Chapter 26
The heat hit Harper like a slap.
After days of sub-zero air, wet wool, and cold numbing every exposed inch of her, the inside of the apteka was overwhelming. Close, stuffy, radiator-warm in the aggressive way of Soviet-era buildings—cranked to maximum because winter lasted nine months and subtlety had no place in survival.
Her face burned. Her fingertips stung as blood returned to them. Pav’s jacket steamed faintly, releasing wet wool, sweat, and the sour grime of days on the run.
She tried not to think about how bad she smelled. It wasn’t the priority.
Her eyes adjusted to the dim light. A single yellow fluorescent tube buzzed overhead, one end dark, the other flickering in a dying staccato. The air held the astringent reek of ethanol, dried herbs, and old cardboard. The staleness of a room unchanged for decades.
The apteka was narrow, with one counter running the length of the back wall. Glass-fronted cabinets behind it were crammed with tincture bottles, paper twists of powder, and old pill boxes. Above her head hung linen bags of dried herbs.
In the corner, a small television burbled quietly, punctuated by tinny laughter, playing a Russian game show—contestants in sparkly dresses, a host in a loud suit gesturing at something off-screen. The picture was grainy and the colors leaned green.
An icon hung above what Harper guessed was the storeroom door. Candle smoke darkened the saint’s face. A red votive burned beneath it, the flame guttering.
The woman at the counter looked up from the game show.
She was around seventy and thick through the middle, her hair dyed a hard black that fought with the gray at her temples.
She wore a floral housedress, a pilled cardigan the color of old rose, and fluffy slippers with cartoon cats on them.
With a huff, she got off her stool and shuffled toward Harper.
Her eyebrows, penciled with a heavy hand, were drawn together in annoyance that the store door had opened.
Her lipstick was a shade of coral that had been discontinued in the late 1970s.
She held a cigarette in her left hand, burning down toward the filter, the smoke curling upward to mix with the herbal stink of the shop.
She assessed Harper with the expression of a woman whose day had just become way more complicated than she wanted it to be.
“Dobry den,” Harper said, summoning her best Russian. Good day.
The woman grunted.
Her eyes went to Harper’s face, then tracked down over her jacket—took in the grime, the bruise on her jaw, the split on her lip that had scabbed.
Harper took a deep breath and asked for antibiotics. Amoxicillin if they had it. Anything for a bacterial infection, a spreading one, urgent.
The woman exhaled smoke through her nose. Her cigarette had burned to the filter, and she stubbed it out in an ashtray already half-full with lipstick-stained butts.
“Nyet.” No.
“No amoxicillin?”
“No antibiotics.” The woman shook her head and sighed.
Harper swallowed, her mouth dry. This was not going according to plan. This was a pharmacy. How could they not have antibiotics? She schooled her face into something approaching calm. “Anything? Anything at all?”
The woman shrugged. A Russian shrug—shoulders lifting with an eloquence that said this is how it is, this is how it has been, this is how it will always be. “People buy. Hunters, loggers, miners. They don’t come back. No deliveries for two months. What we had is gone.”
Harper’s stomach clenched. “Please. I can pay. I have—”
“No antibiotics.” The woman held up her empty hands. “You want bandage, gauze, painkillers? I have those. Antibiotics? No.”
Harper gripped the counter. The wood was worn smooth. Pav would have known what to do.
She stayed small even as panic welled up inside her. Calculations ran through her head, the timeline of Pav’s infection, the sepsis clock already running—hours, not days, and Pav did not do hours well. He would push through damage until his systems failed.
“The nearest pharmacy that would have them. How far?”
The woman’s eyes angled to the window, to the street outside and then back to Harper.
“Proper pharmacy? Krasnoyarsk. Three hundred kilometers.”
Three hundred kilometers.
Pav wouldn’t make it.
She locked her elbows to still her trembling hands.
The woman lit another cigarette and blew out a long stream of smoke. The game show contestants on the tiny television gave a muted cheer. The radiator rumbled as the store door opened with a chime of the brass bell above.
Harper didn’t turn. She kept her face down, shoulders rigid under Pav’s jacket, eyes on the counter—just a woman buying cold medicine.
Freezing air rushed across the back of her legs. Heavy boots paced across the worn floorboards.
A man’s voice. Russian. Friendly, almost. “Good afternoon. How is my favorite pharmacist today?”
Harper’s blood went cold.
She knew that voice—like something buried snapping awake inside her.
Her pulse stumbled. She didn’t know it well—had only heard it a handful of times through the thin walls of the barracks—but some voices didn’t require familiarity. Some voices you memorize on a cellular level because the fear soaks in and stays.
She’d heard it bark orders. Laugh.
Every muscle in her body screamed at her to turn and look, but she absolutely knew turning would get her killed.
“Zoya?”
The woman—Zoya—looked at the man, then at Harper.
Her face didn’t change. Whatever decision she’d made, Harper wasn’t invited into it.
“A moment, Ivan. I am with a customer.”
Zoya turned back to Harper. Her expression was entirely unbothered. But her eyes locked on Harper’s face with an intensity that said: stay still, stay quiet, do not move.
She reached beneath the counter and pulled out a small paper bag and placed it in front of Harper. She dropped two small boxes into the bag—painkillers, bandages. The mundane items of a mundane transaction.
“Two hundred rubles,” she said loudly. Her voice carried across the shop toward the man. “For cold medicine and gauze.”
Harper’s hands shook as she reached into her pocket and pulled out cash. She counted out what looked close to two hundred and pushed it across.
Zoya took the money and folded it into her cardigan pocket with thick fingers. Then her hand came back across the counter. A small paper twist pressed into Harper’s palm beneath the edge of the paper bag.
“Ivova kora,” the woman muttered under her breath. “For fever.”
Willow bark.
Harper’s fingers closed around it. “Spasibo.” Thank you.
Zoya’s hand stayed on hers. One heartbeat. Long enough for a brief squeeze before she let go.
Harper looked up. Zoya turned away, reaching for something on the shelf, her face closed, her posture already that of a woman who had forgotten the conversation she’d just had.
Harper picked up the paper bag and tucked the willow bark into her pocket with shaking fingers. Her spine was straight and her breathing was steady because she’d trained herself years ago in an ER to keep her body calm while her mind ran at full speed.
She nodded a thank you and turned toward the door, keeping her back to Ivan. She kept her eyes on the floor, her stride casual. Aimed for the door and moved past him with the unhurried pace of a woman going home.
She almost made it.
He turned as she passed. Her face was half-hidden by the hood of Pav’s jacket and the hat pulled low. Her English hair, her Harper Fox hair, was tucked away.
For one moment, his eyes held hers.
Her heart stopped.
Too long.
Certainly long enough.
A flash of something crossed his eyes—recognition searching for a landing. Then his gaze slid away.
He didn’t recognize her.
Why would he? He’d never looked at any of them long enough to see a person. To him, she’d only ever been inventory. A body in a room and a problem to move, not a face to remember.
Here, the light was dim, and she was an unremarkable woman in a town full of unremarkable people.
His attention was fully on the woman. “Zoya, I need something for my cough. The drops, the good ones—”
Harper pushed through the door.
The cold hit her. White glare. Wind. The cleansing slice of winter air in her lungs after the stuffy, close warmth of the apteka.
Her legs wanted to buckle, her heart tripping a frantic irregular beat. For a second, the world tilted—heat, fear, adrenaline crashing all at once.
The sidewalk was piled with rubbish, broken crates, and frozen slush. She hurried through it, her boots crunching on broken ice, her breath fogging in sharp, short bursts.
Up ahead, in the trees.
Pav.
She broke into a run.