Page 8 of Hunt Me, Daddy

The Orlov house had been breathing strangely for weeks.

But then I saw her.

One of my passive monitors registered a disturbance in an outer Orlov layer I had been mapping since the Gregor problem first turned into Mikhail’s blood feud. It should have been empty, or as empty as anything connected to organized crime ever was. Orlov administrators came through at predictable intervals. Offshore accountants moved in ugly little clusters. Their cleanup scripts ran too heavy, like men stomping through snow and pretending they left no tracks.

This was none of those.

This was fine. Elegant, even. A touch so light it was almost rude.

I sat forward, the chair creaking softly beneath me, and pulled the log apart piece by piece. The signature was barely there, not because it was sloppy, but because it was disciplined. Whoever had entered the edge of the same system I was watching had done so with restraint, without any unnecessary noise or childish probing. There wasn’t even any triumphant little marker left behind to prove they had been there.

I appreciated that.

I also hated it.

A good unknown was infinitely more irritating than a bad enemy. Bad enemies made mistakes loudly enough that I could use them as instructional material. Good unknowns required attention. Time. Respect.

I did not like giving respect before I had a name attached to it.

My first assumption was law enforcement. That lasted twelve seconds. No agency moved like that. Even the better federal units had habits, and I knew most of them because half their tools were built by men who thought naming conventions didn’t matter. This wasn’t them.

Second assumption: Orlov internal counter-surveillance.

Which was also wrong.

The behavior didn’t match. Mikhail’s people were careful in the way soldiers were careful when told there might be mines ahead. This was different. This was personal. Curious. Focused.

Third assumption: some mystery contractor.

That one had some merit.

I traced the thread back only far enough to confirm it existed. Anything more would have been a declaration. I didn’t want to scare the ghost off. Not yet. So I watched the watcher.

For three hours, I did nothing that looked like pursuit. I let the system remain unchanged. I kept my normal surveillance cadence steady, because the moment you looked directly at someone good, they felt it. People thought digital work was clean, bloodless, all logic and light. It wasn’t. It was instinct. It was pressure. It was knowing when to breathe and when to hold still.

At 2:13 in the morning, I brushed one of her outer watchers.

A question, really.

Are you there?

The response came seven minutes later, though not directly. She checked her perimeter, but not with panic. Not with a clumsy retreat either. She verified. She isolated. She tested whether she had been seen without announcing she had noticed anything at all.

I don’t know why I thought it was a ‘she’ at first. It just felt right and I went with it.

Then she did something that made me go very still. She didn’t go dark. She started setting traps.

I stared at the screen for a long moment, and then I smiled.

“Well,” I murmured to the empty room. “Hello, you.”

Within the hour, I knew the ghost was in Boston and not long after that, I knew she was a freelancer.

It was shortly after midnight when I found her name.

Kit Calloway.

Not Katherine, though the legal record used that version in places she clearly disliked and avoided whenever possible. Kit. Short, cute, memorable. Terrible operational choice, really. Unique names were hooks. Hooks caught things.