Chapter 31
Harper caught Pav as he stumbled, sliding her arm around his waist.
Katya led them down the corridor, through a side door, and around the back of the building into the cold. Beside the woodpile stacked against the east wall, a rusted ventilation grate sat close to the ground, half-hidden by split logs.
Voices carried from the front of the house, closer than they should have been.
“Now,” Katya snapped.
She pulled three logs from the bottom of the pile, revealing the grate behind them, then wrenched it open. The hinges were oiled and silent.
“In. Both of you. Now.”
The space beyond the grate was pitch-black. A crawl space beneath the guesthouse floorboards—a concrete foundation, barely two feet of clearance between the ground and the joists above. Cold. Filthy. A whiff of frozen earth, old timber, and mouse droppings.
Pav appeared upright through sheer force of will. His face was ashen, sweat beading his hairline despite the broken fever, rifle in his hand. His eyes scanned relentlessly for movement, the operator running on fumes and instinct.
“Go.” Directing her, even now when he was barely standing.
She went. On her hands and knees through the grate, the frozen ground biting through her trousers, cobwebs catching in her hair. She crawled forward until the space opened slightly—enough to sit if she hunched, but easier to lie down.
Pav followed. Slower, an audible cost to his breathing. He pulled himself through the grate, and Katya was already replacing the logs behind them, blocking out the light. The last sliver of wintry daylight disappeared.
Absolute darkness.
The kind that pressed against your eyes and made shapes out of nothing.
The crawl space was narrow. The concrete floor leached heat through her clothes almost immediately. Wooden joists grazed her head, and pipes ran along one wall, sweating condensation. Wafer-thin light filtered through gaps in the floorboards above, striping the gloom.
She couldn’t see him, but the solid line of his body was against hers. He took position without hesitation—his body between her and the opening, rifle angled toward the only way in. Contact that was total and completely different from every other time they’d been close.
The blanket had been survival. The hiding spot under the tree had been fear. The dance had been choice.
This should have been fear too.
His breathing was controlled. After a moment, her body followed his. There were worse things to anchor to than him. Tension drained out of her in increments—slow, reluctant—as if her body had trusted this before she did.
Fists pounded wood. A door banged open. The sound traveled through the building and down through the floorboards into Harper’s spine.
Heavy boots. Multiple sets crossing the threshold. The vibration of weight on wood directly above them, each step sending a fine shower of dust down through the gaps in the boards that caught in the thin lines of light and drifted like snow.
It landed on her face. In her hair. She pressed her lips together and breathed through her nose and tried not to cough.
Pav’s hand found hers in the dark. His fingers closed around hers and squeezed.
Quiet. I’m here.
She squeezed back.
Above them, voices. Russian. Two men, maybe three. The tone was aggressive—demanding, entitled. The scrape of furniture being moved. A door slamming open.
Then Katya’s voice cut through the noise like a blade. Every word traveled through the floorboards, her Russian rapid and sharp with the authority of a woman who’d stopped being impressed with men approximately thirty years ago.
“In my guesthouse. Take your boots off or get out.”
A male voice—dismissive, amused. Something about looking for fugitives. A foreign woman and a man. Possibly injured.
“Do I look like I have time for fugitives?” Katya’s voice dripped with contempt. “I’m baking bread. What part of that suggests I’m hiding anyone?”
“We know what you do here,” the man said. “People come through. People disappear.”
“I hide nothing.” Katya said. “I run a guesthouse that nobody visits in a town that nobody cares about.”
More voices. The sound of doors being opened. They were searching the rooms.
Harper’s grip tightened on Pav’s hand. His calm was contagious. Or maybe it was the hand. Either way, her heart rate dropped from catastrophic to merely terrifying.
Footsteps directly above them. A boot flexing the board, the wood bowing down toward her face.
She stopped breathing.
If he looked down, they were done.
The man moved away.
Above, Katya was still going. “You want to search? Search. You’ll find cat hair and a television with three channels. Very dangerous, yes?”
A man’s voice—harder now, threatening. Something about consequences for people who hide things.
“I hide nothing.” Katya’s voice didn’t waver. “If your fugitives were here I would hand them to you myself because the inconvenience of armed men in my kitchen is worse than whatever these people have done.”
The reply came slower this time. A quiet rumble. The tone of a man reassessing whether this fight was worth finishing.
“Do your job properly,” Katya said. “Or stop pretending you have one.”
Magnificent. Harper pressed her forehead against Pav’s shoulder to keep from laughing. Or crying. She wasn’t sure which.
His hand moved from hers to the back of her head and stopped there. His fingers threaded through her hair, and her scalp tingled under his touch.
Minutes passed. The search continued—boots, doors, furniture scraping. Katya’s voice rising and falling—an indignant woman whose afternoon had been ruined by idiots.
The antibiotics had done their work. Pav’s skin was cooler and he was no longer burning up beneath her fingers. For days she’d touched him only as a doctor—checking pulse, temperature, wounds.
This was different.
The width of his shoulder against hers. The steady rise and fall of his chest. The solid reality of him in a space too small to pretend there was a distance between them.
She could smell him. Not the fever sweat of the last day. Pav. Underneath the grime, antiseptic and dust. His hand was still in her hair. His fingers moved—barely. The unconscious motion of a hand that had found where it wanted to be.
Her breath caught low in her throat.
Pav stilled. His fingers flexed gently against her scalp.
Harper closed her eyes and rested her face against his shoulder.
Finally, the voices faded. A last exchange with Katya, her tone bored and dismissive. The front door. Engines starting. The vehicles pulling away, the sound diminishing down the road until the only thing left was the creak of the building settling back into its quiet.
Silence.
They didn’t move.
His hand in her hair. Her face against his shoulder. Their bodies pressed together in the dark. The search was over, and neither of them shifted apart.
Five seconds. Ten.
The grate opened. Light poured in—blinding after the darkness.
Katya’s face appeared. Unimpressed.
“They’re gone. You can stop hiding now.”
Harper pulled back from Pav’s shoulder. His hand left her hair. The cold rushed into the space between them. She stayed where she was for a fraction too long—like if she didn’t move, it might come back. Then she crawled out after Pav, into the freezing air and the world waiting for them.
Katya was already walking back inside. “I need to check on my bread.”
There was dust in Harper’s hair, her skin. The lines of light still ghosting in her vision.
Pav held out his hand.
She looked at it, met his eyes for a second, then slid her hand into his.