Harper pushed through the door.
The cold hit her. White glare. Wind. The cleansing slice of winter air in her lungs after the stuffy, close warmth of the apteka.
Her legs wanted to buckle, her heart tripping a frantic irregular beat. For a second, the world tilted—heat, fear, adrenaline crashing all at once.
The sidewalk was piled with rubbish, broken crates, and frozen slush. She hurried through it, her boots crunching on broken ice, her breath fogging in sharp, short bursts.
Up ahead, in the trees.
Pav.
She broke into a run.
27
Pav’s fingersflexed on his rifle as Harper paused for a second just outside the apteka. She glanced left and right before setting off toward him.
Every protective instinct he had—the ones he’d trained, the ones he’d been born with, and the new ones that had been multiplying since Harper crash-landed in his life—all fired at once.
Something had happened in that shop. More than empty shelves.
She was stiffer now. Her eyes fixed straight ahead in the way people look when they’re trying not to look at something else.
He tracked the direction of her gaze.
A man had emerged from the stolovaya. Stocky. Dark jacket. Moving toward the UAZ with unhurried confidence. Shoulders set, weight forward, the posture of someone with training.
Harper crossed the road to avoid him, keeping her face angled in the other direction as if she was just checking out what was in the store windows.
She cleared the last buildings and broke into a run back toward him. Her face had gone bloodless, her eyes too bright.
She reached the trees where he was waiting and her composure shattered. “One of them. From the camp. He was in the apteka.” She hissed out a breath. “There’s no antibiotics.”
He sorted them by priority—the enemy was immediate, the antibiotics were next.
Down in the town, the man was leaning against the UAZ, lighting a cigarette, phone to his ear.
One man visible. Possibly more inside the stolovaya. His gaze flicked back to the UAZ. Its owner was distracted.
His body was a wreck. Fever. Shoulder. Head wound. Infected chest. The timeline of his operational capacity was hours, not days.
He needed that vehicle. Even though leaving her here went against every instinct he had. But without it, she was walking back into that town. Back to them.
“Stay here.” He shrugged off his sling. His shoulder lit white-hot. He ignored it.
“No, Pav.” Her hair had come loose, tendrils framing her face. “You can’t?—”
“Stay. Here.”
He moved before she could argue. Out of the treeline. Across the open ground. Not running—walking with the easy, purposeful stride of a man who belonged where he was. The fever made the world’s boundaries swim, but the center held.
He hit the town and moved down the main street. Past the produkty and the apteka where the brass bell still swung above the door.
Thirty meters became twenty. Fifteen.
The man by the UAZ was facing away, phone to his ear, cigarette hand gesturing.
Pav came up on his blind side—three o’clock, outside his peripheral vision.
