Chapter 40
Harper lay on her side, hands zip-tied in front of her, the freezing metal floor leeching heat through her thin T-shirt. The van stank of diesel and old fear trapped in the seams.
Other women. Other journeys.
She fought to keep her breathing even while the world thundered and swayed around her. Her face throbbed where her attacker had hit her. The iron taste of blood filled her mouth. She tested it with her tongue.
Split cheek. She’d live.
Katya was on the floor beside her. That was something, right?
She tried not to think about Pav and failed miserably. Was he alive? Everything had happened so fast. The men, gunfire, being grabbed and thrown into the van.
And threaded through it all. Pav coming for her. Armed. Barefoot. But there’d just been so many men.
The van’s suspension was shot, and every rut and pothole jolted through her teeth and the swollen mess of her lower lip where the backhand had split it open.
She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her damaged lips together. She would not let these men see her cry.
The hallway. The fight. His face locked into something she’d never seen, every trace of the man from last night gone, replaced by the thing underneath that she’d always known was there but had never witnessed at full force.
She didn’t know how this ended. The thought sat behind her sternum like shrapnel, cutting deeper every time she breathed.
He could be dead. Or worse—alive and coming for her.
She shut the door on it. Physically—jaw clenching, hands tightening into fists until the plastic bit into her wrists and the pain gave her something concrete to hold. If she opened that door, she wouldn’t be able to function. And if she fell apart now, it wouldn’t matter who was coming.
The van turned. Then turned again. The road surface changed beneath them—mud to asphalt, smoother, the rattling easing into a steady hum. Then mud again, rougher this time, and the van slowed.
Forty minutes. Maybe forty-five. Information was currency, and right now she was broke.
The engine cut and the silence that rushed in was worse than the noise—vast and final in a way that made ice under her ribs.
The rear doors opened. Dawn light poured in, blinding after the darkness, and freezing air hit her bare legs. The men hauled her out by her arms. Frozen grit stabbed at her bare soles, and pain shot up through her feet with a voltage that made her gasp.
The van was surrounded by a brick perimeter topped with razor wire that caught the morning light in thin, vicious lines. Three buildings—one larger, two smaller, connected by a covered walkway. A door stood open, and music played somewhere inside.
Guard positions held the corners, and vehicles were parked nearby in a line, hoods dusted with frost. Men moved between the buildings with the unhurried confidence of people who believed nobody was coming for them.
Despite the cold and fear worrying at her insides, her brain put the pieces together: the long rectangular main building, the smaller block that might have been a gym or cafeteria.
Faded paint still clung to a sign above the main door, Boys Entrance, the Cyrillic letters mostly peeled away.
Near the fence, a rusted climbing frame rose from the snow, one broken swing swaying in the wind.
Her stomach turned.
A school. They’d turned a school into this.
Katya was pulled out beside her and they were manhandled toward the larger building.
One guard grabbed Katya’s elbow and steered her left, away from Harper.
Katya dropped her center of gravity and twisted against his grip with breathtaking speed, driving her forehead into the bridge of his nose.
The crack was audible, and the blood immediate, spraying from his shattered nose in a bright arc.
The second guard hit her across the back.
She absorbed it, kept moving, drove her bound fists into his throat with double-handed precision.
A third guard arrived at a run. They wrestled her to the frozen ground, and it took all three of them to subdue her. She made them earn it, her body twisting and striking, refusing to submit with a ferocity that Harper would never forget.
“Katya—” Harper lunged forward, but a guard caught her arm and wrenched her back.
The zip ties dug into her wrists as she fought his grip. She kicked at his shin. Pain jarred through her foot.
“Bitch.” His grip hardened on her wrist until the bones ground together.
They dragged Katya toward one of the smaller buildings, her feet scraping furrows in the filthy snow.
“Move.” The guard pushed Harper toward the main building.
Katya’s red hair disappeared through a doorway across the compound, bright against drab concrete, and then the door closed and she was gone.
They took Harper to an office on the second floor, up bare wooden stairs, filth grinding under her bare feet. A vicious shove sent her staggering into a room that might have been the head teacher’s office once.
The room was orderly. Desk, filing cabinets, a lamp with a green glass shade that threw a sickly light across papers and folders. The ordinary furniture of administration in a building where women were bought and sold.
He was already there.
Sitting behind the desk with his hands folded.
Average build. Average face. Clean shirt, dark jacket, no insignia.
He was someone you’d pass on the street without a second thought.
Nothing about him stood out. That was the worst part.
The ordinariness. To a man like him, trading in human beings didn’t require monstrousness. It just required indifference.
The man adjusted a pen so it sat perfectly parallel to the edge of the desk, then leaned forward, hands steepled. “Harper Fox. You may call me Stepan. Please sit.” He gestured to the plastic chair on the other side of the desk.
Harper shook her head, but rough hands on her shoulders forced her to sit. The plastic was rough under her thighs.
He pushed his cuff up and checked his watch. “Who came for you?”
This isn’t about me.
She said nothing and kept her expression blank, her face lowered. The posture of a woman who was frightened and containing it, which was exactly what she was.
“The man at the guesthouse.” He unfolded his hands and stood up, then moved to look out the window. “Ex-military. Skilled enough to eliminate four of my men.” A pause that he let sit in the room like smoke. “In his underwear,” he added, as if that detail offended him most.
Something shifted behind his expression. A recalibration. Pav had surprised him.
“How many more are coming?”
She said nothing. Let him sit in it.
He watched her a moment longer, then sighed. “You’re very calm. For someone in your position.”
She didn’t answer.
A flicker crossed his face. “I prefer that.” He moved back to the desk, resting his hands lightly on the surface. “Panicked people are unpredictable.” He paused. “And unpredictable people make poor investments.”
“My family has resources.” She used the tone she used in the ER when she needed a patient to understand the gravity of what she was telling them. “The man you encountered was the first. Not the last.”
Others might come for her. Fox. Zak. She kept her chin lifted and prayed she wasn’t lying.
“Good.” He sat and leaned back in his chair. “Then we wait.”
He wasn’t worried anymore. “Take her.”
The guards stepped forward, flanking her, hands on her arms.
His voice followed her. “The man who came for you. When he comes again—and I think he will—he won’t leave this compound.”
The door closed behind her. He hadn’t been calculating risk. He’d been calculating opportunity. They weren’t hiding from Pav. They wanted him.
She wasn’t a hostage. She was bait.
This was a trap set with the one thing guaranteed to bring Pav through the door—her.
They marched her up another flight of stairs and then along a corridor lined with classroom doors. The guard opened a door and pushed her through into a room, concrete and freezing. The door slammed behind her, no handle on the inside. Keys turned the lock.
If he was alive, Pav was walking into a trap designed to kill him. There was nothing she could do to stop it.
His voice echoed in her mind. Men like me don’t last.
He’d warned her.
If he was alive, he was already coming.