Chapter 32
The water turned gray the moment Pav lowered himself in. Days of blood and sweat and forest lifted from his skin in slow, clouded ribbons.
It didn’t feel like getting clean.
It felt like something being stripped away.
Katya’s bathroom was small. Pale green tiles, grout darkened with age. A frosted window let in a square of hazy light. Steam thickened the air, softening the edges of everything.
He didn’t trust comfortable. That was when you stopped scanning. But the heat worked anyway.
It sank into his shoulders, his ribs, the joint Harper had forced back into place. Muscle by muscle, his body uncoiled—not willingly, but because it didn’t have the strength to resist.
He let it happen.
His watch broke the surface. Dull steel worn smooth at the edges, scratched crystal, the red second hand ticking steady.
Alexei’s.
He’d washed around it without thinking. The watch stayed on. It always did. Same as the guilt. Always there. He let his hand slip back under the water.
The water cooled by degrees, but his mind didn’t.
The men looking for them had left, but they’d be back, a wider sweep, more vehicles. The window of safety was hours, not days. The border was twenty miles south. The window was closing, but it wasn’t gone yet.
His shoulder was functional. His chest wound was improving, the itch and heat retreating, the infection contained. And his ribs were just noise.
Sixty percent, maybe seventy. Enough to move and get Harper to the border if nothing else went wrong.
He drained the tub and stood, catching the edge as his legs protested. The room tilted, then steadied.
He toweled off with one of Katya’s threadbare blue towels.
She’d left clothes folded on the chair by the door. A shirt, a dark wool sweater, and trousers that were an inch too short in the leg—left behind by a previous guest, probably.
Hand-knitted socks with wonky stripes.
He pulled them on, knowing Katya had chosen them on purpose. He finished dressing and wiped the fog from the mirror with his palm.
The face that looked back was one he barely recognized. Clean jaw. Damp hair pushed back from his forehead. Without the blood and grime, he looked like someone else.
Someone who’d died years ago. Someone who didn’t need to be dangerous.
For the first time in years.
He opened the bathroom door. Voices from the kitchen reached him—Harper and Katya, layered over each other in the easy rhythm of women who’d found a working frequency.
Harper’s voice was lighter, stripped of the tight control she’d carried since the compound.
Then she laughed.
A genuine laugh—surprised out of her, the sound of it bright and warm in the corridor. It hit him clean through the ribs, harder than anything had for days.
The kitchen opened at the end of the corridor.
He stopped in the doorway. Heat rolled toward him from the range, a massive cast-iron beast that radiated warmth in waves that sank into his bones and stayed there. Katya’s scrawny cat lay stretched out on the warm tiles at the range’s base.
There was rye bread on the counter. Steam rising from a pot. A table set.
A life.
Harper stood at the counter with her back to him.
The breath left his body.
She wore a dress sprinkled with tiny blue forget-me-nots. She’d washed her hair, and it fell in loose waves down her back, darker where it was still damp. Her feet were bare on the kitchen tiles, her sleeves pushed to her elbows as she stirred something with the same focus she gave everything.
She looked—
Unmarked.
As if the forest and the blood and the running had happened to somebody else. He knew better. Which only made it harder to look away.
This was Harper.
Dangerous in a way he wasn’t trained for.
Katya saw him first.
Her eyes flicked to the doorway, and something crossed her face—amusement, or recognition of the expression he wasn’t hiding. “Sit,” she said. “Before you fall over.”
Harper turned.
Her eyes found him, taking in his clean hair, the borrowed clothes, the absence of blood.
Something shifted in her expression. Gone almost before it arrived. He held her gaze, didn’t reach for cover or look away.
Normally he’d find something operational to focus on—the window, perimeter, the threat assessment that ran like breathing. This time he didn’t. He stood in the doorway of Katya’s kitchen in borrowed clothes and let Harper see him without his armor on.
Four seconds. Five. Color rose in her cheeks, and she turned back to the counter. “Sit down, Pav. Food’s almost ready.”
Katya laid the table with mismatched bowls and rye bread as Pav took a seat. The chair creaked under his weight, and the cat opened one eye to a narrow slit of yellow, then closed it again. The table was scarred oak, worn smooth where hands had used it for years.
