Chapter 38
Pav woke with Harper tucked into him, her back curved against his chest. His arm around her waist—the same position that had started as survival and become something else entirely.
Her breathing was deep and even, her hair spread across the pillow.
His face was close enough to breathe in her clean scent. He lay still and let himself have it.
The warmth. The hush. Her weight against him.
It was temporary.
He knew that.
He’d forgotten what this felt like. Or he’d never known. Maybe whatever this was between them had never existed before last night. Something she’d made just by being here.
His thumb traced the curve of her hip, committing her to memory because some part of him understood that this might be all he got.
The doubt was there. Quiet and persistent. Running underneath the warmth like the current beneath still water.
If they found her because of him. If his world, his enemies, the violence that followed him like weather, brought harm to her—
She stirred and turned her head. Sleepy eyes found his. A small smile that hit him somewhere unprotected.
“Hey.”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “Hey, you.”
“Mmm.” She wriggled against him then and sat up.
He caught her wrist, his thumb on her pulse point.
She squeezed gently. “I’m fine. Bathroom.”
She slid out of bed, her legs bare under an oversized T-shirt. She padded across the room, the floorboards creaking under her weight.
The bedroom door closed behind her.
He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. His body ached, but a good ache that had nothing to do with injury and everything to do with what they’d done to each other in the dark.
He closed his eyes.
A sound.
His eyes snapped open, his blood humming. A pattern underneath a muffled sound—wrong for the house. Controlled and deliberate.
Human.
He reached out and clicked on the bedside light.
Nothing.
He was out of bed before the thought completed. Bare feet on cold wood. Shorts. Nothing else. The pistol was where he’d left it on the dresser. His hand closed around the grip.
Loaded. Ready.
His injured shoulder protested the lift, a bright rush from joint to collarbone. Later.
He moved to the door. Opened it. The hallway was dark. The pre-dawn light from his room cast a pale rectangle on the floorboards that illuminated nothing.
Silence.
The bathroom was at the far end.
Harper.
Twenty feet of dark corridor between them.
He stepped into the hall. Chill air drew goosebumps on his skin.
Shape. Movement. Close.
His body responded on instinct. Pav drove the butt of the handgun into the man’s face. Bone gave under the impact. A crunch of cartilage, and the man dropped, stumbling backward.
A second shape came through behind him.
The hallway was too narrow for distance work. This was elbows, knees, walls. Fighting where you could smell the other man’s breath. No extended grappling. No giving his damaged shoulder a second chance to fail.
The second man swung.
Pav grabbed, twisted the arm, too late to avoid it clean.
The blow grazed his shoulder. Pain detonated through the joint, too big to have edges. For half a second, his grip went numb.
He used the numbness, drove forward before the arm failed completely, and slammed the man into the wall. The man’s head snapped back into the wall with a dull crack. Pav hit him twice—kidney, temple—and he went down.
Two down.
Breaking glass from the kitchen. Back door. Forced entry. No attempt at quiet.
Pav moved immediately. The floor was cold under his feet, the air biting against bare skin, his body still running on the last of the heat from the bed.
More coming.
He moved down the hall, his feet silent on the worn wood, weapon up. A third man came out of the kitchen. Bigger, faster, armored plates protecting his chest. He pivoted, weapon raised.
Pav shot him in the neck. The shot detonated in the narrow hallway—a concussive crack that rang in his ears.
The man hit the floor, blood gurgling from his throat, streaming between his fingers.
Harper screamed.
It cut through everything.
Ahead. In the bathroom.
The door slammed open.
A fourth man had her, his arm locked around her throat—dragging her backward toward the back door. She fought him, digging at his shins with her bare feet.
Her eyes were wild and locked on him. “Pav—”
The man released her for a split second, just long enough to backhand her. The crack echoed down the hall. Her head snapped sideways—blood spraying from her mouth.
Grip locked under her arms, the man dragged her toward the back door, her body a shield.
Everything in Pav narrowed to a single line—her body, his shot, the space between them. The distance had opened. Forced by bodies in the hall. Bought by seconds he didn’t have. That was all it took.
His teeth ground against each other.
Not this time.
“Let her go.”
“Fuck you.” The man shouldered the back door open and dragged her out.
A fifth man stepped out of the bathroom, blocking the hallway. Thick neck and tattoos on his face.
Pav went through him.
The handgun wouldn’t work this close, so he used it as a club, driving the grip into the man’s throat. The impact jarred through his injured shoulder, and for a split-second the hallway thinned dangerously at the edges.
He kept going.
The man staggered, choking. Pav brought the butt up into his jaw—bone caved with a wet crack—then followed him down with an elbow to the temple. His shoulder screamed, and his ribs dragged tight.
Pav stepped over the toppled body, stripped the rifle from the man’s hands and didn’t stop.
Freezing air whispered against his skin. The hallway was empty, the back door ajar. A battered van waited outside, doors open, engine running, exhaust fogging the blush-dawn light.
A man was forcing Katya into the back—her arms wrenched behind her, face bloody. She suddenly slackened in her captor’s arms. As the man adjusted his grip, she drove her head back into his nose.
He screamed, blood bursting over his mouth, and Katya twisted to get one hand free before another man hit her from the side and threw her bodily into the van.
Pav’s eyes met Harper’s across twenty feet of frozen ground.
Her bare feet left blood on the ice as she fought, her hands clawing at the thick arm clamped around her throat.
For one impossible second, he was back there.
Too far away.
Too late.
The man had her locked tight against his chest, using her body as protection. Nothing exposed but the edge of his face and one shoulder.
Pav lifted the rifle and took aim.
Her body shifted as she fought, throwing the line off even further. His muzzle tracked, adjusted—
Pav closed.
Twenty feet. Fifteen.
Bare feet on gravel and frozen mud, jagged ice lacerating his feet with every stride. He didn’t slow.
The man flung Harper into the van. He dove in after her, slammed the door.
The engine revved. The tires spun, spat grit, and the van lurched forward.
Pav adjusted. Not straight—angling, trying to cut the driver’s side as it rolled, weapon up, tracking the windshield. The driver’s window was tinted. Shadows inside, but no clear line. Nothing he could shoot without risking her.
The van picked up speed, nose swinging toward the road. He stepped wider, trying to clear the front quarter—get past the pillar, find the driver.
Harper’s silhouette flashed across the back window as she was dragged down.
Fuck. No clean shot.
He planted his feet.
Sights. Breath. Rear tire.
The only target that didn’t bleed.
He fired.
The round punched through the rubber. It blew, shredding, and the van fishtailed, but it didn’t stop.
The driver corrected, forcing it forward. Gravel sprayed, sparks dragging from the rim. The van took the bend. Brake lights flared—red against the white.
Then it was gone.
Harper with it.