Page 133 of The Enforcer’s Pawn

“A desperate one,” I say. “It has to look like I panicked and tried to move Mikhail somewhere safer without telling Dmitri first.”

Dmitri’s voice drops. “Meaning?”

“Meaning we build a paper trail Patrick can smell,” I say. “It can be a rushed message, a false pickup window, or a fake handoff point. Something that looks like me making a bad choice because I’m scared.”

Abramov studies me. “You want Patrick to think you’re moving the child.”

“I want him to think I’m trying,” I say. “If he believes I broke from the Volkov plan, he’ll want control of the route before Morozov does.”

Kirill finally looks up. “That makes sense.”

Dima turns toward him. “You like this?”

“No,” Kirill says. “That’s not the same as saying it makes sense.”

I look at Yuri. “Patrick won’t trust a perfect file. It has to look human. Messy, and tired, like I made it under pressure.”

Yuri pushes his keyboard closer. “What do you need?”

I turn toward the door. “Kathryn.”

Dmitri looks at Abramov.

Abramov speaks into his phone. “Bring Miss Walsh to the annex. Mrs. Wentworth sends Anna, the nurse, to stay with Mikhail, and Sergei remains at the nursery door.”

A few minutes later, Kathryn steps in from the corridor with her arms folded, hair pulled back, and her mouth set hard enough to warn everyone in the room.

She looks at the screens, then at me. “You need Boston details.”

“No,” I say. “I need you.”

Her expression changes by a fraction.

Yuri pushes a keyboard toward her.

“What kind of details?” Kathryn looks at the map, then at me.

“The kind of behaviors I do when I panic,” I say. “The kind Patrick would notice.”

Kathryn sits and cracks her knuckles. “Cara never writes Urgent unless she wants someone to ignore it. She says Quick Favor when she’s about to ask for the moon. She double-checks times, but if she’s scared, she forgets apartment numbers and overexplains landmarks.”

I wince. “Thank you.”

Kathryn points at me without looking up. “You asked.”

Yuri opens a blank message draft. “Old phrasing she chooses?”

Kathryn types with two fingers. “Make it sound like Boston. Normal, not polished. She’d mention weather if she wanted someone to think she was calm.”

I lean over her shoulder. “Patrick needs to think I’m scared and trying to move Mikhail without telling Dmitri.”

Kathryn nods once and adds a name. “Use a woman from preschool. Someone I’d know, but not someone Patrick can check fast.”

Yuri builds the message step by step. He adds an old Boston nanny contact, a generic medical appointment, a transport request, and one old Boston detail.

The message tells the nanny contact I remember meeting her at the corner café near school, back when Kathryn and I were asking around for temporary childcare.

Yuri reads it once, then adds the technical part. The message won’t go to Patrick. It’ll go to the nanny contact, but it’ll brush an old Boston channel Patrick used to watch when he was tracking my life.