Harper had stopped beside him. Her face was white. “What?—”
“The wolves found the dogs.”
She stared at him, glancing back toward the sound. The chaos behind them was escalating—snarls and the crack of a gunshot that did nothing to quiet the fight.
“They’ll go for the dogs first?”
“It’s their territory.” The pursuit was finished. The handlers would be lucky to get out with their own lives, let alone continue a tracking operation. “Wolves don’t share.”
Something shifted in her expression. The fear evolving into something more complex.
Relief. Horror. Uncomfortable awe.
“We need to keep moving,” he said. “The wolves have just bought us time.”
The sounds of the fight faded—the wolves driving the remnants of the pursuit away from their territory and deeper into the forest.
The adrenaline was already pulling back, and every injury he’d suffered came roaring back.
The border was ahead.
Extraction was a straight line. Get her to the border. Job done.
Simple.
Except nothing about this woman had been simple since the moment she shoved his hands away and crawled toward a dead girl in a burning helicopter. Since the moment she made it impossible to treat this like a job.
“How did you know?” she asked. “That they wouldn’t attack us?”
He started walking. “I didn’t.”
Harper’s hand found the back of his fleece again. Not for support or guidance this time.
Just contact.
He let it stay.
22
The weather stationmaterialized through the snow, and Harper almost wept.
It was a squat concrete block with a rusted antenna on the roof and stingy windows. Soviet-era and ugly as sin. The most beautiful building she’d ever seen.
Pav had known it was here. The man who had contingency plans for his contingency plans.
The weather had worsened into a blinding storm—snow driving sideways, wind tearing at her jacket, visibility collapsed to nothing. Every step was a fight against the weather and her own exhaustion. But Pav had told her the storm was their ally. It would bury their tracks, and drones couldn’t fly in conditions like this. For the first time since the crash, nobody was following them.
She clung to that the way she’d clung to his hand in the river.
He forced the door—two kicks, and the rusted lock gave way.
But he didn’t go in immediately. Instead, he stilled on the threshold, head angled slightly, body gone quiet in a way that was deliberate.
Listening.
Then he moved inside, fast and low. Seconds later he appeared and beckoned her in with a jerk of his head. She followed him inside, gratitude making her eyes sting.
Pav didn’t lower the rifle immediately. He crossed to the blackened wood stove, crouched, and touched two fingers to the ash inside.
