I pause at the corner of the cabin, my breath forming clouds in the frigid air. The last time I spoke to another person face-to-face was four months ago, when I drove into town for supplies. The cashier at the grocery store asked how I was doing, and I almost cried from the simple human interaction. I managed to say "fine" and get out of there before I made a fool of myself, but I sat in my truck in the parking lot for twenty minutes afterward, just breathing, trying to remember how to be around people.
I continue my circuit around the cabin, checking each sensor, each camera, each potential approach vector. The north side is clear. The east side is clear. The south side is clear. I'm startingto relax, starting to think maybe tonight will be just another quiet night, when I round the western corner, and something makes me stop.
A sound. Something that doesn't belong in the symphony of wind and creaking trees.
I freeze, rifle already coming up to my shoulder. My heart hammers against my ribs as I scan the tree line, looking for movement, for shapes that don't match the landscape.
That's when I see it, a dark shape in the snow near the tree line, maybe thirty feet from my porch. Even through the blizzard, even with visibility down to almost nothing, I can make out the dark stain spreading across white.
Blood.
My finger moves to the trigger as my mind races through possibilities. This is a trap. It has to be. People don't just collapse near my cabin by accident. Not out here. Not in the middle of nowhere.
I should go inside right now, lock the door, and pretend I saw nothing. If someone dies in my yard, that's not my responsibility. I didn't ask them to come here. I didn't invite them to bleed out thirty feet from my porch.
"This is insane," I whisper into my scarf. "This is exactly how horror movies start. Stupid girl helps mysterious stranger, ends up dead in the first act."
But my mother's voice echoes in my head, that particular tone she used when I was being stubborn. "Lena Marie, we don't leave people to suffer when we can help." Easy for her to say from thesafety of whatever life she's living now. If she's still alive. I don't know. I can't know. That's the price of survival.
Every instinct screams danger. This could be Bratva. This could be one of Romanov's soldiers, sent to find me. Or maybe someone saw smoke from my chimney and decided to investigate. Maybe this person killed someone and is running from the law. Maybe they're running from the same things I am.
Maybe I've been alone so long, I'm actually considering helping someone who could destroy everything I've built.
The shape in the snow hasn't moved. My heart hammers against my ribs. If I'm going to do something monumentally stupid, I need to do it now, before the choice is made for me and I spend the rest of my isolated existence wondering if I could have saved them.
I think about my routines. My security measures. The careful invisibility I've cultivated. One decision, one moment of weakness, and I could lose it all. Romanov could find me. His men could show up at my door.
But what's the point of surviving if I lose every piece of humanity in the process? What's the point of living if I'm too afraid to be human?
"Damn it," I whisper.
The snow is already filling in the blood trail. In an hour, it will be like this person was never here. Like I never had to make this choice. But I am making it. God help me, I'm making it.
I take my first step toward the collapsed figure, my rifle gripped in shaking hands.
2
ALEKSANDR
Cold hits me first, so deep it feels like my bones have turned to ice and my blood has frozen solid in my veins. I try to move, to force my body to obey, but nothing responds to my commands.
Pain comes next, sharp and burning in my shoulder, radiating down my arm in waves that should make me yell, but there's something else competing for my attention. A dull, throbbing ache in my head pulses with every heartbeat like someone's taken a hammer to my skull and left it lodged there. The two pains war for dominance, and I can't yell because my throat is raw and my mouth is dry as sand.
I drift in and out of consciousness, time losing all meaning as hands grab me and start pulling, dragging me across something that tears at my skin. The pain in my shoulder explodes into white-hot agony, and I try to fight back, try to throw off whoever's touching me, but my arms won't cooperate, and my body refuses to obey.
A voice cuts through the fog. Female, speaking words I should understand but can't quite grasp. The sounds wash over me, urgent and frightened, and some part of my brain recognizes the language even if I can't process the meaning. English. She's speaking English. Why do I know that when I can't understand what she's saying?
My body moves across something rough and cold that I recognize as snow, and then suddenly, there's warmth, shocking and sudden, making my body shake with violent tremors I can't control. The voice comes again, closer now, almost pleading, and I want to respond, want to tell this person I'm trying to cooperate, but the darkness keeps pulling me under before I can form words.
When I surface again, there's light. Dim and flickering like firelight, but nothing about it feels safe. Hands touch me again, gentler this time, more careful as they remove my clothes and peel away layers that stick to my skin. Every instinct I have screams danger, tells me to fight, to defend myself, but I can't make my body obey, and my limbs are nothing but dead weight.
The woman's face swims into view above me. Blonde hair, short and wavy, frames features I can't quite focus on. Her eyes, though, those I see clearly for just a moment. Dark blue, almost midnight, filled with concentration and something that might be fear. She's young, maybe mid-twenties.
Her hands move over my chest, pressing something warm against my skin, and I realize I'm shaking so hard, my teeth are chattering. The sound echoes in my skull, mixing with the pounding headache until I can't tell where one pain ends and another begins.
I try to speak, try to ask where I am, who she is, what happened to me. My mouth opens, but only a groan comes out, low and pathetic, the sound of a wounded animal rather than a man. The woman leans closer, her breath warm against my face, and says something I still can't understand. Her voice is soft now, soothing, like she's trying to calm a spooked horse.
The darkness pulls at me again, and I let it take me because fighting hurts too much.