Chapter 28
Harper white-knuckled the steering wheel. If she let go, even for a second, everything would come apart. She’d wedged the map between her legs, blood smudge facing up, his fingerprint showing her where to go.
In her rearview mirror, there was only desolate road. For now, no pursuers.
The UAZ smelled like diesel and old cigarettes and the metallic undertone of Pav’s blood.
She split her attention between the map and the road—a narrow strip of frozen mud and ice cutting through forest that looked identical in every direction.
Snow. Trees. Rock. More snow. More trees.
The landscape repeated itself with a monotony that was meditative or maddening, depending on how close to hysteria she was.
She was closer than she liked.
But she was also a doctor. And she was Harper Fox. She didn’t spook easily—or if she did, she got through it.
She glanced at Pav slumped in the passenger seat. Thirty minutes ago he’d knocked a man unconscious with one hand while running a fever. Now he could barely sit upright.
Gears ground as she shifted. The clutch was stiff and unforgiving, and the UAZ responded to steering input with the enthusiasm of a shopping trolley with a locked wheel. The heater didn’t work, and the windshield had a crack running corner to corner. One wiper blade was missing entirely.
Buckle up, Harper. He needs you.
His head was tipped back against the window. The wound on his scalp had bled through again, dark at the edges. His skin had gone gray beneath his stubble, beads of sweat catching the light. His breathing sounded wet.
Stopping was a gamble, but she needed to check him. She pulled to the side of the road, then reached across, fingers pressing into the groove beneath his jaw. She counted the beats. Thready but still with her.
“Don’t you dare die on me.”
His eyelids fluttered but never opened. She pulled her hand back and checked the rearview mirror. Empty. She exhaled and moved off again.
He was alive. She was driving. She could do this.
“Okay.” Her voice was loud as she repeated his instructions. His head lolled with the rocking of the UAZ, but he didn’t wake. “Thirty miles. Left at the birch fork. Yellow door.”
Smaller tracks peeled off into the trees. She ignored them and kept to the road Pav had marked, then checked the mirror until her eyes hurt. If they were followed, every junction bought her seconds. Maybe minutes. She’d take seconds.
The silence pressed in when she stopped talking, so she filled it. “Your friend Katya better have antibiotics. Seriously—if I’ve driven on this shitty road in a stolen car with a missing wiper blade and your blood on my map and she doesn’t have antibiotics, I’m going to be extremely upset.”
Nothing from him. Just that ragged rhythm. Sweat had soaked the collar of his shirt. Another flush burned high across his cheekbones.
“The wound is tracking.” Saying it out loud made it manageable. “The infection’s already spreading. Fever. Confusion. Rapid pulse.” She huffed a small laugh. “You’d say that’s not relevant.”
Her grip tightened on the wheel. “But you’d be wrong.”
Ten more minutes of driving. The road curved and the forest crowded in on both sides. When she stopped talking, blood hummed in her ears.
“I became a doctor because of my dad. He’s a GP in Herefordshire.
Old school. House calls. Knows every patient by name.
I used to go with him on rounds when I was little—I’d sit in the car and read comics while he worked.
He’d come back smelling of tea and biscuits because every single patient fed him. ”
The UAZ bumped over a rut. Pav’s head knocked against the glass and she swore, braking hard. She leaned across, eased him back against the headrest, then got the UAZ moving again.
“He never rushed. It didn’t matter how many people were waiting. Whoever he was with—that was the only person in the world for those ten minutes.”
Her mouth twitched, almost a smile.
“That’s the job,” she said, more to herself now. “You stay. You fix what’s in front of you. You don’t panic about everything else.”
Her eyes flicked to Pav. His breathing had changed again. More shallow.
“I’m staying. That’s what I do. Even when it scares me.”
She changed down a gear as they lumbered up a hill. At the next fork, she almost turned too early, then caught the map’s blood-smudged mark and kept straight. Behind her, the empty road stayed empty.
“Fox is my uncle on my Dad’s side, in case you were wondering. He was always the wild one. Military at eighteen. Special forces by twenty-two.”