Harper sat opposite him. Flour smudged her cheekbone. He didn’t say anything.
Katya set a bowl in front of him.
She moved the bread within reach, and the butter beside it, then poured black tea.
A large pot of steaming stew followed. Thick and dark, it had cooked long enough to lose its shape and become something else entirely.
Root vegetables had collapsed and the meat pulled apart at the touch of his spoon.
Garlic. Smoke from the stove permeating everything.
The first mouthful hit harder than he expected. Heat. Salt. Game and dill. Sour cream cut through it and kept it from being heavy.
His eyes closed.
Fuel, yes.
But more than that. A table. Food someone had taken the time to make. People alive around him.
People who mattered.
Across the table, Harper tore bread with her fingers and dipped it into her bowl. She mumbled around a mouthful. “Oh my God. Katya, this is so good.”
“More?” Katya asked, already reaching for the ladle.
“Please.” Harper held out her bowl. “This is incredible.”
“It’s stew.” Katya refilled it. “It’s not complicated.”
“It’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten.”
“You’ve been eating pinecones and snow for days. Your standards are compromised.”
Harper laughed. The sound filled the kitchen, and the cat lifted its head.
He didn’t look.
Didn’t—
He looked.
Just long enough to confirm she was still there. That he wasn’t imagining this.
Harper smiled. “God, if only that wasn’t true.”
Slowly, the conversation became easy. Katya refilled his tea without asking.
“You two worked together?” Harper asked, tearing more bread apart.
“Briefly.” Katya glanced at Pav. “He was young and I was competent. The usual arrangement.”
“Katya was the best marksman I ever worked with,” Pav said. “She won’t tell you that.”
“Markswoman,” Katya corrected without looking up.
Harper’s eyebrows rose. “You were a sniper?”
“I was many things.” Katya chewed on a crust. “Now I bake bread and argue with the electricity company. Life is strange.”
“She could hit a target at eight hundred meters in a crosswind,” Pav said. “Still can, probably.”
“Probably.” Katya swallowed. “I haven’t checked recently. The electricity company doesn’t require it. Yet.”
Harper was looking between them with an expression Pav recognized—the recalibration, a reassembly of assumptions.
“We worked on a contract together,” Katya said after a moment. “Northern border. Winter. Very cold, very boring, very sudden when it wasn’t boring.” She glanced at Pav. “You remember the goat?”
He smiled. “I do.”
“There was a goat.” Katya wagged a finger at Harper. “It wandered into our observation post at three in the morning. Pav tried to remove it quietly. The goat did not wish to be removed.”
“It bit me,” Pav said.
“He bled more from the goat than from any action in the entire mission.” Katya’s mouth twitched. “I had to stitch him in the dark. While he argued with a goat.”
Harper laughed.
He watched and didn’t pretend he didn’t. The way her nose creased when she tipped her head back and let the laughter come without restraint.
He’d remember that instead of a hundred more important things.
The light through the wide windows shifted violet as the evening deepened, and they ate thick slices of apple cake scented with cinnamon and cardamom.
The tea cooled in his hands. Tiredness pulled at his muscles.
He stood. Collected his plate, his glass, his cutlery and carried them to the sink.
“I need to rest.” He said it to both of them, but he directed the meaning at Katya. I’m standing down. You’ve got the watch.
Katya dipped her chin. She pointed to a small monitor on the mantelpiece above the fire. “I have eyes outside.”
He stole a final look at Harper. The dress. Her clean hair. The flour on her cheekbone that she hadn’t noticed, and he still wouldn’t mention because it was his.
He walked back to his room. The sheets were cool and smooth, the pillow soft under his head. His body sank into the mattress, the weight of the last few days lifting by a degree.
Through the wall, the murmur of voices resumed. Harper and Katya. The clink of glasses—vodka, knowing Katya. The low conversation of two women with a bottle and the specific freedom that came from the absence of men.
Harper laughed again. Quieter this time. Katya’s voice underneath it, dry and unshakable.
He closed his eyes and listened to Harper through the wall.
It was enough for now.
Even though he knew it wouldn’t be.