The violence in him broke open. Every dangerous part of him reoriented in a single breath around the fact that she was alive.
“Harper.” Her name left his mouth rough and torn.
His gaze flicked past her. To the women. Lena clutching her hand.
The gun remained in his grip. The danger was still there. But it was no longer aimed at her.
Harper stared at him, heart punishing her ribs, the frightened women crowded behind her.
His rifle lowered first.
Blood still marked his face.
Harper went to him anyway.
45
Pav didn’t remember crossingthe last three steps.
One moment Harper was above him on the landing, pale and bloody in the pulse of failing lights, one hand locked around the wrist of a terrified girl. The next his hand was along the line of her jaw, tipping her face toward the light.
Pupils even. Bruising and cuts to her lips. Zip-tie abrasions circling both wrists, raw and angry against her skin. Her injuries stripped every unnecessary thought out of him.
Later.
He buried his reaction before it became a liability. She was warm beneath his hand.
Breathing.
Alive.
She’d moved toward him with nine women behind her.
“Harper.” His fingers tightened once at the back of her neck, against the softness of her hair. Then he let go.
The question he wanted had no place here.
“Can you run?”
His gaze traveled along the line of women—barefoot, shaking, exhausted, held together by terror and will. One barelystanding and another younger than the rest with a stuffed rabbit crushed to her chest. The last one at the rear held a handgun with the expression of a woman who’d already decided she was willing to use it.
Harper’s eyes met his, too bright. “Yes.”
He believed her because he had to. And because she was Harper.
Harper pointed. “Olga helped me get the others out.”
Olga met his gaze without flinching, and she gave him the smallest nod. Pav flexed his aching fingers around the rifle grip. The extraction had evolved again.
Harper’s shoulders squared as if waiting for him to argue, to tell her no, that the odds had changed and they were leaving the others behind.
“Stay close.” Then he turned and moved.
His comms shrieked. Fox cursing as gunshots cracked twice in disciplined rhythm, followed by a dull concussive thump.
“A bit tied up on my end.” Zak’s voice rumbled over the comms, breathless but controlled. “Be there in a tick.”
Pav turned back, taking the route he'd used to reach the upper floor.