Another check of the rearview mirror. Still no sign of their pursuers. Thank God.
“If he picked you…” A sigh escaped her. “Then you’re the best option I’ve got.”
One thumb lifted from the wheel. A small shrug at herself. “I don’t usually go for men like you.”
The road zig-zagged and she followed it, fighting the steering.
“Actually, that’s a lie. I don’t know what men like you are.”
The gears shrieked. She swore under her breath, corrected.
“The men I’ve dated have been fine. Nice, mostly. But none of them ever made me feel like this.”
She shot him a sideways look.
“None of them ever made me walk through a freezing river.”
She shifted her damp palms on the steering wheel.
“Or gave me their jacket.”
The jeep jolted over loose rocks.
“Or got injured by a drone and then argued with me about medical care.”
She wiped loose hair from her eyes. “You’re not like them.”
No response.
“You don’t say enough. You notice too much.”
She changed gears with a grunt.
“I don’t know what to do with that.”
She drummed her fingers on the wheel.
“You kissed me back, Pav. I know you did.”
The words hung in the space between them.
“Under the northern lights. You kissed me back and then you walked away and I don’t know what that means—”
Her voice caught.
“—but I know what it felt like.”
An ache gathered in the back of her throat. “It felt real.”
She swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “So you don’t get to die. Because I have questions and you don’t get out of answering them by dying. That’s not how this works. Not before I understand what that was.”
Her voice steadied again by force.
“I’ve got you. You just need to hold on long enough for me to fix it.”
The road straightened. More bloody, endless forest. More snow. The fuel gauge sat at less than a quarter tank. She chewed on her lip. One crisis at a time.
Ahead, the road forked.
She reached across and touched his wrist.
Hot. He was burning up.
She slowed, leaning forward over the wheel.
Left at the birch fork.
Pine. Pine. More freaking pine.
Then she saw it.
A massive birch, split clean into two trunks from a single base.
Unmistakable. A landmark you’d note on a reconnaissance that wouldn’t change in a decade or a century.
She turned left.
“Thank you, Pav. For being the person who notices things like that.”
The forest thinned. The road improved—still rough but wider, with the suggestion of maintenance. A signpost in Cyrillic she couldn’t read fast enough to translate. Then a fence. A garden. A house.
More houses.
She was driving through a small village and the shock of ordinary civilization hit her like the warmth of the apteka—overwhelming and disorienting.
Street lights weary in the dull afternoon.
A woman in a heavy coat walking with a shopping bag.
A child’s bicycle leaning against a fence, half-buried in snow.
Normal life. People living it.
Her eyes burned, and she blinked it back. Not now.
Past the settlement. The road narrowed again. River on the left—he’d said river road. She followed it. The water was dark and slow, ice crusting the banks.
She almost missed it.
Set back from the road behind a stand of birch trees. A small guesthouse with a yellow wooden door. The paint faded and peeling but unmistakably yellow. Green roof, the color dulled by weather and time. Woodpile stacked against one wall.
His words. His map. His preparation saving them one more time.
She pulled the UAZ off the road and killed the engine. The silence rushed in—vast and ringing after the constant rattle. Her chest vibrated from the drone of the engine, and her shoulders ached. Her eyes were gritty and raw.
But we made it.
She expected relief. Instead, she felt empty. The type of exhaustion that lived below adrenaline.
Pav was still unconscious. Sweat had soaked through his collar. She reached for him, flattening her palm against his chest.
God, he was so warm.
For one stupid, terrifying second—she thought she’d already lost him.
His chest rose under her hand. Her fingers curled into his shirt, gripping hard.
“Not yet,” she whispered. “Don’t you dare.”
He didn’t answer.
She opened the car door and stepped out. The cold nipped her face, and the wind carried the smell of woodsmoke and the faint sound of a radio playing inside the guesthouse.
She walked to the front door. Yellow paint, cracked and flaking. A boot scraper. Muddy wellingtons by the step. A cat watched her from the inside windowsill with flat-eyed suspicion.
A door. A chance.
Or not.
She raised her hand.
Knocked.