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I follow.

By evening, the notebook contains his medicine doses, foods, books, bedtime order, preschool contacts, Galina’s number, the names of his teachers, and a warning never to cut sandwiches into triangles because triangles are for hospital days.

It also contains several additions in green crayon.

Cars need fuel.

Doctor Shark bites bad fish.

Papa reads slowly.

I glance at Vera. Her cheeks turn red, and she mouths, “I don’t know.” Perhaps Oksana wrote down whatever her three-year-old employer dictated.

I read the bear book twice. On the third attempt, I skip a page.

Misha catches me immediately. “You missed the cave.”

“The cave contributes nothing.”

“The bear is scared there.”

“He is scared on the next page too.”

“But first he is scared in the cave.”

I return to the cave.

Vera stands in the connecting doorway, arms folded over a soft gray sweater. She has spent the afternoon speaking with the hospital, moving operations to Ivan Zorin and Kira Karpova, and demanding inactive employee records from an administrator who keeps claiming the archive server is under maintenance.

She has barely spoken to me.

When Misha falls asleep against my side, she crosses the bedroom and lifts him carefully.

“I can carry him,” I say.

“I know.”

She takes him anyway.

I follow to the bed and pull the blanket over his legs after she settles him. Vera watches my hands, then turns down the lamp.

Later, I go to the sitting area, where Oksana tells me Maksim and the others have arrived.

Maksim waits beside the window with Abramov and Leonid.

“Belov’s men used a legitimate courier, an order placed through Vera’s stolen hospital account, and a device planted by a plumbing contractor,” Abramov says. “The contractor’s company is real. The foreman’s brother is a customs broker who works for Captain Rudenko.”

“Proof Rudenko ordered it?” I ask.

“No. But Gurin gave us Vlasov.”

I lower myself into the armchair. “How?”

“We released Gurin and his mistress separately, as you said.” Abramov sets his tablet on the low table. “Both went to a house linked to Vlasov. Gurin arrived first. Ten minutes later, a yellow Lada taxi dropped her at the door. They stayed inside for fifty-eight minutes.”

“And then?”

“We took Gurin when he turned the corner. A second team followed the woman home and questioned her there. She said Gurin expected Vlasov to give them money and passports.”