Two fingers pressed against her lips, cutting off the word before it fully formed.
His eyes never left the building, scanning the treeline, the clearing, the door. Then his hand dropped from her face. “Don’t move.”
“Pav,” she shout-whispered.
He pivoted, showed her the palm of his hand.Wait.He unslung his rifle, leading with the muzzle. His weight shifted to the balls of his feet. He went through the door fast and low, and then he was inside and she was alone in the clearing.
She rubbed her arms. Forest pressed in around her. Dense pine, the canopy filtering the pale daylight into a cold gray wash that flattened everything. Wind moved through the trees, and somewhere in the distance a branch snapped, the crack echoing off the frozen ground.
Shit.
She started, turning a slow circle, her breath sawing in and out.
The wilderness was impassive.
Nothing there.
Her breath fogged in the cold air like a signal flare, her heart rate ramping.
Okay. Enough of this. Get inside.
She ran. Her waterlogged boots broke through the crusted snow, and her lungs burned, the distance between the trees and the door shrinking in a blur of white and gray. She hit the threshold at speed and staggered through, catching herself on the doorframe.
The muzzle of Pav’s rifle cut past her cheek by inches.
Behind, his face was tight with adrenaline and something harder. He exhaled noisily through his nose and lowered the weapon. “What part of wait did you not understand?”
“I—”
Her gaze slid from his face to the room behind him. The place had been torn apart.
Shelving ripped from the walls, brackets still dangling from the concrete. A metal locker forced open, the door bent back on its hinges. Clothing scattered across the floor, thermal layers, socks discarded in heaps. Empty food wrappers and packaging.
“What happened?” she said, though the answer was already forming in her chest, cold and heavy.
Pav moved through the space with a methodical precision that was terrible to watch. Checking corners, running his hand along shelves that held nothing. His face was blank, everything inside locked down and running on protocol alone.
But his eyes were different. Cold and flat in a way she hadn’t seen. A fury so controlled it registered as absence.
The line of his jaw could have been carved from stone. “Food’s all gone.”
This was what lay underneath all that control. And the realization of how much he’d been holding back around her settled in her stomach and stayed.
He picked up a shredded wrapper, swore under his breath, the word low and vicious in Russian.
“How long ago?”
“Recent. A day.” He slung his weapon over his shoulder and moved toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Perimeter.”
She dug her nails into her palms so she wouldn’t scream in frustration. “Perimeter?”
“I need to check the perimeter. Make sure they’re gone.” He was already halfway through the door, his body angled toward the trees, his attention no longer on her.
“Pav—”
