Page 18 of The Enforcer’s Pawn

Emergency trip. Blue lunchbox.

It means use your key. Take Mikhail. Don’t call until you’re away.

The man’s eyes move past me. My body locks down so fast, I almost forget how to breathe.

“My neighbor’s kid,” I say, and the lie comes out fast enough to bruise. “I babysit when she works nights.”

He looks back at me. I give him the face I save for compliance officers, and for Patrick when he wants me annoyed enough to solve his problem. A tired single woman irritated by strange men at her door, with no secret worth collecting behind her. I’m making a poor job of myself. I can’t let my eyes move toward Mikhail’s door. His room has to stay a closed door, nothing else.

The word son tries to rise, and I shove it back down. If I picture his damp hair after a bath, his socks kicked under the bed, his car locked in his fist, or his little voice asking if sharks sleep, my face will break in front of them. Men like these are trained to read the part of a person that tries to hide first.

“His mother will be back any minute,” I add.

The man watches me for one long second, and I feel every inch of the apartment behind my back. The couch with Mikhail’s blanket. The dinosaur cup by the sink. The drawing on the fridge.

Dmitri can’t know. That thought lands with teeth. He can’t know about Mikhail because if he knew, these men would already be inside. They would have orders for both of us. They would say my son’s name with that same flat certainty, and I would have nothing left to bargain with. So this isn’t Dmitri collecting his child. This is Patrick’s mess reaching my door.

That should comfort me, but it doesn’t, because Patrick’s messes always come with bills, and I’ve been paying them since I was old enough to believe big brothers knew better.

The man releases the door. For half a second, I think I’ve won. Then he reaches through the gap, lifts the chain with a thin metal tool, and slips it free before I can slam the door shut. My heart kicks hard enough to hurt. He opens the door the rest of the way and steps inside.

I step back.

“Who sent you?” I ask.

No answer.

“Is Patrick dead?”

Still nothing.

The first man lets his gaze sweep the apartment in one pass. Laptop, flash drive, counters, kitchen, locked bedroom door. He clocks everything. The second man moves toward the window. A third one stays in the hall. I glance at my phone.

“Leave it,” the first man says.

“I was checking the time.”

“Leave it.”

I do. My thumb has already done its work. He picks up the phone, turns it over, and sees the locked screen.

“You were quick,” he says.

He moves past the couch, the bookshelf, and the coffee table, then stops in front of the only framed picture on the wall. My hand curls into a fist. The picture is of Patrick and me. Mikhail’s face isn’t anywhere they can study. His preschool photos stay private. The beach pictures stay buried in my camera roll. His birthday smile, frosting and all, belongs to me. That saves me today.

The man studies me. “Dmitri said you’d react fast.”

The name throws me back to a hotel elevator five years ago, to a Russian man looking at me like I was a mistake he wanted anyway. I bury it before it shows.

“Dmitri who?”

The soldier almost smiles. “Coat.”

“No.”

“Cara.”

Hearing him say my name makes my skin crawl. My eyes almost move toward the bedroom door. I stop them in time. Mikhail is behind it, maybe sitting on his bed and listening. Scared enough to cry and smart enough not to.