Page 17 of Hunt Me, Daddy

I stood across the street for eleven minutes. Exactly eleven, because I had decided ten was a reasonable observation window and then failed to leave.

That should have been my first warning.

I had followed men before. I had watched enemies meet mistresses, politicians accept bribes, accountants lie with their hands folded over tables, and killers sit down to breakfast as though blood washed off the soul as easily as skin. Surveillance was not a new thing for me. Observation was not new. Patience was certainly not a new thing either.

Standing in the rain across from a coffee shop because a woman frowned at her laptop like the machine had offended her personally was new.

I did not like new.

I left before she looked up because I had learned what I came to learn, and lingering beyond utility was how men began making mistakes. At least, that was what I told myself as I walked away.

I went back on Wednesday.

There were reasons. The first day’s assessment had produced several concerns. Her route was too consistent. Her coffee shop exposed her. The rear alley near her building had an unresolved blind spot. Her physical awareness was strong but self-taught, which meant she would catch obvious threats and miss more professional ones. Her sleep deficit was making her reaction times uneven. Also, a man in a cheap gray coat had entered thecafé nine minutes after her on Tuesday and left twenty-three minutes later without finishing his drink.

That last reason was the only one Ireallyneeded.

He was there again on Wednesday. I saw him before Kit did. He was in his mid-thirties. He had dark hair and broken capillaries around the nose. He was built like a man who considered intimidation a skill instead of a failure of subtlety. His shoes were too clean for the weather, his coat too cheap for the watch on his wrist, and his left hand rested near his pocket every time the café door opened.

He reeked of Orlov.

He wasn’t important enough to be dangerous on his own, but important enough to have been sent by someone more important than him.

I photographed him through a reflection in a bus shelter ad for a luxury apartment building no one with taste would live in. Then I sent the image to Sergei with no explanation.

His reply came four minutes later.

Sergei: Orlov runner. Name likely Pavel Sidorov. Low-level grunt.

I looked through the café window. Kit sat in her usual seat, hair up again, laptop open, coffee going cold while she read. She had noticed Pavel. She might not know him by name, but she had clocked him. I could tell by the way she changed nothing.

That was her tell.

Most people revealed awareness by looking. Kit revealed it by refusing to. Her posture remained the same. Her eyes stayed on the screen. She lifted her cup, took a sip, grimaced faintly because the coffee had cooled, and kept reading. All perfectly natural. Too natural. A small, beautiful performance of inattention.

I felt something dangerously close to pride, which was incredibly inconvenient.

Pavel sat three tables behind her with no laptop, no book, no convincing reason to be there. He glanced at her once, then at the door, then down at his phone.

Amateur.

I disliked him immediately, which was operationally irrelevant but emotionally satisfying.

Sergei called instead of texting again.

I answered without taking my eyes off the café. “Yes?”

“He is not there by chance, is he?” Sergei asked.

“No.”

“Does this connect to the Orlov file you are not telling Maxim enough about?”

“You have an unpleasant habit of making accurate guesses.”

“And you have an unpleasant habit of thinking silence is a strategy.”

“It often is.”