Chapter 18
Pav gutted the hare.
He’d done this hundreds of times. His blade was sharp, making quick work of it. His hands worked automatically. No thought required.
His focus slipped.
Harper.
She was close by, sitting on the tarp by the stove, wrapped in the oversized thermal layers she’d found.
Her knees were drawn up, arms around them.
Flickering light caught the bruise on her jaw, the dark circles under her eyes.
She looked bone-tired and filthy as she watched him with an expression he couldn’t read, too still to be casual.
He threaded the meat onto stripped green branches and propped them over the fire. The fat hissed and spat, the smell turning rich and gamey as smoke curled into the room.
Real food.
Harper’s stomach growled. She pressed a hand against it. “Wow.” Her cheeks pinked. “Guess I’m hungrier than I thought.”
He said nothing but turned the meat. When it was done, he pulled a branch from the fire and tested it.
“It’s ready.” He handed it to her.
“I’ve not eaten hare before.”
He waited to see if she would turn her nose up at it.
But after studying it for a moment, she pulled off a piece and put it in her mouth. Her eyes closed, and she made a small sound of appreciation. She took another bite, swallowed, licked grease from her fingers.
He dragged his eyes off her and focused on stripping the rest of the meat off the branch.
“Thank you. It’s good.”
“It’s hare.”
“Well.” She met his eyes. “It’s good hare.”
He nodded and took a bite of his own. Food was fuel. Calories against the cold, protein for the muscles, energy for the walk ahead. He chewed and swallowed.
Harper finished first.
She reached behind and produced a tin of condensed milk. She held it up with a triumphant expression. “Found it in the mess. They missed it.”
She’d saved it. Kept it to share while she sat alone waiting for him.
No one did that for him.
“Can I borrow your knife?”
He handed it to her, and she prized the tin open with a competence that no longer surprised him. She poured the thick milk into the tin mug and offered it to him. “You first. You caught dinner.”
He hesitated and then accepted the mug. The sweetness was almost violent after hours of nothing—dense and warm, coating his tongue and the back of his throat.
He handed it back, his fingers brushing hers.
She drank from the same place his mouth had been.
Deliberate.
Or not.
He didn’t know which was worse.
And why the hell did it even matter?
He stared more intently at the flames. Maybe he took a knock on the head earlier.
Harper stood up, lifting more wood from the pile she’d collected to feed to the stove. There was a micro-hesitation in her step. A fractional shift of weight from her left foot to her right, so brief it would be invisible to anyone unless you were watching closely.
“Sit down.”
She kept moving toward the wood pile. “I’m fine.”
“You’re limping.”
“I’m stiff. We’ve been walking for—”
“Sit down, Harper.”
The same voice that got the jacket on her and got her into the river.
She sat back down. Annoyed. Arms folded. The posture of a woman who wanted it on record she was complying under protest.
He pulled the med kit from his pack and opened it. Antiseptic, blister plasters, gauze, tape. Basic field supplies. “Boots off.”
“Pav, it’s just blisters—”
“Boots off.”
She huffed a sigh before she unlaced them with stiff fingers and yanked them off. She peeled her wet socks away, her face crinkling into a grimace.
Everything stilled inside him.
Her feet were a mess. Raw blisters on both heels, two burst and weeping.
Angry red skin between her toes where the wet skin had been rubbing.
The beginnings of maceration along the edges of her soles—the skin white and soft and breaking down from hours of moisture.
Her left foot was worse. The blister on the heel was deep, and the surrounding skin inflamed in a way that said infection was coming if it wasn’t treated now.
She’s been walking on this for hours. Keeping pace with him. Not a word. His anger was immediate, directed inward. He checked everything. Entry points. Sightlines. Wind direction.
He hadn’t checked her.
That was on him.
He kneeled in front of her and took her foot in his hands. Her foot was small, fine-boned and cold against his palm. He adjusted his grip, keeping it practical and clinical.
It didn’t help.
He cleared his throat. Smoke from the fire. Obviously.
He took a breath to recalibrate and cleaned the blisters with antiseptic. She hissed, and her foot twitched in his hand.
“Sorry.” The word sounded unfamiliar in his mouth. He ignored it and kept working.
She was watching him. He sensed it—the weight of her gaze on the top of his head, on his hands, on the place where his fingers held her. He didn’t look up.
Instead, he applied the blister plasters, smoothing the edges with his thumb, sealing them against her skin.
“The blisters on my left heel are worse.” Her doctor voice. Trying to take back control. “You’ll need to—”
He flicked his gaze upward. Just a second. “I can see.”
“Okay…”
He placed her left foot in his lap. “You should have said something.”
Seconds passed.
“It wasn’t relevant.”
Pav lifted his head.
She looked down at him, amusement lifting the corner of her mouth, her eyes bright and challenging. Despite her exhaustion, she’d just thrown his own words back at him with a precision that a sniper would envy.
Something pulled at the edge of his mouth—
Pav focused on the dressing as if the world depended on it, before the expression fully formed. He finished and smoothed the last plaster back into place.
“Keep them dry,” he said. “And tell me next time.”
He released her foot, crossed to the other side of the fire. Distance felt safer.
“Your watch.”
He looked across the fire at her, firelight burnishing her skin to gold. “What?”
“It’s a Vostok, isn’t it?”
She leaned toward him, studying the steel case worn soft at the edges, the scratched crystal catching firelight, the faded dial with its red second hand ticking steadily.
“Komandirskie,” she said. “Soviet military. My dad collects watches. He’s got one just like that.”
“It’s my brother’s.” His hand closed over the watch before his sleeve covered it.
Harper froze, the question she’d been about to ask dissolving behind her teeth.
Neither of them spoke as the fire sank to embers between them.
Pav stared at the glow.
“Pav.” Her voice was quiet. “I’m sorry, did I…”
He stood, feeding the last of the wood into the stove and adjusted the flue without looking at her.
Then he lay down beside her, his body between her and the door. Close enough to block anything that came through it.
The survival blanket crinkled as he pulled it across both of them. “Get some sleep, Harper. We move at first light.”