Page 68 of The Enforcer’s Pawn

Oleg sits beneath the first line with clearance stamps, after-hours approvals, and dull job written beside his name. Under the second line, she has written wife and child.

Evan has the next line, and she has marked him in both columns. Under professional usefulness, finance operations, compliance vendor, payment holds. Under personal pressure point, Kathryn’s kitchen, Mikhail nearby, casual questions.

Then Patrick. Family language. Old debts. Boston contacts.

One corner of a folded routing slip is tucked under her palm. I step closer, slow enough that she can move if she wants.

“Whose name are you keeping out, Cara?” I ask.

15

CARA

Idon’t see Dmitri standing in the doorway. My mind is taken up with the intrigue laid out before me. For the last few hours, it has shrunk around the scraps on the table until nothing else can get in.

Oleg moves clearances.

Morozov takes his family.

Evan brushes finance systems.

Patrick reaches him through Kathryn.

My mind completes the circle, then swings into another arc.

Or Patrick flatters him. Makes him feel chosen. Makes him feel useful. Weak men blabber when someone important lets them believe they matter.

A sound pulls my attention to the door. A cough, maybe. Or my own reflex finally catching up. I freeze. Dmitri walks in. He circles the table, his gaze fixed on the scraps, and I understand one beat late that he’s not looking at what I found.

He’s looking at what I left out.

“Whose name are you keeping out, Cara?” he asks.

My skin goes cold. My hand stays over the page, covering the one part of the grid I should have destroyed the second I wrote it.

He has already seen enough. Oleg. Evan. Patrick. Professional usefulness and personal pressure point. Work and love. Access and leverage. Mikhail sits in the blank space under my palm.

“No one,” I say.

Dmitri’s gaze moves from my hand to my face. “Don’t lie badly to me.”

“Then stop asking questions you haven’t earned.”

Sergei shifts outside the partly open door.

Dmitri doesn’t look away from me when he speaks. “End of the corridor.”

Sergei leaves without comment. His steps fade, and my pulse starts making terrible decisions.

Dmitri closes the library door.

I stand straighter behind the table. “That’s not helping your case.”

“Are you hiding a name?” He frowns.

“I’m protecting a person.” I drag my fingers across the page, rubbing hard over Mikhail’s name until the paper thins, then tears. Good.

“From me?” he asks.