One seat short on the return trip. Some sounds never left the body.
He sat near the open door, one gloved hand braced on the frame, as black landscape scudded beneath them. Steppe and forest. Kilometers of empty terrain. Land that killed the unprepared.
His world. The one he understood better than people.
The helicopter’s interior was cramped. Fox sat across from him, checking his rifle’s optics. Zak scrolled through something on a tablet, earbuds in. Both men looked comfortable in the tight space, shoulders almost touching, existing in each other’s orbit without friction.
Pav worked his aching jaw. He’d been clenching it for the past hour.
Two days of investigation to get this far.
Fox and Zak had handled the urban work. CCTV from a pawn shop across from Harper’s apartment. Half the footage was useless. One camera had been aimed at the sidewalk. Anotherhad overwritten itself after forty-eight hours. Zak still pulled three frames clean enough to work with. Grainy, bad angle, but enough: two men forcing Harper into a white van marked with a butcher’s logo.
Zak had run the logo. Meat supplier. Butcher’s delivery. Clean little lie. Fox’s intel contacts confirmed within hours: it was a known front for a Bratva-adjacent gang, the Severnaya Set. Smuggling, extortion, protection rackets. They controlled two remote territories near the Mongolian border.
Duke’s niece. Wealthy family. Public profile. On paper, it looked like ransom. But there’d been no demand. The fact niggled at Pav. Ransom crews made noise early. They wanted families panicking, money moving. Silence meant something else.
Except Fox wasn’t the type to wait for demands.
They’d flown to the first territory Fox’s contacts identified. Pav scouted on foot for eight hours and tracked the Severnaya to an old airfield. Flights came and went, carrying God knew what. Harper wasn’t there.
Second territory, he found it.
Fresh vehicle tracks matching the van from the CCTV footage—and no effort to hide them. Whoever drove them didn’t expect pursuit. Or didn’t care. That narrowed the field fast.
Heavy trucks too, multiple vehicles, all headed into terrain most people avoided—ground that punished anyone who didn’t already know where they were going. Gullies and scrub willow, ground that looked flat but hid ravines.
Pav eliminated three false leads—hunters, an abandoned logging operation, and homesteaders who’d packed up for winter.
The fourth location fit the pattern. Generators running. Guards on rotation. Vehicles that arrived light and left heavy. Professional setup and organized.
The pattern ended here.
“Two minutes.” The pilot’s voice crackled through the headset.
Fox looked up, met Pav’s eyes across the cabin. His face was harder than it had been back at the cabin. Harper was his family.
“You’re sure?” Fox asked.
Pav held his gaze.
Fox gave a clipped nod. “Good enough.”
They geared up. White winter combat suits over tactical layers, weapons checked and rechecked.
Zak handed Pav night-vision goggles. “Handle with care.”
Pav took the goggles, calibrated the optics.
Zak nodded approval. “Finally. Someone who respects equipment.”
Fox slung his own NVGs around his neck with significantly less care. “It’s a tool, not a bloody Fabergé egg.”
“That’s what you said about the DPV.”
“Still worked, didn’t it?”
“After I spent six hours recalibrating the guidance system you destroyed.”
