"Move or die. Your choice."
The harshness of it snaps something back into place. I look at him, but there’s nothing I can read in his expression; his face is a mask of ice. Weakly, I nod, and he hauls me forward, bringing me with him as he starts to run back the way I came.
Back toward the safe house.
My legs are shaking so badly that I can barely stay upright. Kazimir has one arm around my waist, half-carrying me, and it feels almost familiar now.
I wish it didn’t.
Behind us, I hear shouting, crashing through the underbrush. They're coming, more men… how many? I can’t tell. I keep facing forward, trying not to fall, terrified that if I do, Kazimir will leave me this time. He’s furious withme, I feel sure of it.
"There!" someone yells. "I see them!"
A gunshot cracks through the air, and bark explodes from a tree inches from my head. Kazimir returns fire without breaking stride, and I hear a scream.
We keep running.
He pulls me left, then right, changing direction constantly. I've lost all sense of where we are. There's only the burning in my lungs, the agony in my feet, the terror that the next bullet will find me.
There’s another shot. This one is closer. Kazimir shoves me down behind a fallen log, covering my body with his. I hear more shots, the sound echoing through the trees.
He fires back in quick succession, and I hear someone cry out.
Then silence.
We wait, pressed against the frozen ground, both of us breathing hard.
"Stay here," Kazimir whispers against my ear. "Don't move. Don't make a sound."
"Where are you?—"
"Stay. Here." His voice is forceful, angry again, and then he’s up and on his feet, gone before I can argue and melting into the trees like a ghost.
I huddle behind the log, shaking violently, from cold or fear or adrenaline or shock, I don't know. Probably all of them, I think dimly.
The blood on my clothes is starting to freeze, stiff and crackling. I close my eyes and try not to think about the man's face as he died. The way his eyes went empty, right in front of mine. How good it felt to know that he was never going to laugh at anything, ever again.
He was going to kill me. They were all going to kill me, or worse. So why do I feel like I'm going to be sick?
I wait, shivering, counting the minutes as they pass, until I’m too cold to keep track any longer. I feel like I’m losing track of time altogether. I can’t tell if it’s been five minutes or twenty. Every second feels like an eternity out here.
The forest is silent except for the wind through the branches and the occasional crack of ice-laden wood. I don’t hear any gunshots or voices. I don’t know where Kazimir is, where he went, or why he’s not back yet.
My fingers are going numb. I flex them, trying to keep the blood flowing, but it's getting harder. The cold is seeping through my clothes, through my skin, into my bones.
I press myself tighter against the log, trying to make myself smaller. Invisible.
More minutes pass, and I hear a male voice. I tense, hoping it’s Kazimir, but then I hear another.
Thick Russian accents. None of them are Kazimir, I feel sure of that. My heart starts to race again, and fear rushes through me, making my hands shake for reasons other than the cold.
"—Saw them come this way?—"
"—Split up. Cover more ground?—"
"—Can't have gone far. Not with the woman injured?—"
They're close now, I realize. So close I can hear their boots crunching through the snow.
