Harper sucked in a breath and focused on securing her seatbelt, but her hands were numb and her fingers un-cooperative.
Fuckfuckfuck
“Let me.” Strong, warm hands nudged hers aside and clipped the belt home in one smooth motion. His face was inches from hers, his scent of woodsmoke and wool wrapping around her. “Breathe.”
She nodded, clenching her fists so the tears wouldn’t come.
Through the windshield, the plane was taxiing toward the far end of the tarmac, engines roaring to life.
The headlights were closer now. Three. Maybe four.
Muzzle flashes.
Bullets hit the concrete ten feet away. Sparks burst white in the darkness.
“Hold on,” Pav said.
The helicopter shuddered, skids scraping across the concrete before it lurched upward.
Harper gripped the straps of her harness as vibration climbed up through her spine, rattling her skull. The plane was already airborne, banking away smooth and clean into the storm.
More gunfire. Their pursuers raced straight at them, firing wildly from the jeeps. The helicopter climbed, and the ground dropped away. Ten feet. Twenty. Fifty.
The storm closed in around them—white and violent, swallowing the airbase, the plane, everything. Her breath stuttered. If this went wrong, there was nothing she could do but trust him. The helicopter shuddered again, rough enough to knock the breath from her chest. She risked a glance at the man beside her.
Trust it was.
10
Pav kepthis hands steady on the cyclic as the storm battered the helicopter from every direction at once. Every gust sent a structural tremor through the pedals, up his boots, into his teeth.
Instruments glowed green. Altimeter climbing too slowly. Airspeed low but stable. Compass heading south-southwest. He flew by the gauges because there was nothing else—only endless white noise beyond the windshield.
His temple throbbed where something had caught him in the compound. He couldn’t remember what. That was the problem with adrenaline—it borrowed from later.
Somewhere back at the airstrip, this had stopped being an extraction and become survival. Women evacuated from a trafficking camp with no real exit plan. A girl bleeding out in the back. And a doctor beside him who looked like she’d draw a line and stand in it.
He checked the fuel gauge, knocking it with his knuckle. It bobbed wildly. The needle settled just above the quarter mark, but he didn’t trust it. He didn’t trustanyof the gauges in thisheap of junk. The altimeter could be off by a hundred feet, and he’d never know until mountain appeared where sky should be.
Behind him, Sasha’s breathing rasped. He’d strapped her in himself—head braced, belt cinched, coat folded over her wounded side to keep pressure. It wasn’t enough. None of it was enough, but the nearest medical facility was across the border.
Next to him in the co-pilot seat, Harper hung on to her harness straps as if letting go might tilt the helicopter apart. She hadn’t spoken since takeoff. Her breathing was controlled—too controlled, the deliberate rhythm people used when they were trying not to fall apart.
The storm threw the helicopter sideways, and he compensated, pedals and cyclic working together. Warning lights flared, brief and ugly, before the gyro stabilized again.
Pav corrected on instinct. The engine whined in protest, torque fighting him. He rode it out and let the storm spend itself while he held the margins.
In his peripheral vision, Harper went rigid, breath hitching—but the altimeter steadied, the airspeed crept back into the green, and the vibration eased.
Pav kept the bird flying. That was the only way through.
“Where are we going?” Her voice cut through the engine noise, stronger than he’d expected.
“South.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is if you can read a compass.”
