Page 104 of Sexting the Pakhan

So Levin is still in it. After Anton, after the dead ends, after the false trails, he’s still trying to bleed the east side one careful theft at a time. Unfortunately I found out about it after Anton was dead.

I walk to the window overlooking the warehouse floor. Below, a truck backs into bay three. Two men guide it in with hand signals, unaware that one of their supervisors has been selling pieces of the operation while they worked.

I turn back to Pavel. “Send two men to the kindergarten. They watch only. No entering, no digging, no approaching staff. I want to know if Lenkov is already there.”

Pavel nods and takes out his phone.

Kirill jerks against the ropes. “He’ll know I talked.”

I look at him. “Yes.”

His face goes pale. “I told you where it is,” he says.

“You did,” I say.

“I helped.”

“You helped yourself late.”

He starts to speak again, but I lift one hand, and he stops.

There is nothing more I need from him right now.

I look at Dima. “Keep him here. No one touches him until I come back.”

Dima says, “Shame.”

Kirill closes his eyes.

Stepan follows me out of the office and down the metal stairs. The warehouse air is colder below, full of diesel, dust, and wet concrete. Men keep working, though a few glance our way and look away again quickly.

The driver pulls out of the warehouse yard and turns toward the eastern road, away from the busy part of the city. The kindergarten Kirill named is not nearby. It sits on the edge of Marrowick, a small town forty minutes out, the kind of place people move to when they want quiet streets, cheaper rent, and fewer reasons to look over their shoulders.

A good place to hide something.

“Andrei is there,” Pavel says. “The kindergarten is called Little Birch Early Learning. It’s behind the old church road, near the river turn. Small compound. One main gate. One back gate facing a service lane.”

Stepan looks at the map on his phone. “Residential around it?”

“Mostly houses,” Pavel says. “A mechanic’s shed on one side. Empty field behind the service lane.”

I look out the window as the city thins around us. Shops become shuttered garages. Apartment blocks become warehouses, then low houses with tin roofs and narrow lanes between them.

“Where in the compound?” I ask.

Pavel listens again, then says, “Kirill’s description matches. Back-left corner. Garden area behind the playhouse. Painted fence with flowers. There’s a shed beside it.”

Stepan’s jaw tightens. “Children’s garden.”

“Yes,” Pavel says.

No one speaks for a few seconds.

The car moves over a rough patch of road, and the tires hum against broken asphalt.

A kindergarten outside the city. A garden behind a playhouse. Six stolen cases buried under soil where children probably plant sunflowers and learn the names of insects.

Lenkov chose well. That makes me want to hurt him more, not less.