Page 43 of The Enforcer’s Pawn

Papa. She means papa.

My laugh comes out thin and wrong. “Tell him I’m checking lost-and-found.”

Dmitri’s attention settles on me.

“The garage is locked,” Kathryn adds. “The mechanic is asleep.”

Safe. Done asking questions for now.

My lungs remember their job. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. Come home.”

“I’m working on it.” I press the phone closer to my mouth.

A male voice sounds in the background, casual and much too near. “Is that the emergency trip thing you told me about? I told Patrick, and we had a good laugh over the blue lunchbox.”

My fingers go numb around the phone.

Kathryn snaps away from the receiver. “Go to the kitchen, Evan. Stop hovering.”

Evan. Kathryn’s boyfriend.

The blue lunchbox shouldn’t be in his mouth. I say nothing. Dmitri stands six feet away, and silence is the last lock I own.

Kathryn comes back rushed. “Sorry. He’s being annoying.”

“I get it.” My voice holds. Barely. “I’ll call when I can.”

The line ends.

Dmitri takes the phone, his eyes fixed on my face. “What happened?”

I see his mouth move. I know he’s speaking to me. The words reach me without meaning. Evan’s voice plays again inside my skull.

Emergency trip thing. Blue lunchbox.

My emergency phrase. My son’s safe place. The last line before Patrick reached Mikhail’s bed. Kathryn would never have given him that. Evan heard it. Evan carried it.

My safe place in Boston now has a crack in it, and Patrick is on the other side.

10

DMITRI

“Who was the man?” I ask.

“No one.”

“Cara.”

Her fingers close around the phone. “Kathryn isn’t involved.”

“Innocence doesn’t stop information from being useful.”

She hates that. I see it in her mouth and in her eyes. For one second, a memory pulls her away and leaves fear behind. Then she comes back and sets her shoulders.

“Her boyfriend,” she says. “Evan. Finance operations, last I knew. That’s all you get.”