“That she needs to see me. It’s about the shooting.”
“She knows something,” Mikhail says.
“Possibly,” I say, “We won’t know till I meet her.”
“And that’s the only reason you want to see her?” he asks.
I turn to face him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I get up and go to the window because sitting still suddenly feels impossible. The city outside is gray and wet, half the afternoon already gone. Cars below, people rushing, steam lifting from the street like the whole place is trying to hide its own shape.
“Her father’s tightened the house since the shooting. More men, more rules. If she sent this, she’s already stuck.”
He nods once. “You going there?”
“No,” I say.
I look down at the phone again. I need to see her, tonight preferably.
“She needs a reason to leave her room, and then a reason to be briefly alone. Something ordinary. Something no one in that house will find worth remembering,” I say.
“Such as?”
I turn back from the window. “The chapel.”
He thinks about it, then nods again. “That could work.”
Every old house like that has one. Private enough for grief, prayer, guilt, and all the things families like the Markovs prefer to dress up as devotion. If she goes there after dinner, nobody questions it. Not at first.
I take my phone and type.
Tonight. Eleven. Private chapel. Use the side path behind the cemetery wall. Leave the children behind. I’ll be waiting on the river road. Don’t answer this unless you have to.
I read it once. Then I send it.
We wait. Five minutes pass.
Nothing.
Mikhail closes the file in front of him. “Maybe she can’t reply.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe she won’t.”
I slide the phone into my pocket. “She might be spooked.”
“That would be reasonable.”
“Yes.”
He waits.
I say, “I’m going anyway.”
That gets a look out of him.“You’re just going to wait?”
“Yes.”
