Empty tower. Open yard. No panic movement. This wasn’t bad luck. It was design. Pav slowed.
Harper bumped up against him. “What?”
This wasn’t escape. It was channeling.
He pressed on her shoulder. “Down.”
Floodlights ignited. Light crashed across the yard, erasing depth and shadow. Snow became glare, and the women’s silhouettes were caught in the open doorway. Nowhere to hide. Screams broke out behind him. Hands flew up to cover eyes. Olga swore and raised the stolen gun, but there was nowhere to aim.
Pav drove Harper back against the wall with his body before she could step into the light.
A static crackle came from old speakers mounted high beneath the eaves. Then a voice. “Harper Fox. At last. Thank you for your cooperation.”
Harper stilled beneath his hand, but a hiccup of breath escaped her.
He glanced back. Her face had gone somewhere he hadn’t seen before. Something quiet and worse than fear.
Pav’s blood iced.
The killbox had snapped shut.
46
Harper shieldedher 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.
