Page 108 of The Enforcer’s Pawn

Third, one fake aid name hidden in Patrick’s notes.

New Harbor Medical Aid.

We have seen that name before. Cara found the Boston clinic reference inside a New Harbor Medical Aid batch. New Harbor also sits in the middle of the old pattern. Patrick’s money trail, Oleg Baranov’s false clearances, and the Vostok Meridian shell Morozov keeps using to hide his work.

Abramov and I walk toward the comms center in the main estate building with two guards behind us and the corridor cleared ahead.

Cara follows.

I hear her before I look back. Her steps are uneven after the delivery yard injury, but she keeps walking anyway.

“Shouldn’t you be with Mikhail?” I ask without stopping.

Cara pulls her cardigan tighter around her body. “He’s sleepy, and Kathryn will put him to bed. I have work.”

I look back at her.

She already has her mouth ready for trouble. “What? I’m here to debug the thugware.”

Abramov makes a sound that may be a cough.

I keep walking. “Thugware doesn’t rhyme with anything useful.”

Cara comes up beside me. “It rhymes with nightmare if you bill hourly.”

I shake my head. There’s no beating Cara.

The comms center is awake when we arrive. Yuri has the screens open at the first console. Kirill cross-checks timestamps from Patrick’s archive against vendor payment windows. Secure phones blink across the table, and one call starts before the last one ends.

My secure phone sits near Mikhail’s red toy car.

He gave it to me after breakfast because, according to him, it was made to race and win, and I looked like I might need it. Cara sees the red car before she sees the screens. Surprise softens her face, then she looks at me.

She understands exactly why it is there.

Yuri points at his monitor. “The vendor account woke up less than an hour ago,” Yuri says. “It was supposed to be dead. Someone touched it.”

Abramov turns one screen toward us. “That account links to the delivery materials for tomorrow’s charity dinner.”

Cara stops in the doorway. “Which charity?”

I look at her. “You weren’t cleared to work.”

She doesn’t look away from the screen. “I wasn’t cleared to be kidnapped either.”

The line comes out tired, with none of her usual bite. That bothers me more than the disobedience. When Cara stops being scared, she becomes scary. I catch myself worrying about the woman limping into a comms center because work is the only thing keeping her upright.

Yuri brings up the guest file. “The invitation is clean. Elena’s office selected the charity for tomorrow night. Leonid vetted the representative. Abramov’s people cleared the guest.”

Cara steps closer. “Then where’s the breach?”

Kirill turns the next file toward us. “The guest is clean. The delivery channel is not.”

He taps the screen. “Someone used Oleg’s old service path to push dinner packets, sealed documents, and event materials into the house through Sable Crown Courier.”

Cara looks at him. “I thought Oleg was exposed.”

“He was,” Abramov says, tapping the folder. “Major routes were cut off. Smaller delivery access stayed open under watch.”