He removed the IV from his arm. Pain flared and blood welled and tracked down his wrist, but he ignored it and swung his legs off the bed.
The vehicles were closer. Slowing.
He collected his rifle from the dresser. Magazine. Chamber. Safety off.
The women’s voices had gone quiet. Katya appeared in the doorway, her face pale but her features set. “We need to hide you. Now.”
Harper was behind her, wiping her hands dry on a dishtowel. “Pav, can you?—”
The room swayed. He locked it down. “Move,” he said.
Outside, the engines cut and doors slammed. Voices. Russian. Boots on frozen ground.
They were here.
And he wasn’t fucking ready.
31
Harper caughtPav as he stumbled, sliding her arm around his waist.
Katya led them down the corridor, through a side door, and around the back of the building into the cold. Beside the woodpile stacked against the east wall, a rusted ventilation grate sat close to the ground, half-hidden by split logs.
Voices carried from the front of the house, closer than they should have been.
“Now,” Katya snapped.
She pulled three logs from the bottom of the pile, revealing the grate behind them, then wrenched it open. The hinges were oiled and silent.
“In. Both of you. Now.”
The space beyond the grate was pitch-black. A crawl space beneath the guesthouse floorboards—a concrete foundation, barely two feet of clearance between the ground and the joists above. Cold. Filthy. A whiff of frozen earth, old timber, and mouse droppings.
Pav appeared upright through sheer force of will. His face was ashen, sweat beading his hairline despite the broken fever,rifle in his hand. His eyes scanned relentlessly for movement, the operator running on fumes and instinct.
“Go.” Directing her, even now when he was barely standing.
She went. On her hands and knees through the grate, the frozen ground biting through her trousers, cobwebs catching in her hair. She crawled forward until the space opened slightly—enough to sit if she hunched, but easier to lie down.
Pav followed. Slower, an audible cost to his breathing. He pulled himself through the grate, and Katya was already replacing the logs behind them, blocking out the light. The last sliver of wintry daylight disappeared.
Absolute darkness.
The kind that pressed against your eyes and made shapes out of nothing.
The crawl space was narrow. The concrete floor leached heat through her clothes almost immediately. Wooden joists grazed her head, and pipes ran along one wall, sweating condensation. Wafer-thin light filtered through gaps in the floorboards above, striping the gloom.
She couldn’t see him, but the solid line of his body was against hers. He took position without hesitation—his body between her and the opening, rifle angled toward the only way in. Contact that was total and completely different from every other time they’d been close.
The blanket had been survival. The hiding spot under the tree had been fear. The dance had been choice.
This should have been fear too.
His breathing was controlled. After a moment, her body followed his. There were worse things to anchor to than him. Tension drained out of her in increments—slow, reluctant—as if her body had trusted this before she did.
Fists pounded wood. A door banged open. The sound traveled through the building and down through the floorboards into Harper’s spine.
Heavy boots. Multiple sets crossing the threshold. The vibration of weight on wood directly above them, each step sending a fine shower of dust down through the gaps in the boards that caught in the thin lines of light and drifted like snow.
