28. Dmitri
DMITRI
Oleg Baranov leaves his apartment at three in the morning.
Abramov’s phone lights up, and for one second, every instinct in me goes for the fastest answer. Grab him. Put him in a chair. Take the fear out of his mouth and turn it into names.
The order almost leaves me.
Then Cara’s voice cuts through the thought. Patrick wins when people chase him.
I look at Oleg’s pale face on the traffic feed, at the cheap coat buttoned wrong, and I see a man trying to look ordinary while leaving home before dawn.
I keep my hand flat on the table. “Eyes only,” I say.
Abramov glances at me once, then speaks into his phone. “Tail him, eyes only, no stop, no approach.”
Dima straightens near the wall. “If he runs?”
“Let him run far enough to show us who trusts him,” I say.
Cara stands across the table in my white shirt under her belted coat, bare legs below the hem, hair loose around her face. The screen glow makes her look pale, stubborn, and dangerous in a room full of men running on adrenaline and coffee.
Her gaze travels over the table and finds mine, with a question in her eyes and in the slight tilt of her head, then the question fades, and she looks back at the screen.
The security annex shifts from investigation to live operation in less than a minute.
Yuri’s cigarette pack lies open beside the keyboard, half buried under printed route sheets. Kirill takes one, lights it, and keeps working with smoke curling toward the vent.
Yuri pulls Oleg’s phone activity onto one screen, traffic cameras onto another, and vendor activity onto the third. Kirill checks old clearance logs against Oleg’s current path. Dima sends two plain cars out to bracket him, one ahead and one behind, with enough distance to avoid a Volkov pattern.
“Car one, fall back,” Abramov says, one finger pressed to his earpiece. “Let the taxi pass. Car two, take the next turn and don’t look hungry.”
Yuri clicks into a feed. “His phone is on, but location services are dead.”
Kirill leans closer to his log. “He opened a payment app twelve minutes before leaving.”
Dima looks at me. “Cash?”
“Fear,” Cara says, arms folded tight. “He checked the money before he moved.”
Mikhail is asleep, Kathryn is with him, and Cara has every reason to be upstairs behind a closed door.
She stands here instead, exhausted and pale, with fear riding her shoulders and Patrick’s pattern already moving behind her eyes.
I could send her away, but my attention keeps coming back to the space beside me.
Oleg doesn’t go to a mistress, a safe apartment, or a bar. He walks four blocks in the wrong direction, waits under an awning, then gets into a car ordered by someone else. We know because Yuri finds the ride account two minutes later under a false name tied to an old logistics temp.
“Sloppy,” Dima says, watching the car move.
Abramov shakes his head. “Careful for a clerk. Bad for a professional.”
The car drops Oleg near a twenty-four-hour pharmacy.
He goes inside and walks past medicine, baby formula, bandages, and cold remedies without buying anything.
Inside, Oleg speaks to the night pharmacist. The man doesn’t ring up a sale.
He passes Oleg a folded receipt instead.
Five minutes later, a delivery truck blocks the alley camera.
Cara leans in. “Back exit.”
Yuri curses and pulls another feed. “I have him.”
Oleg keeps something in his wallet that looks like the folded receipt and comes out through the rear alley, his shoulders hunched and his head low.
“Is he running?” I ask.
Abramov studies the feed. “No. He’s looking for reassurance.”
Maksim, who has said nothing for ten minutes, sets his glass down. “Good. Follow the comfort.”
He pushes away from the table and looks at Cara. “You should rest.”
Cara turns to him. “With respect, no.”
Maksim’s mouth tilts a fraction. “That sounded like no respect.”
“My name is in the files,” she says, one hand tightening around the edge of the table. “My son was in the warning. I’m not leaving while the men look after the job.”
Maksim studies her, then looks at me. He gives a short nod and leaves. I say nothing because the decision was already made before she refused.
Oleg turns toward the old medical logistics district. He reaches a small freight office. The office handles medical forms, delivery notes, and customs fixes for companies that want to stay hidden. A man waits near the side entrance with a bag and an unlit cigarette.
