Distance. Time. Bodies.
All solvable.
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 betweenthe 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.
