Chapter 29
Harper hesitated, her hand hovering just above the wood.
This was where Pav had told her to go. To someone he trusted.
She knocked.
The door opened three inches and snagged against a chain. Behind it, the warmth of the house breathed out—fresh bread and herbs.
The woman on the other side didn’t look at Harper.
Her gaze went past her—over her shoulder, down the road. A quick sweep. Satisfied, her gaze snapped to Harper.
She was tall. Lean and angular, a woman who worked physically and didn't sit down much.
Red hair—a proper copper-red, pulled back in a messy knot.
Early forties. Defined cheekbones. No makeup.
A dishcloth was slung over her shoulder.
Her sweater sleeves were pushed up, forearms dusted with flour.
Slate-colored eyes assessed Harper with flat, measured hostility.
"Da?" One word. Who are you? What do you want? Why are you at my door?
Harper's Russian surfaced through the exhaustion. “Are you Katya?”
The slate eyes narrowed. "Who's asking?"
“I’m Harper Fox.” She gestured to the UAZ. “I have a man who's badly injured. He said you'd help."
Nothing changed in the woman's face. The door held at its three-inch gap.
"What man?"
"Pav." Harper's voice cracked on his name and she hated it. “His name is Pav.”
Something flickered across the woman’s features.
Recognition.
Color drained from her face and the chain came off the door so fast the metal sang against the frame.
"Where?"
"The car. He's unconscious. He has a fever and an infected wound and he needs IV antibiotics or he's going to—"
Katya shoved bare feet into the wellingtons by the step and was past Harper before the second boot was fully on. She wrenched open the passenger door.
Harper followed as Katya's hands went to his face. Both hands, cupping his jaw, tilting his head, and checking his eyes. The gesture was intimate in a way that made Harper's stomach clench with something ugly and unwelcome.
“Pasha.” Katya’s voice dropped, softer now.
Harper stilled.
Pasha.
Not Pav. Pasha. Familiar and affectionate.
Katya’s hands moved through his hair without hesitation, finding the wound immediately. She’d done this before.
Harper’s gut twisted, catching her off guard.
Pav was unconscious, dying of infection. The priority was antibiotics not territorial feelings about a man she'd known for days and kissed once. She rammed her hands in her pockets and gritted her teeth.
Shut it down, Harper.
He was dying.
That was the only thing that mattered.
"We need to get him inside," Harper said. Her voice was calm because she was a doctor and doctors were calm even when they wanted to scream. "Now."
Katya glanced over her shoulder and blinked as if Harper had dropped out of the equation entirely. She looked at Harper properly for the first time. Harper straightened and smoothed hair back from her face. She tugged at the collar on her jacket. As if that made a difference.
Katya nodded. “Inside. I have a room. Can you take his legs?"
“Yes.”
She helped Katya pivot him in the seat.
“On a count of three.” Katya slid her arms under his arms and locked her hands across his chest while Harper took his knees.
Even with both of them carrying, Pav was a dead weight, his body slack and burning with fever, his head lolling against Katya's shoulder.
Harper looked away. It didn't matter but somehow it did.
They carried him inside into a narrow hallway. A row of boots lined the wall, heel to heel. Faded wooden floors, white-painted walls, the scent of baking bread. A different world to the last few days of dirt and snow and ice.
At the end of the corridor, Katya shouldered open a door.
A room. A bed. Actual sheets and a blanket and pillows.
Harper almost cried at the sight of it because she'd forgotten that beds existed and you didn't have to share a survival blanket on frozen ground to be warm.
The room smelled of clean linen and soap, undercut with starch.
They laid him down. Katya levered his boots off, then his jacket, pillows propping him up.
Harper pulled his shirt open.
Katya swore under her breath.
The wound was worse. The red streaks had spread since the gorge, tracking further across his chest, the edges of the laceration weeping and hot. The butterfly strips were curling and useless. His skin radiated heat tangible from six inches away.
"How long?" Katya was beside her, looking at the wound with an expression that was calm but underlaid with something Harper recognized because she felt it herself. Carefully managed fear.
"The infection started eighteen to twenty-four hours ago. The streaking has accelerated in the last six hours. He needs IV antibiotics." Harper pressed her fingertips to her closed eyes. They’d made it here but you couldn’t just go out and buy IV antibiotics—
"Da." Katya moved to a cabinet in the corner of the room. Inside, shelves were neatly stacked with IV bags, tubing, sealed packs of needles, bottles of saline, and antibiotics.
Harper stared. "You keep all this here?”
Katya pulled out antibiotics and a bag of saline. She looked right at Harper and lifted one shoulder. “I keep a lot of things here. Safe houses don't stay safe if everyone dies."
Okay.
“I’m a doctor. I can administer it.”
