The moment shattered.
Move.
Harper scrambled upright, shaking so badly she could barely move her fingers. The guard writhed on the floor, making wet choking sounds behind his hands while Olga aimed the pistolat his face with terrifying steadiness. Whatever Olga had been before this place, fear hadn’t erased it completely.
“Get inside.” Olga motioned with the gun, and the guard crawled on his hands and knees, swearing, blood dripping onto the floor. She slammed the door behind him and locked it.
She tossed Harper the keys. “Go.”
Doors to her left and right. Peeling paint curled beneath old notices pinned crookedly to bulletin boards. A faded mural of children holding hands marched across one wall beneath water stains and grime, while alarms pulsed somewhere deeper in the building.
Harper fumbled through the keys for the one that fit the closest door. She got lucky on the third try. She unlocked the door and shouldered the heavy wood open. Inside, two women recoiled from the sudden light.
Somewhere below, another shot cracked. Plaster dust drifted from the ceiling. One woman whimpered and sank back from the doorway.
“It’s okay,” Harper said quickly in Russian. “You need to move. Now.”
She moved as fast as she could, her stomach a sickening knot, her lungs never seeming to fill completely.
The next lock resisted, the key jammed. Her palms were slick with sweat as metal ground against metal, and for one horrible second her fingers wouldn’t work. Her breath wheezed out of her when it finally turned.
On the other side, a girl who couldn’t have been more than seventeen, sitting on the floor with her back to the wall, her arms wrapped around a stuffed rabbit worn bald. She didn’t even look up when the door opened.
“Hey.” Harper crouched, keeping her voice with no urgency in it, even though urgency was the only thing in her body. “What’s your name?”
The girl looked up, her gaze nervous. “Lena.”
“Lena. I’m Harper. We’re leaving. Can you stand?”
Lena looked at the rabbit, then put her hand in Harper’s and didn’t let go.
Harper’s throat closed.
Don’t.Not now.
She pulled Lena upright and kept hold of her hand because Lena hadn’t released it and Harper wouldn’t be the one to let go first.
Olga helped her unlock the rest of the doors. Women emerged into the corridor barefoot and shaking, wrapped in blankets or oversized sweaters, eyes huge with confusion and fear. One crossed herself with trembling fingers. Another whispered something in a language Harper didn’t recognize, over and over.
Eight women, not including her and Olga.
Harper counted them twice, Lena’s hand in hers.
“Stay together,” Harper said in Russian, then again in English for anyone who needed it. “We’re going to the stairs. Stay close to me.”
Gunfire echoed.
Closer now.
The women flinched as one. A few cried out, hands flying to their mouths, shoulders curling inward. Cold swept through Harper so fast it made her dizzy. Something bad was happening, but whatever it was, it was their only chance.
“Stairs,” Olga snapped.
Harper turned toward the far end of the corridor and started moving, the women behind her in a frightened, uneven cluster.
If Pav was here, this place was already bleeding.
“Stay close.” Harper took a breath and headed for the stairwell.
