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.
