Page 120 of The Enforcer’s Pawn

“Money moves,” I say, “then someone fixes the paperwork behind it.”

Yuri brings up the name attached to the correction.

Oleg Baranov. The small door Patrick thinks is boring enough to matter.

Dmitri looks at the screen, and his face closes.

Abramov’s phone lights up. He reads the message, then lifts his eyes.

“Oleg just left his apartment,” Abramov says, already reaching for his coat.

“At three in the morning?” Dima’s eyebrows lift.

“Scared men don’t go home,” Dmitri says. “They go to whoever they think can save them.”

Maksim’s smile fades into something colder.

Dmitri points to the map. “Let Oleg lead.”

28

DMITRI

Oleg Baranov leaves his apartment at three in the morning.

Abramov’s phone lights up, and for one second, every instinct in me goes for the fastest answer. Grab him. Put him in a chair. Take the fear out of his mouth and turn it into names.

The order almost leaves me.

Then Cara’s voice cuts through the thought. Patrick wins when people chase him.

I look at Oleg’s pale face on the traffic feed, at the cheap coat buttoned wrong, and I see a man trying to look ordinary while leaving home before dawn.

I keep my hand flat on the table. “Eyes only,” I say.

Abramov glances at me once, then speaks into his phone. “Tail him, eyes only, no stop, no approach.”

Dima straightens near the wall. “If he runs?”

“Let him run far enough to show us who trusts him,” I say.

Cara stands across the table in my white shirt under her belted coat, bare legs below the hem, hair loose around her face. The screen glow makes her look pale, stubborn, and dangerous in a room full of men running on adrenaline and coffee.

Her gaze travels over the table and finds mine, with a question in her eyes and in the slight tilt of her head, then the question fades, and she looks back at the screen.

The security annex shifts from investigation to live operation in less than a minute.

Yuri’s cigarette pack lies open beside the keyboard, half buried under printed route sheets. Kirill takes one, lights it, and keeps working with smoke curling toward the vent.

Yuri pulls Oleg’s phone activity onto one screen, traffic cameras onto another, and vendor activity onto the third. Kirill checks old clearance logs against Oleg’s current path. Dima sends two plain cars out to bracket him, one ahead and one behind, with enough distance to avoid a Volkov pattern.

“Car one, fall back,” Abramov says, one finger pressed to his earpiece. “Let the taxi pass. Car two, take the next turn and don’t look hungry.”

Yuri clicks into a feed. “His phone is on, but location services are dead.”

Kirill leans closer to his log. “He opened a payment app twelve minutes before leaving.”

Dima looks at me. “Cash?”