“We need to get to the plane,” Tae said. “My backpack is inside. It has my research and . . .” She looked at Colt, her pale blue eyes on him, a small glare headed his direction.

Fine. Whatever. He’d sort of thought there might be a little something between them over the past few weeks. She had, after all, sat by his bedside during those early days after his extraction from an op-gone-south in Africa. Heard his nightmares. And he’d witnessed one of her own, so . . .

But after he’d cornered her, forced her story out two weeks ago, something had changed between them. The big chill.

He should have expected that, maybe. No one liked being interrogated.

“We’ll have to traverse the glacier,” Dodge said, “and then ice climb down to the plane. It looks pretty precarious.” He glanced at Colt. “You sure you’re up for this?”

Colt didn’t want to bristle at his brother’s question, but still, it burned through him. “Of course.”

If it hadn’t been for the beating Colt had suffered while being held hostage by a group of terrorists in Nigeria, he would have been out here two weeks ago. Right after local sheriff Deke Starr had turned up with the proof that someone was after Tae—someone meaning some Russian mafia group.

And now he sounded crazy, even to himself.

Clearly, Colt was desperate to put a little hero back into his reflection in the mirror. The one that stared at him with reddened eyes and fading bruises. He didn’t go to sleep every night without replaying that moment when the truck of jihadists pulled up in a Nigerian village and forced him and his fellow security officer to their knees. When, for the first time in years, he prayed that God hadn’t completely abandoned him. