Chapter 3 Puzzle

MAYA POV

For two years, I'd been convinced Nico Laurent had forced me off the track at Turn Six.

Now I wasn't sure I understood the crash at all.

“You're going to tell me what you meant.”

I caught up with him the following morning beside the garage, before he could disappear into another meeting or hide behind a screen full of telemetry.

“Right now,” I added. “No more walking away. What really happened that day?”

Nico turned toward me. He looked tired, though not in the ordinary way that came from too little sleep and too many hours at the track. There was something heavier in his expression, something that made me wonder how long he'd been carrying whatever he was about to tell me.

“Not here,” he said.

I let out a disbelieving laugh.

“Then where? I've spent two years thinking you put me in the wall on purpose. Yesterday, you stood in an office talking about some secret version of the story I never got to hear. So start talking.”

He set his phone on the desk beside him.

“I'm not playing games with you, Maya.”

“Then stop acting like you are.”

My voice rose before I could stop it. A couple of mechanics glanced in our direction, and I lowered it again.

“You clearly said someone needed to tell me the truth. You're the one who said it. So tell me.”

Nico glanced toward the open garage doors.

“People walk past this office every few minutes. If you really want to know, I'll tell you. Just not standing here.”

I had another argument ready. Something sharp enough to force him into answering me. But the words died before I could use them.

He wasn't refusing to tell me. He was being careful about where he told me.

I hated that I'd noticed the difference.

“If you're trying to clear your name,” I said, “you've had two years to do it.”

“I know.”

“Then why now?”

He held my gaze but didn't answer.

Honestly, that silence bothered me more than any excuse could have.

If all he wanted was to convince me that he hadn't caused the crash, why wait until now? Why bring it up in the middle of a season when we were being forced to work together?

And why did he look as though telling me the truth might cost him something?

I stepped back.

“Fine. Keep your secrets.”

“Maya—”

“Please don't.”

I turned and walked away before he could say anything else.

For the rest of the morning, I tried to concentrate on the upcoming test. I studied setup changes, reviewed the previous day's lap times, and answered questions from the engineers.

I even managed to make a joke about the team's coffee, which tasted like someone had filtered it through an old racing glove.

But my mind kept returning to the same question.

What really happened?

For two years, the story had been simple.

Nico defended too aggressively into Turn Six. Our wheels touched. My car snapped sideways, and the barrier did the rest.

The stewards had investigated. My team had explained the findings until there was nothing left to discuss.

Everyone had given me the same version.

Eventually, I'd stopped asking questions.

It was easier to hate Nico than to wonder whether the crash had been an accident neither of us could have prevented.

I'd built an entire personality around that hatred. It gave me something to focus on when the pain became so unbearable, something to blame when I couldn't get back into a car without remembering the sound of metal twisting.

But now one small detail kept surfacing.

Right before the collision, Nico's radio had said something.

I couldn't remember the exact words. I couldn't even remember who had spoken. All I could recall was the tone. Sharp, almost panicked and the way Nico's car had moved a fraction earlier than it should have.

At the time, I'd assumed he was reacting to me.

What if he'd been reacting to something else?

The thought followed me into the data room, where I sat staring at a screen without absorbing a single number.

“You're about to overthink yourself into a hole and then tell me you're fine in half an hour, aren't you?”

I looked up. Evelyn stood in the doorway, holding two cups of coffee.

“Good morning to you, too.”

She crossed the room and placed one cup in front of me.

“That's what I said yesterday. You ignored me then, too.”

“I'm starting to think you're not very supportive.”

“I'm extremely supportive. I'm also observant, which is clearly an inconvenience for you.”

I took the coffee, mostly to give my hands something to do.

For a few seconds, I considered keeping the question to myself. Evelyn had been with me through the worst of the aftermath, and I didn't want to drag her back into something she'd already spent two years helping me survive.

But she had been there on the pit wall that day.

She might remember something I'd forgotten.

“Ev?”

She looked at me over the rim of her cup.

“Do you remember the race? The one from two years ago, when I crashed?”

Her expression changed. It was slight. A pause that lasted barely a second. A moment of stillness before she answered.

“Of course I remember. I was on the pit wall.”

“Before Nico caught me, do you remember anyone radioing his team about my car? Anything about my tires, my pace, or a problem with the setup?”

Evelyn's fingers tightened around her cup.Then she smiled too quickly.

“Maya, that was two years ago. Everything was chaos that day. The radios were overlapping, people were shouting. I don't remember every transmission.”

I watched her face.

“And you're sure?”

“Yes. Of course I'm sure.”

She reached across the desk and squeezed my wrist, a familiar gesture she'd used countless times when she wanted to ground me.

“Why are you suddenly asking about this? Did someone say something?”

I could have told her about Nico. About the conversation I'd overheard. About the way he'd looked at me when I asked what really happened.

Instead, I shook my head.

“No. Just thinking.”

Evelyn studied me for another moment before changing the subject. She talked about the next test, the setup changes we'd need to review, and a problem with one of the engineers' calculations.

The normal, comfortable things.

I listened, but I couldn't stop thinking about the way she'd gone still when I mentioned the radio transmissions.

It might have meant nothing.

Two years was a long time. The crash had been chaotic. People forgot things.

I knew all that.

Still, when she finally left, I found myself replaying her expression more carefully than I had the memory of the crash itself.

For the first time, I wondered whether there were things Evelyn remembered that she wasn't telling me.

