14. Dmitri
DMITRI
Kathryn Walsh answers on the second ring, and Evan Mercer’s voice comes through behind her when Cara says the code.
“Patrick told me you’d say that.”
Cara barely reacts, not enough for a careless man to catch. I catch it anyway. Her fingers tighten around the handset.
A pause. Then Kathryn comes back on the line.
“Evan, I’m on the phone,” Kathryn snaps.
I reach for the phone.
Cara looks at me once, fast and hard. Don’t.
Everything in me wants to take the call from her. Evan is close enough to hear. Patrick has called him. Morozov is breathing behind Patrick, and the line may be watched. Abramov is tracing what he can, Yuri is watching the relay, and every second gives someone else time to listen.
Cara knows Evan is standing there. She knows Patrick has already reached Kathryn, and she knows one wrong word could make this worse. She also knows Kathryn’s voice when it’s scared, and I don’t.
I pull my hand back an inch.
Cara returns to the call. “Hey,” she says, her voice eager enough to pass for bad reception. “Sorry, bad signal.”
Kathryn inhales sharply. “Cara, where are you?”
“In a conference that won’t die,” Cara says. “I need you to stay where you are for now and keep everything normal.”
Maksim stands near the far wall, watching the trace screen instead of Cara.
Elena remains beside him, her focus on Cara’s face.
Abramov’s deputy works over the console, tracking numbers that vanish as fast as they appear.
Yuri sits hunched at his station with both hands off the keys, smart enough not to interrupt.
Evan’s voice comes through again, nearer now. “Patrick called me back. He said she might need me to explain something.”
Cara’s mouth twitches once.
Kathryn snaps away from the phone. “Evan, she can’t talk right now.”
“I’m just saying,” he answers casually. “He asked if she was okay.”
Cara closes her eyes for half a second, then opens them. “Kath.”
“I’m here,” Kathryn says, and panic rides under the words.
Cara’s thumb moves over the phone’s edge. “You’re a gem.”
Kathryn says nothing for ten seconds.
Then she says, “I know, Cara. I know.”
The phrase does what she meant it to do. I see that much. I don’t like being the man who misses it. Cara has sent a warning in plain words, and no one in this room knows how to read it.
Kathryn recovers quickly. “Right. Sure. I’ll handle the office-line thing when it comes.”
“Good,” Cara says. “Don’t change plans until then.”
Cara ends the call before Evan’s questions finish collecting shape.
Abramov’s deputy freezes the trace, and the monitors throw fragments across the screens. Cara sets the handset down with care. Her face stays composed, and her hand remains on the table, palm down, as if she is keeping the whole city of Boston from tipping.
I step closer. “What does gem mean?”
Elena’s eyes narrow at me.
Cara stares at her hand. “It means Kathryn understands me.”
“That’s not an answer.”
I lower myself until I’m level with her, one hand braced flat on the table, close enough that she can see exactly how little patience I have left.
Cara lifts her eyes to mine, undaunted. “It’s the only one you get.”
Anger moves through me hard enough for Abramov to notice. He turns back to his screen, choosing unawareness with professional speed.
I’m not angry because she ended the call. She ended it well. Cara kept Kathryn calm, kept Evan from learning which word mattered, and cut the line before Patrick could take more. The problem is that she did all of it while still holding things back from us.
Abramov speaks before I do. “Trace hit a masked relay chain. Cheap, messy, and fast. Two prepaid hops, then it dropped into a business exchange.”
“Patrick?” Maksim asks.
Abramov’s mouth tightens. “Partly. That’s the problem.”
One of Abramov’s men steps in from the side table and hands him a slip of paper. Abramov reads it once.
“New Jersey,” he says. “Temporary office lease. Rented last week under a shell company.”
“Patrick opens doors. He doesn’t build traps inside them,” I tell Maksim. “That’s the pattern I’ve been following.”
Cara tips her head a little, then looks away when my eyes find hers. She agrees with me, and she doesn’t want me to know it.
Abramov turns one screen toward us. “The relay didn’t only hide where the call came from. It sent a signal back when our trace touched it.”
Yuri goes very still. “A tripwire.”
“Yes,” Abramov says. “Whoever built this wanted to know when Volkov started checking the Boston line.”
Maksim’s face doesn’t change. “He knows.”
“Likely,” Abramov says.
Cara’s hand tightens on the table. “So when we called Kathryn…”
“Patrick may know we reached her,” Abramov says.
No one answers.
A side monitor wakes with Ilya’s face on it, the feed clipped at one shoulder, a road map open behind him. Ilya handles movement, exits, and the routes men use when they don’t want to be followed.
“Patrick called Evan after she opened the O’Connell archive,” Ilya says. “Within twenty minutes.”
