay on the page.
"Section two. The equity stake described in your Section eight is struck. I accept minimum-table compensation per FIM-W tariff. Any podium bonus accruing to my person is redirected to a registered charitable trust of my nomination."
"Which trust?"
"Already named in the schedule. You will see it on the back page."
I do not turn the page. There is a sound somewhere in my chest that I will deal with later.
"Section three. No joint press conferences with the Managing Director after Friday's first appearance. Naomi sets all media calls."
He stops with his hand flat above the fourth section. Three seconds.
"Section four. Personal possession off-track. Defined by the parties privately. Not subject to media, legal review, or termination clauses on either side."
The watch on my wrist ticks. I hear it because the rest of the building has gone quiet. He is waiting.
I read section four again. Then a third time, moving my lips without sound, because reading it out loud would be agreeing with it before I have agreed with it.
"I'll need fifteen minutes."
"You have five."
His eyes hold mine. His hand stays flat above the page. He puts the four pages back on the black surface and steps back two paces, far enough to let me have the page to myself.
I keep my feet. The carbon fiber is warm under my palm. I count my breaths because counting is what I do when there is nothing else to count. One. Two. Three. By twelve I have decided.
The Mont Blanc comes out of my jacket pocket. The cap is sticky in my hand because the air in this garage is humid and I have been holding it for ten minutes without knowing.
I sign on the engine cover of the race car, because there is no table in this room that he and I share. The nib catches once, lifts a microscopic burr of ink, and a small black drop falls onto my right ring finger, just below the crest of my father's signet, and stays. I leave it.
Jax steps forward. He places his right hand flat on the carbon, an inch from mine. His palm is wide — the skin sun-darkened above the wrist where the cuff of his jacket has ridden up, a faint dark seam of machine oil still under his thumbnail despite a recent shower. His fingers stay still. He keeps the gap. He is letting me feel the warmth of carbon through metal through air, and that warmth has a source.
Then he picks up the four pages, folds them along the staple line once, again, and slides them into the inside pocket of his jacket. I notice the pocket because I am noticing everything.
He turns. At the threshold of the garage, his back to me, he says, "See you at the after-party tomorrow night, Mrs. Eldridge."
The door rolls down behind him. Yusra steps out of the back room with her earpiece in. The mechanics return to the tablet. The pat-pat-pat of pneumatic guns starts again two doors down.
I look at my hands. The Mont Blanc in one. A black drop on the other, beside a crest turned outward for the first time in ten years. On the writing desk in my suite at the Hôtel de la Mer, six floors and four streets away, forty-six untouched pages lie face up beside a phone I have left dark since landing.
Eight minutes to the press conference. I straighten my shoulders. Then I walk to the back room and tell Yusra to start the formal announcement clock.