Page 47 of Hunt Me, Daddy

Katherine Calloway, Calloway Security Consulting, General Admission + Workshops.

Katherine.

I disliked seeing it for her sake. She had made herself Kit everywhere else, which was shorter. More intense. Less available to people who thought full names gave them authority.

I changed the display label on my private copy of the badge list.

Kit Calloway.

Much better.

I should not have cared.

The schedule was workable but not ideal. She had registered for two workshops, one technical briefing on adversarial attribution in financial crime, and a morning session titled Shell Games: Corporate Obfuscation, Cryptocurrency Rails, and Cross-Border Laundering.

Subtle, she was not.

That session was at 10:15 on Thursday in Harbor Room B.

She would most certainly attend because the presenter was Dr. Mara Chen, a cryptographic systems researcher whose work Kit respected enough to have printed, annotated, and pinned to the edge of her Orlov board. I had seen the paper during my first apartment entry. She had underlined an entire paragraph and written in the margin.

Mara Chen was also the key.

She and I had never been friends. Friendship required more maintenance than I usually offered, and academics tended to ask questions whose answers created paperwork. But six years earlier, one of her graduate researchers had nearly destroyed a university lab by bringing home ransomware from a compromised conference network, and I had quietly undone the damage before the breach became public. She knew I was not merely a private-sector analyst. She knew enough not to ask what else I was. In return, I respected her work and occasionally sent her technical corrections under names that made her sigh at me over encrypted email.

She would introduce us if asked properly.

By late afternoon, my whiteboard was full of Kit’s likely morning. Coffee locations within three blocks. Hotel entrances. Session timing. Mara’s talk. Alternate introduction paths. Conversation subjects I could safely raise without revealing prior knowledge. Questions I could ask that would draw her in. Questions I could not ask because they would tell her too much.

Do not mention her brother.

Do not mention the Orlovs first.

Do not mention her file on me.

I knew too much.

That was the central problem with meeting her as a stranger. I knew she hated her full name. I knew she took her coffee black only when working but added cream when she was pretending to be a normal human being in public. I knew she carried a knife in the inside seam of her bag. I knew she checked reflective surfaces every half block now and that she had almost caught me twice.

I emailed Mara Chen at 5:30 in the morning. Her response did not come until 6:12, which was rude, but expected because unlike me, she occasionally slept.

Mara:Morozov. I assume this is either urgent or annoying.

Me:Those are not mutually exclusive.

Mara:They are when you are involved.

Me:I need a speaking slot.

Mara:No.

Me:You haven’t heard the conference.

Mara:I know you. The answer is no.

I smiled faintly despite myself.

Me:SecureLine East. Thursday.