Page 79 of The Enforcer’s Pawn

For one second, I see my father’s study after the fire. Blackened beams. Melted glass. My mother’s scarf near the rear stairs. The house was burning while I was in Boston with Cara.

I force myself back to the van and hand the evidence bag back to Roman.

“Pull every Vostok Meridian site,” I tell Ilya. “Current and archived.”

Ilya types as I speak. “And the van?”

“Strip it for evidence. Leave enough for Maksim.”

Dima appears at the bay entrance. “Blue sedan was local muscle. Paid cash, told to follow the middle car until we reached industrial roads.”

“Who paid him?”

“He says he doesn’t know.”

I look at him.

Dima’s mouth barely moves. “He’ll remember.”

“No noise here.”

Dima nods. Ilya’s tablet pings, and he turns it toward me. “There’s an old Vostok Meridian office fourteen minutes from here. Closed on paper. Storage yard behind it. Same shell as the one in Patrick’s archive.”

“Brickworks road?” I ask.

“Same ownership trail.”

“Send it to Abramov,” I say. “Run it against the Boston relay chain and Oleg’s false clearances.”

“Yes, Boss,” Ilya says.

Roman stands with another bag. “Fiber caught under the rear latch. Dark wool. Expensive.”

“Bag it.”

A vehicle moves outside, tires crunching over frozen gravel. Every man in the bay reacts at once. Roman steps left, Dima moves behind the van, and Ilya’s nearest road man heads for the side door.

The lead car reports through the channel. “White pickup at the north gate. Two men. Yard clothes. Wrong boots.”

“Hold,” I say.

The pickup stops outside the fence. One man gets out and lights a cigarette. The other stays in the cab. Yard clothes, cheap hats, no gloves, boots clean enough to call them liars.

Ilya watches the exterior feed on his tablet. “They’re checking whether we found it.”

“Let them see enough.”

He glances at me. “You want them to leave?”

“I want them to report.”

The cigarette man stands by the fence for forty seconds. His head tilts once toward the rear bay, then toward the road. A small nod to the man in the cab follows. The pickup leaves.

Ilya sends a message with one hand. “Roof team has them.”

“No grab.”

“Understood.”