Chapter 39
He’d let someone in.
And the world took her.
Again.
Pav stood in the road, feet numb, chest heaving. The road was empty, Harper gone.
He knew this silence. He’d stood in it before. The same hollow carved out of the world where a person used to be.
He turned back to Katya’s guesthouse.
Inside was a crime scene.
Two bodies in the hall—the first two he’d dropped. One breathing, barely, jaw askew. The other still. Pav nudged him with his boot. No response. Past them, the one he’d shot in the neck lay in the kitchen doorway, blood pulsing slower now from the neck wound, spreading dark across the boards.
And the fifth?
Alive.
He was crumpled against the wall, conscious, his hand clamped to his throat where the stock had crushed into him. His eyes tracked Pav with the raw, animal awareness of someone who knew exactly what he was.
Good. A live one.
Pav stepped over the man without looking down and headed to the bedroom.
The room still held her, her scent in the air. The faint crease in the sheets where her body had been. He stopped beside the bed and put his hand down.
The fabric was still warm. For one second he let himself feel it.
Harper.
His shoulders sagged. Minutes ago she’d been in his arms.
And now?
He straightened and dressed quickly, not looking at her dress draped over the patched easy chair. Looking cost time. He swallowed against the thickness in his throat.
There was work to do.
Back in the hall, the man was still slumped against the wall. Still breathing. Pav crouched in front of him. Close. Weapon across his knees.
“Where are they taking the women?”
The man spat a shard of tooth onto the floor. Blood ran in rivulets down his chin. “Don’t know.”
His eyes were wide, his breathing fast and shallow—his body flooding with cortisol, pupils dilated.
Lying.
Pav took his hand and held it as if he was going to offer comfort, then he pressed into the first joint of the index finger. Just enough. The man screamed but Pav waited it out. Pain was ugly, but other options took time he didn’t have.
“Where?” Pav asked.
The answer came in a rush. Too fast. Direction. Street name. Something rehearsed. The man’s eyes flicked left.
Fabrication.
Pav reached for the next finger. “Try again.”
The man’s eyes bulged, panic breaking through whatever loyalty he thought he had. “Fallback site.” His voice rasped. “Southeast. Old customs depot near the border road. That’s where they said to bring them.”
“Distance?”
“Forty kilometers. Maybe less.”
“Again.”
The man repeated it. Slower this time, from memory, not invention.
Pav released him and stood. “How many?”
“Ten. Maybe twelve.” The man’s head dropped, and he muttered a curse.
Pav zip-tied his wrists to the radiator, then checked the other bodies systematically.
One had a charged sat phone. Another had a GPS unit with recent coordinates still logged. He took both and laid them out on Katya’s kitchen table. There was blood on it now. The cat sat under the table, watching him with unblinking yellow eyes.
He powered up the GPS unit. Recent tracks loaded slowly. A line from the main road to Katya’s guesthouse. Another from the town. Then a stored waypoint forty kilometers southeast, tucked near the border road.
No label, but it didn’t need one.
He checked the sat phone call log. Three outgoing calls to the same number. The last one pinged from the same grid. The live one had told the truth or enough truth to be useful.
Pav picked up the sat phone and dialed the number he’d memorized before the extraction.
It rang twice.
“You’re late.” Fox’s voice was clipped.
Pav breathed out, dipped his head, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“They found us. They took Harper.” Her name caught in his throat. “Katya Sokolova, too.”
The line went quiet.
“Location?”
Pav gave Fox the coordinates.
“Timeline?”
“Hours. Not days.” A beat. “They’ll move them over the border.”
“We’re mobile.” A rustle. “We can be at the target in four.”
“I’m not waiting four hours.”
“Pav—”
“I’m moving now. I’ve sent you the coordinates. Meet me there.”
A muttered curse. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I’ll do what I have to.” He ended the call.
The kitchen was cold. Blood on the floorboards was drying to brown. He checked his weapons and spare magazines, then collected Katya’s truck keys from the hook near the door. The sat phone disappeared into his jacket. He checked the GPS again.
Two access roads.
One main and one service track. He’d take the service route.
He dry-swallowed two painkillers from his med kit. He considered a third one and took it, but no more. He needed the pain below the threshold where it stole function, not gone enough to make him slow. His feet were bleeding. He taped them fast, ugly and tight, then shoved them back into his boots.
His ribs throbbed with each breath. His shoulder ground where the joint had taken a hit. He ignored all of it. Pain was information. Nothing more.
He would find her.
The rest was logistics.
Distance. Time. Bodies.
All solvable.