Katya didn’t move. Her eyes dropped to Harper’s hands—tracking the cuts, the ingrained dirt. “What’s the dose?”
Harper lifted her chin a fraction. “One gram now. Repeat depending on response. Slow push or infusion depending on what you’ve got.”
Katya held her gaze before she nodded and passed her the antibiotics. “Do it.” She folded her arms. “Don’t miss.”
Harper met her eyes. “I won’t.”
Katya gestured to the small washstand in the corner. Harper scrubbed her hands with soap and antiseptic until the cuts stung, her fingers becoming instruments again instead of survival tools. Hands clean, she pulled on the gloves Katya gave her.
She mixed ceftriaxone into the saline bag. Primed the line then checked for air bubbles with the familiarity of a thousand IV setups in brightly lit wards that felt like they belonged to another life.
She took his arm. His right—the good arm, the one she hadn't had to relocate.
She palpated the skin, feeling for the vein beneath.
Dehydration made it tricky to locate the vein and it rolled under her fingers but finally she found it.
A hot flush swept up her throat as she swabbed his arm with antiseptic.
Almost there.
She got the cannula in on the first attempt, Katya’s scrutiny from the doorway burning the skin on the back of her neck.
She taped it in place, connected the line and opened the drip. Slowly, the first clear drops of antibiotic entered his bloodstream.
Done.
Now her hands shook. She pressed them flat against her thighs and breathed through it.
Katya left the room without a word.
Harper breathed out, grateful for the break from observation.
She took hold of Pav’s hand. It dwarfed hers. Roughened and capable. Familiar already in a way it had no right to be. Heat burned through his skin, the strength in it muted now, slack in her grip in a way that felt wrong on him.
"I got us here,” she said. “You noticed the birch tree and I followed it and Katya has antibiotics and the IV is running and you're going to be okay."
She looked at his face. The bandage on his head. Fever riding high on his cheekbones. Dark stubble. The lines around his eyes that were deeper than they should be for a man his age.
"Pasha," she said, trying the word. It felt foreign in her mouth—intimate, like wearing someone else's clothes.
She went back to the name she knew. "Pav."
The window showed early evening light, winter-blue, fading. The room was quiet. Not the vast, pressing silence of the forest but a contained human quiet. Music from somewhere—the radio in Katya's kitchen? A woman singing in Russian. Floorboards creaked as Katya moved through the house.
There was so much she didn’t know about Pav, and this house was full of it.
She held his hand as the antibiotics infused and waited.
Minutes later Katya returned with tea and a plate of food. Black bread, butter, cheese, sliced sausage. She set both beside Harper without comment.
Harper stared at the bread as if it had arrived from another planet.
Real food.
On a plate.
The sight almost hurt.
“Eat,” Katya said. “You’re shaking.”
“That’s adrenaline.”
“It is hunger.”
Dizziness washed through Harper as she lifted the tea. Strong and black, served in a glass with a metal holder, steam curling up in thin white lines. The first sip was sweet and scalding, dissipating the chill lingering in her belly.
Katya pulled a chair up near the foot of the bed. “I moved the UAZ to the barn, out of sight.”
“Thank you.”
Katya’s nod was curt.
Harper took a bite of bread, thick with yellow butter. She closed her eyes for a moment as she chewed. It was, without a doubt, the best thing she'd ever tasted.
The chair creaked as Katya stood and hovered over Pav—checking the line. Then her attention shifted to Harper.
Harper finished her bread.
Let her look.
Katya finally sat and sipped her own tea. Still watching.
“You got the line in clean,” she said after a moment.
Harper nodded. “Yes.”
Silence settled again.
Katya’s gaze flicked once to Pav then back to Harper’s face.
Then she looked away.
That was the closest thing to acceptance Harper was going to get for now.
When the tea was finished and Harper had finished eating, Katya cleared the plate and glasses and then returned. "You should sleep." Her voice was brisk.
"I'm fine."
"You're not." Katya looked at her the way Harper had looked at Pav when he said the same thing. The same unimpressed certainty. "The antibiotics will take hours. He's stable. The fever won't break tonight."
"I know."
"Then sleep."
Harper looked at Pav. At the IV. At the steady rise and fall of his chest.
"There's a bed in the next room," Katya said from the doorway.
Harper didn't move but smoothed her thumb along Pav’s wrist.
Katya sighed and left the room. She returned with a blanket—heavy wool, dark blue, smelling of cedar. She draped it over Harper's shoulders without ceremony.
"Stubborn," Katya muttered. It might have been the first warm thing she'd said.
Harper pulled the blanket around herself with her free hand. Her other hand stayed in his.
She closed her eyes—just for a moment.
Her head tipped sideways against the back of the chair, her fingers still laced through Pav’s. The sound of his breathing carried her under, his pulse steady beneath her fingers.
Proof.
For now.