Nico was waiting for me at the back of the garage after the debrief.

He held a slim black hard drive between two fingers.

“Come with me.”

I glanced at the drive.

“Is this another attempt to make me mysterious and paranoid, or are you finally going to explain yourself?”

“It's evidence.”

That wiped the sarcasm from my face.

I followed him into one of the unused engineering rooms, where he connected the drive to a laptop. The screen flickered before a collection of old files appeared.

Nico stepped aside.

“Telemetry. Both cars. The official files were cleaned, but these weren't.”

I stared at the screen.

“What do you mean, cleaned?”

“Some of the original data wasn't included in the final review. I kept copies of what I had access to.”

I turned toward him.

“You've had this for two years?”

“yes. I've been trying to understand what happened for two years.”

The answer wasn't quite what I had expected. So I sat down and began examining the files.

At first, everything looked like the usual mess of numbers, graphs, tire temperatures, and racing data. I scrolled through the information, trying to understand what Nico wanted me to see.

Then I found it. His car had changed strategy seven-tenths of a second before the impact.

I studied the trace again.

It wasn't a normal defensive adjustment. The timing suggested that his team had instructed him to hold his position aggressively, as though he had been warned that I was about to become a hazard.

My stomach tightened. I opened the data for my own car.

My tire temperatures had been high, but stable. The wear was within the expected range. Nothing in the available readings suggested the kind of sudden tire failure that would have justified the warning Nico's team appeared to have received.

I scrolled farther then a radio transcript was attached to the file. With just only one message that stood out.

Baudelaire's tires are critical. Defend.

I read it again. Then a third time.

The words remained the same. I leaned back in the chair, staring at the screen.

“Who told you my tires were gone?”

Nico's answer came quietly.

“Your team.”

For a moment, I couldn't make sense of what he'd said.

“My team?”

“They told my engineer your tires were critical. The instruction was to defend.”

“But my tires weren't gone.”

“No.”

I looked back at the data, searching for something that would make the numbers fit the story I'd been told. A warning I'd missed. A spike in temperature. Some indication that the message had been accurate.

I found nothing.

“Why would they do that?”

Nico stood a few feet away, his expression guarded.

“That's what I've spent two years trying to find out.”

The room seemed to shrink around me.

I thought about the crash. The hospital. The questions I'd asked when I was finally able to sit up and understand what had happened. The explanations I'd been given until I'd stopped asking.

And Nico.

I'd blamed him for every second of that day. Every lost opportunity. Every time I'd climbed into a car and wondered whether my instincts could still be trusted.

“You knew,” I said.

My voice sounded thinner than I'd intended.

“You knew the report might be wrong, and you still let me hate you.”

His jaw tightened.

“I tried to say something right after the crash. But you know how these things works.They shut it down. They said the data supported the official story. They said if I kept pushing, it would look like I was trying to shift the blame.”

“So you gave up?”

“That's not true. I didn't give up.”

“Then what did you do, Nico? Because from where I was standing, you went on winning championships while I spent two years trying to put my life back together.”

He didn't interrupt.

“You let me believe you were responsible for everything."

“I know.”

“Do you have any idea what that did to me?”

“Yes.”

The answer was so quiet that it stopped me.

I looked at him, searching for the familiar arrogance, the cold confidence, the slightest hint that he was trying to make himself the victim.

I didn't find it.

He wasn't asking me to forgive him. He wasn't even asking me to believe him.

He was simply standing there, allowing me to be angry. And somehow, that made everything harder.

“Why didn't you tell me?” I asked again.

Nico looked toward the laptop.

“Because the person who gave me that order was the same person who could end your career if the truth ever came out.”

I stood so quickly that the chair scraped against the floor.

“Who?”

His eyes flicked toward the main garage. Engineers were still moving around the cars, carrying equipment and discussing the next test.

Then he looked back at me.

For a second, I really thought he might change his mind.

Instead, he said two words.

“Ask Evelyn.”

I stared at him.

The room went silent around us, though I could still hear the distant rumble of an engine being started outside.

“Evelyn?”

Nico didn't answer.

I shook my head, refusing to accept what my mind was trying to piece together.

“No. She was there for me. She helped me through everything. She—”

I stopped. Because I remembered the data room.

The way her fingers had tightened around her coffee cup. The smile that had come too quickly.

And the certainty in her voice when she'd said she didn't remember.

I'd trusted Evelyn with things I hadn't told anyone else. She'd been beside me when I was convinced my career was over. She'd helped me return to racing, celebrated every small victory, and stayed when I couldn't bear to talk about the crash.

She was the last person I would have suspected.

And now I couldn't stop wondering whether that was exactly why she'd been able to hide the truth from me.

I looked at Nico again.

“Are you sure?”

“I wouldn't have shown you this if I weren't.”

I glanced at the hard drive, at the numbers that had just torn apart the story I'd believed for two years.

Then I thought about Evelyn's hand on my wrist, her familiar voice telling me everything was fine.

My entire life suddenly felt built on ground I could no longer trust.

I didn't know whether Nico was telling me the whole truth. I didn't know why my team had sent that warning or what Evelyn had known when she stood beside me on the pit wall.

But I knew one thing.

I couldn't go back to believing the crash had been a simple accident caused by a man I hated.

Not now. Not even after this.

And if Evelyn really knew what had happened that day, I was going to find out why she'd kept it from me.

Even if the truth cost me the one friendship I'd never thought to question.