Chapter 30
Pav came back in pieces.
Not all at once—in fragments, a signal breaking through static. Warmth first. Real warmth, not the feverish burn of the last twenty-four hours but clean sheets and blankets and a room that held its heat.
Then sound.
A car driving past outside. Someone’s radio in another room. The creak of old floorboards settling. Domestic sounds that belonged to a world he’d been outside of for so long they were foreign.
Then her.
Her fingers laced through his, loose with sleep but still holding. Her breathing was slow and deep. The rhythm of someone who’d fought sleep until it won.
He opened his eyes.
Milky light filtered through a window. The room was small. An IV bag hung above him, half-empty, the line running into his arm. A chair beside the bed.
Harper.
She was asleep in the chair, her body curled under a dark blue blanket. Her face was grimy, dreams flickering under her closed eyelids.
She was holding his hand. He should let go, but didn’t. She’d got them here while he was unconscious, handling what was his responsibility. He didn’t like that at all.
Her hand was small inside his, her knuckles raw from days of cold and hiking through the wilderness.
A cough came from the doorway.
Katya stood there. Arms folded, leaning against the frame, watching him with an expression that was half relief and half the particular brand of exasperation she’d directed at him for years.
“You look terrible,” she said in Russian. Low, so as not to wake Harper.
“I’ve seen worse.”
“No.” Katya’s mouth flattened. “I’ve seen worse.”
He sighed. “Afghanistan.”
“The fishing boat.” She pushed off the doorframe as she entered the room.
“The fishing boat wasn’t my fault.”
“The fishing boat was entirely your fault.” Katya adjusted the drip without looking at him, then pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. “Fever’s broken.”
“Hmm.”
“Your doctor girlfriend set the IV.” Her eyebrows rose. “Clean work.”
“She’s not my—”
Katya fired him a look.
He closed his mouth as she glanced at Harper.
“She drove here alone,” Katya said. Matter of fact. “You always did like arriving half-dead.”
“I was unconscious.”
“Exactly. Lazy. Make other people do the work.”
He skimmed his thumb over Harper’s knuckles. “She did the work.”
Katya’s eyes dropped to his thumb. “You always bring me strays.”
Pav frowned. “What?”
“Dogs. Injured birds. That fox with three legs.”
“I was twelve.”
Her head tilted with the memory. “You carried it home in your school backpack.”
“It was injured.”
“My point precisely.” She brushed non-existent dust from her arm, straightened. “She wouldn’t leave the chair. I offered her a bed. She wouldn’t go.”
He worked his throat through a sandy swallow. “How long was I out?”
“Twelve hours. The infection was advanced. Another six hours without antibiotics and we’d be having a different conversation.” She paused. “Or not having one at all.”
“I need to move.”
“You’re going nowhere.” Katya’s lips pressed into a line.
The look of a woman who’d managed men like him for decades and wasn’t impressed by their urgency.
“One day. It’s off season. I have no other guests.
The antibiotics have bought you time. They haven’t fixed you.
You leave now, the infection comes back and your doctor girlfriend gets to watch you die slowly. ”
“Katya—”
She narrowed her eyes at him. That look again.
He shut up.
One brow arched. “Water?”
He nodded. “Please.”
Katya left. He lay still and ran the assessment.
Body. The fever was gone, but the aftermath was everywhere—muscles weak, joints aching, his head wound throbbing dully. The antibiotics were working. His shoulder was stiff but functional. His ribs were background noise.
Functional capacity? Forty percent. Maybe fifty with adrenaline. Enough to move but not enough to fight, not at the level that mattered.
The men hunting them wouldn’t give up easily. Not after they’d taken the UAZ. It was only a matter of time before their paths crossed again.
One day. Fluids. Another dose. Enough for his body to stop actively trying to kill him. Then they moved. Twenty miles south to the border. Fox would be there. They’d be overdue but Fox would wait.
One day. That was all he needed.
Harper shifted in the chair. Her fingers tightened in his, her sleeping hand gripping him as if she was afraid he’d disappear.
She inhaled and woke with a gasp, her body jerking upright, eyes wide and disoriented.
Her gaze found him, focused, and registered that his eyes were open.
“Hi,” he said.
She stared at him. For a second, her face did something complicated—relief and exhaustion and something fierce and tender collapsing into each other. Her chin trembled before she locked it down.
“Hi.” Her voice was rough with sleep. “How do you feel?”
“Better.”
She fired him a side-eye. “That’s not a metric.”
“It is today.”
She gave him a small smile. Then her doctor brain took over, and she was up—checking the IV, checking his pulse, pressing her hand to his forehead. Her fingers were cool against his skin and he closed his eyes without meaning to.
“Fever’s broken,” she said. “Pulse is stronger. Respiration’s improved.”
“Katya already checked.”
“Katya isn’t your doctor.”
He opened his eyes. She was so close, standing beside the bed, her hand still on his forehead, her face inches from his. Bruising on her jaw. Shadows under her eyes. Hair escaping everywhere.
She looked exhausted, stubborn—like she’d fought a mountain and won.
Wrecked and fierce and beautiful.
Beautiful.
The fever had burned through his last filter, and he was too tired to rebuild it. He’d spent days cataloguing injuries, capabilities, risk factors and survival probabilities. Somewhere along the way he’d missed the obvious.
She’s beautiful.
He didn’t let the thought go any further. No matter how much he wanted it, there was nowhere it could go that didn’t get her killed.
“Thank you,” he said. “You got us here.”
“You gave me the map.”
“You drove.”
“Your car was a total nightmare.”
“Not my car.”
She sighed. “The car you stole was a nightmare.”
The corners of his mouth moved. He was too weak to fight the smile and too tired to pretend he wanted to.
The awkwardness of the kiss was still there. But underneath it—more. They’d kept each other alive. That changed the equation.
She looked away first and fussed with the IV line. But her cheeks were pink, and it wasn’t from cold. “Let me check the wound.”
He nodded, and she changed the dressing with supplies from Katya’s kit. She pressed the fresh bandage into place. He lay still and let her work and tried to maintain the thinning fiction that her hands on his skin were purely medical.
She caught him watching her. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re staring.”
“I’m looking at the ceiling.”
“You’re looking at me looking at the ceiling.”
He turned his head and stared at the window with great determination.
Katya brought food with the water. Thick, hot soup heavy with potato and dill. Bread, dark and dense, still warm. He ate slowly while Harper ate like a woman who’d been running on adrenaline and nothing else for days.
She closed her eyes on the first spoonful.
Pav ate his soup and tried not to think about the soft sound of appreciation she made.
The afternoon faded and murky light thinned toward dusk. Harper left to help Katya in the kitchen. The indistinct murmur of conversation filtered through the wall. The women’s voices washed over him, his body warm and drifting.
For the first time in days, he closed his eyes without calculating exits.
Engines.
Multiple. The particular diesel growl of military-grade vehicles close by.
His eyes opened. The switch flipped, training taking over, exhaustion and weakness shoved into a compartment he’d deal with later.
He removed the IV from his arm. Pain flared and blood welled and tracked down his wrist, but he ignored it and swung his legs off the bed.
The vehicles were closer. Slowing.
He collected his rifle from the dresser. Magazine. Chamber. Safety off.
The women’s voices had gone quiet. Katya appeared in the doorway, her face pale but her features set. “We need to hide you. Now.”
Harper was behind her, wiping her hands dry on a dishtowel. “Pav, can you—”
The room swayed. He locked it down. “Move,” he said.
Outside, the engines cut and doors slammed. Voices. Russian. Boots on frozen ground.
They were here.
And he wasn’t fucking ready.