Chapter 46
Harper shielded her eyes with her hand as white glare blasted across the yard, so bright the snow seemed to vanish into it.
Pav was between her and the open yard. Every line of him had gone quiet in a way that made goosebumps rise on the back of her neck.
On the far side of the yard, a door opened and a man stepped out.
Stepan.
Light fawn coat and gloves, a thick scarf around his neck. Two armed men flanked him, and more movement shifted behind him in the glare.
Behind Harper, boots scraped. She turned her head as two more guards emerged from the service corridor they’d just escaped through.
They’d been driven here. Herded. Nausea hit her.
Stepan’s eyes locked on Pav. Harper understood it then, in one clean and sickening line of thought. She wasn’t the prize. None of the women were. They were just the mechanism.
“Put it down.” Stepan’s voice carried across the yard without effort.
Pav shifted half a pace, widening the barrier of his body between the women and the guns.
Harper’s breath snagged. Pav’s gaze darted across the yard—towers, windows, angles, the women trapped behind him in the doorway. The assessment was immediate. No clean shot or way to move first without someone else dying.
His eyes found hers. Something wild and helpless surged up her throat.
No.
But Pav had already decided. He lowered his rifle to the snow. One guard barked in Russian.
Sidearms.
Pav exhaled and placed two handguns on the ground next to his rifle.
A faint smile ghosted across Stepan’s face. “That’s better.”
Both men flanking him advanced, attention fixed on Pav now that he was unarmed.
A tiny motion at the side of Harper’s vision.
Olga.
The stolen pistol rose through the bone-white light.
Olga fired.
The shot cracked across the yard.
Stepan jerked sideways, confusion crossing his face before blood bloomed dark against his coat. He staggered, hands pressed to his chest, and toppled sideways with a grunt.
The yard exploded. One of the men at his side fired.
Olga jerked backward as rounds hit through her chest. The impact spun her sideways and threw her into the snow. The gun spun out of her hand and blood spattered crimson across the ice-crusted ground.
No.
Harper dove toward Olga.
Pav was a blur—the immediate translation of stillness into violence that Harper had seen in the stairwell and still wasn’t prepared for.
He crossed the distance before the guard understood the threat had changed, knife already in his hand from somewhere Harper hadn’t tracked.
He slipped inside the guard’s reach as if he’d measured the exact geometry of it in advance.
The guard’s knees hit the snow.
Before the body finished falling, Pav ripped the rifle from the man’s hands and drove the stock into the second guard’s face with a smash Harper felt in her teeth. The second guard’s head snapped back. Pav was already past him toward the third and fourth.
It wasn’t like the films. There was no elegance to it, or choreography. It was appallingly fast and completely without hesitation, and it was the most frightening thing she’d ever seen a human body do.
She couldn’t look away.
Gunfire erupted from somewhere high above. The guards behind them jerked under impact as gunfire ripped through them. Their bodies fell while Olga’s blood spread red beneath her.
Ten seconds.
Maybe less.
Harper crawled the last few feet to Olga.
She triaged because that was what she did when the rest of the world stopped making sense.
She pressed her hands into the warmth pulsing from Olga’s body, because she had to do something, even though the knowledge had already landed.
There was too much damage, too much blood.
Olga’s eyes found her even as dark blood spilled over her lips. Still sharp.
“Hey,” Harper whispered, and her voice broke on the word.
“Hey.” Olga coughed. “That was a good shot.”
A laugh broke out of Harper and turned into a sob halfway through.
“It was,” she said, closing one hand around Olga’s. “Olga.”
Snow began to fall. Olga’s gaze moved past Harper to the flakes drifting through the glare. Her fingers twitched once against Harper’s, then loosened.
Harper sagged.
No.
A shadow dropped beside her, a firm hand gentle on her shoulder.
Pav.
He set the gun down. “I’m sorry.” His broad hand moved gently over Olga’s face, closing her eyes.
Harper didn’t answer. There was nothing to say that the snow wasn’t already saying.
It fell soft and indifferent across the yard, settling in Olga’s hair and lashes, whitening the blood by degrees.
She’d made the reckoning so Harper didn’t have to, and now she was lying in the snow and the world would keep turning anyway.
Pav’s hand stayed on her shoulder and let the silence stand. Harper concentrated on breathing. The backs of her eyes burned. Her throat hurt.
Engines roared. Headlights swept across the yard. Two vehicles came through fast, snow kicking out from beneath their tires. One skidded to a stop near the loading bay, the other angling across the open space to shield the women from the tower line.
Doors opened.
Fox appeared, rifle up. Zak followed.
Then the passenger door of the lead vehicle swung wide. Katya. One hand braced against the doorframe, the other holding what looked like a length of pipe.
Harper’s breath left her in a broken rush. “Katya.”
Katya limped toward her, face swollen along one cheek. She looked at Olga, then at Harper.
Harper swallowed. “You okay?”
Katya wiped blood from her mouth with the back of her hand, then studied it as if seeing it for the first time. Her gaze flicked back to Harper. “The guard who tried to stop me is having a worse night.”
Fox came around behind her, expression grim. “By several measurable metrics.”
The laugh that escaped Harper was small and cracked and completely inappropriate. It saved her anyway.
Fox’s eyes landed on her, and something hardened in his expression. “Are you hurt anywhere serious?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine.”
Pav rose first, then offered her his hand.
Harper looked back at Olga lying still in the falling snow. Then she took Pav’s hand and let him bring her to her feet. Around them, the women were moving. Fox and Zak guiding them toward the vehicles.
Harper wiped her face with the back of her hand. A shaky breath escaped her. Then she turned toward the living.