Page 54 of Hunt Me, Daddy

The roundtable began with the usual ritual of people compressing their entire professional identity into twenty seconds and trying not to sound desperate while doing it. When I said, “Kit Calloway, independent consultant,” a few people nodded politely. One man from a large firm glanced at my badge, saw the Katherine side still hidden, and looked irritated that he couldn’t pin me more neatly into his mental filing cabinet.

The man at the end of the table did not look at my badge. He looked at me like he was waiting for something.

Mara introduced him last. “Ivan Morozov. Independent security research. Financial attribution, adversarial noise, and a list of things I am not cleared to know but occasionally benefit from anyway.”

A few people laughed, but Ivan Morozov did not. His mouth only moved slightly, like amusement was an emotion he permitted in narrow, controlled doses.

Morozov.

I knew the name the way anyone in Boston security circles knew certain names, through rumors and omissions. Morozov meant North End money, private security fronts, the Iron Wolf Tavern, and Russian shadows dressed in legitimate business language. He was Russian Bratva. His name did not belong on a conference badge beside independent security research.

And yet there he was.

I had expected him to be arrogant, which was the strange part. I had met arrogant men. Cybersecurity had a surplus. Arrogance filled space because it was afraid of silence. It interrupted. It corrected too fast. It performed knowledge like a mating display for people who thought terminal windows were personality traits.

Ivan Morozov did not perform. He simply occupied the room as though he had already measured it and found it sufficient.

The discussion moved around the table. Attribution thresholds. False flags. Toolmark analysis. How much confidence was enough when action carried legal exposure. I spoke less than I normally would have because I was watching the man at the end of the table and pretending I wasn’t.

I was drawn to him, and I couldn’t figure out why. Maybe it was his stillness, or the way he sat in his chair like he’d already mapped every exit in the room and decided he didn’t need them, or the way his attention settled on me like he knew me already. I told myself it was basic chemistry, but it still pinged the same deep, paranoid instinct in me that had been quietly insisting for weeks that I was being watched. I shook it off.

He contributed three times. Each time, the room quieted by instinct. He was concise, dry, and mildly devastating. Hedisagreed without appearing excited by his own disagreement. He corrected a bad assumption from one of the government men so politely that it took the man four seconds to realize he had been filleted. He did not look at me while speaking, which bothered me too.

I was used to men either trying too hard or dismissing me until I gave them no choice.

Ivan Morozov did neither.

After the roundtable ended, people drifted into the hall in clusters. I moved toward the side exit because crowds after small professional rooms became traps disguised as networking opportunities. I made it almost to the coffee table before Mara intercepted me.

“Kit,” she said. “Before you disappear.”

“I don’t disappear. I strategically avoid small talk.”

“Of course.” Her eyes flicked over my shoulder. “Ivan.”

I knew he was there before he spoke. He approached with no wasted motion, stopping near enough to join the conversation but not close enough to crowd me. Another man would have stepped into my space just to see whether I moved. Ivan did not need to test the boundary that way.

He probably already knew where it was. The thought came so fast and intense that I nearly dropped my coffee.

Mara looked between us with the expression of a woman who had done exactly what she intended and was now deciding whether she regretted it. “Kit Calloway, Ivan Morozov. I suspect the two of you may find each other useful.”

“Useful,” I repeated. “That’s a dangerously practical endorsement.”

Ivan’s gaze touched my face. “Dr. Chen rarely wastes praise on impractical things,” he said.

His voice was lower than I expected. Calm. Russian accent softened by years in America but still there, wrapped around certain consonants like he had decided which parts of himself were worth smoothing and which were not.

Mara’s mouth twitched. “See? Useful.”

Then she abandoned me.

Traitor.

Ivan offered me his hand.

“Ivan Morozov.”

As if I hadn’t just heard.