Page 4 of Hunt Me, Daddy

Methodically.

I opened a new workspace on the air-gapped machine beside my desk, the one with no wireless card and a keyboard that clicked too loudly in the quiet. I copied the anomaly data over by hand first, because paranoia made me patient and patience kept people alive.

If it was Orlov, they should have done more. If they had found me, they should have traced back, pushed harder, tested my nodes, dropped some sort of digital grenade into my path and waited for me to step on it. Orlov violence had a smell, even online. It wanted you to know it was coming. It liked pressure. Fear. Demonstration. This didn’t feel like that, which was infinitely worse. Because if it wasn’t Orlov, then someone else had been inside the same shadows I had, looking at the same money, following the same trail.

Someone good.

I hated good.

Good made things complicated.

I created a decoy first. A false continuation of my Orlov map, sloppy enough to look like a human mistake but not so sloppy that it insulted anyone competent. A fake shell lead tied to a logistics company in Providence, with enough surface-level relevance to seem promising and enough hidden markers that I would know if anyone touched it. Then I seeded it where the anomaly’s route might notice if it returned and I built a second trap behind the first. People who saw traps liked to feel clever for avoiding them.

The second trap was for clever people.

My coffee sat forgotten beside me. My legs had gone stiff beneath me, but I didn’t uncross them. The city outside remained dark and quiet, holding its breath against the windows. Somewhere below, a siren wailed briefly and then faded, swallowed by the sleeping streets.

I worked.

That was what I did when fear came knocking.

I worked until fear got bored and sat down in the corner like everything else.

By three-sixteen, the first trap was live.

By three-forty, the second was too.

By four-oh-seven, I had cloned a narrow slice of the environment into an isolated lure and dressed it up with just enough Orlov stink to be convincing. False credentials. A draft memo referencing Mikhail by initial only. A beautiful little liewith a door left open. I didn’t leave it wide open, but open just enough. Then I sat back, rolled my shoulders, and stared at the monitors.

“Come on, then,” I whispered.

My voice sounded too loud in the apartment.

Nothing moved.

Of course nothing moved.

Whoever it was wouldn’t come when invited. Competent people rarely did. They waited. Watched. Let the other side sweat. Let the silence become part of the pressure.

Fine.

I could do silence.

I had been raised in it.

I opened a fresh encrypted note and titled it Anomaly. Then I stared at the word, irritation prickling hot beneath my sternum. Too passive. Too clinical. Like this thing was weather. Like it had drifted into my system by accident.

I deleted it and started again.

I titled it Watcher, which was far better.

My hands paused over the keys. There was something intimate about naming a threat. It gave me something to hunt.

I added the first entry.

02:13:44—Unknown actor detected in Orlov-adjacent monitored layer. Unlikely to be Orlov admin, internal cleanup,or automated. Manual, controlled, highly skilled. Signature minimal. Intent unknown.

I stopped, then I added one more line.