Yuri freezes the image and enlarges the man’s face. “Document runner. Pavel Sidorin.”
Kirill checks the old notes. “Pavel Sidorin appears twice with New Harbor. First with the shipment. Now with the dinner delivery. Low level. He carries envelopes, small drives, and changed forms.”
Cara looks from one screen to the next. “Patrick still needs paper.”
Dima turns toward her. “For what?”
Cara rubs one hand over her wrist. “To keep the lie looking real. If Patrick moved money through New Harbor, Oleg, and the renovation shells, he needs papers that make every part look normal.”
Lena carried one of those parts without knowing it. Without those papers, New Harbor stops looking like charity work and starts looking like theft.
Kirill nods slowly. “And Morozov’s people need Patrick because he knows where the money went.”
Every man in the room turns to look at him.
Patrick is still alive because Morozov’s people need what he knows. He knows how to make Volkov look weak in public if we grab him first.
Morozov burned my family home to kill my parents. I was in Boston with Cara. Patrick saw enough, and later, he learned how to use Cara against me.
Morozov used my grief, my anger, and my need to punish someone. He wanted me to act fast and stupid, and he wanted Volkov weaker because of it.
My hand grips the edge of the table.
Now he’s using the same method again.
Cara. Mikhail. Patrick.
Patrick carries the secret. Cara becomes the pressure point. Mikhail becomes the threat. Morozov keeps finding ways to turn family into a weapon.
“Names, wallets, approvals, old routes.” I tap the table. “Patrick is buying another day alive.”
Cara blinks once, then looks back at Patrick’s name on the screen. The room has too many men talking, and none of it reaches her.
I pull a cigarette from the pack on the table and light it without looking away from the screen. I take one slow drag, let the smoke out through my nose, then set the lighter down.
“He’ll sell pieces until someone decides he’s worth more dead,” I say quietly.
Cara’s eyes move to me. “Then we need him before that choice gets made.”
On the screen, the runner steps close to Oleg. No envelope changes hands, no drive, no packet. Oleg takes the pharmacy receipt from his pocket, folds it once more, and gives it to the runner like trash.
Dima leans toward the screen. “I can’t read that without taking it.”
“Don’t take it,” I say.
Dima’s head turns. “You sure?”
“No,” I answer, watching the runner leave. “But we can follow the paper.”
Oleg remains in the alley after the runner leaves. Thirty seconds. Forty. His hands shake badly enough for the camera to catch it. Then another car pulls up, and he gets in.
The city begins to pale at the edges when Oleg crosses into a municipal records district. He enters a government building through a side entrance just before dawn, flashing a pass that shouldn’t exist.
Yuri captures the pass image. “That’s new.”
Kirill checks the number. “Issued yesterday afternoon.”
Cara’s voice drops. “Someone is feeding him confidence in small pieces.”
Maksim returns near sunrise, dressed for the day and already briefed. He doesn’t ask why Cara is still there. He looks at me first.
“Does Oleg know?” Maksim asks, taking his place at the table.
“No,” I say. “But he knows danger is close.”
Maksim looks at the municipal feed. “Let him believe he survived the night. His next mistake will be cleaner.”
Oleg returns to the estate just after eight, pale, sweating, and dressed in the same cheap coat. Through the internal cameras, I watch him sign into his small logistics station, greet another clerk, and avoid looking toward the secure corridors.
He becomes dull again. Weak coffee beside his keyboard. Bent shoulders, routine face, a man shaped like nobody’s problem.
Dima stands beside me with his arms crossed. “Say the word.”
“Find the pressure point,” I say. “Don’t accuse him. Don’t corner him.”
Dima looks at the feed. “Then what do you want?”
“Make him feel the floor move,” I say. “Enough to run.”
Abramov slips his phone into his pocket. “If we scare him inside the estate, he bolts to whoever controls the courier channel.”
I look at Oleg on the screen.
He reaches for his coffee with one shaking hand.
“Good,” I say. “Then open the door and let him see the fire.”