Maksim’s face hardens. Elena folds her arms, and one hand closes around her sleeve. Abramov turns toward Yuri. His mouth opens like he wants to curse, then shuts again. He doesn’t waste anger unless it has a job.
Beside me, Cara raises both hands. “Hallelujah.”
Every man looks at her.
“What?” she says. “My brother put a doorbell on the family trauma box. Seems on brand.”
Yuri’s throat works. “It wasn’t the call.”
Maksim turns to him. “Explain.”
Yuri looks at his screen. “Patrick hid a beacon inside the O’Connell archive. When Cara opened it, the archive sent a signal out.”
My blood turns hot. Patrick has started setting bait.
Yuri turns his monitor toward us. “Evan received one call, no saved contact, no clean origin. After that, our call hit Kathryn’s phone, and Evan was close enough to hear it.”
He folds his glasses and sets them on the table. “Patrick knows we’re checking him, or someone made sure he knows.”
Cara stops arguing, and that worries me. She understands enough now, and she’s trying not to show how badly it scares her.
I take the chair beside her. I need answers, but I won’t get them by giving orders.
“Kathryn is in danger,” I say.
Her mouth opens, then closes.
“Tell me what you sent her.” I keep my voice low, and my hand rests on the table near hers, palm down, close enough for her to take if she wants. Her eyes flick to it, and I leave it there.
I lean closer. “If Evan repeats the wrong detail, Patrick may know Kathryn isn’t only holding information for you.”
I take the chance, and Cara reacts at once. Her face loses color.
I see it now. Someone else is involved.
My hand closes against the table. For one second, I nearly rise, then I make myself stay in the chair.
Elena steps forward. “Cara warned Kathryn. If Kathryn understands it, she’ll wait for the next call.”
Cara looks at her, and some of the panic leaves her face.
Maksim gives Abramov the order without raising his voice. “Prepare the office-line call. Keep Evan untouched until we know whether he is bait or breach.”
Abramov nods. “Understood.”
Ilya speaks from the monitor. “Boston routes?”
“Quietly,” Maksim says. “No men near Kathryn unless we confirm movement. Patrick acts fast when he feels watched. Don’t give him a reason.”
My focus stays on Cara. “You’ll sit with me while we plan the second call.”
Her gaze narrows. “I’m not your consultant.”
“No.” I turn Yuri’s recovered message pieces toward her—the coffee invite, the payment nickname, and the line about asking Kathryn without making it strange. My knuckles brush her fingers. She pulls her hand back fast, and I leave mine on the table.
“You’re the only person here who knows how Patrick talks,” I say. “His old lies. The way he makes panic sound reasonable.”
“That’s not hacking.” Her head tilts.
“It is when Patrick is the lock.”
Yuri clears his throat from the station. “Also, she opened the archive faster than I did.”
Cara’s mouth curves.
I move closer and stop before I touch her.
“You know systems,” I say, and my voice comes out rough. “You know Patrick. You know Kathryn. That makes you useful in three directions.”
“And dangerous in at least four,” Yuri says.
“Yes.”
Cara smiles, showing the neat line of her teeth and the mouth I’ve spent five years trying not to remember, and I have to keep my hands on the table. I need her beside me. Patrick chose her because he thought she would never trust me, and I need him wrong.
Maksim’s phone rings. He turns from the trace screen. “Speak.”
His face changes as he listens. First his eyes, then his mouth.
He lowers the phone. “Petrov. Freight strike outside the Riga bonded warehouse. Humanitarian route.”
Abramov moves before the sentence finishes. One of his men throws the feed onto the main wall, and the screen fills with a loading bay, gray pavement, open crates, men running, and blood near the rear wheel of a truck.
Cara’s fingers stop on the table.
Yuri leans toward his monitor. “That route touched the false clearances.”
Ilya reads from the incoming report. “Medical refrigeration crates, winter-aid pallets, and children’s clinic equipment.”
My chair scrapes back as I stand. On the screen, a guard kneels beside a dead driver. Another man staggers near the truck, face split open, hands raised as if he expects another blow.
Abramov takes a headset from his deputy. “Camera four is down. Camera two caught the aftermath. Dispatch says one driver killed, one guard alive.”
Petrov bursts into the comms room with his coat still on. “Several crates were opened and photographed before the attackers left. Forged Volkov clearance notes were placed on top of the supplies.”
Elena scans the incoming reports. “They staged it.”
“Message?” Maksim asks.
Abramov listens, then looks at him. “Surviving guard keeps repeating one phrase. Volkov feeds on aid.”
No one moves.
Morozov wants us angry first.
Elena stands beside Maksim with her arms folded. Her foundation’s name is already close to this mess, and now Morozov has put children’s clinic equipment on camera beside forged Volkov notes.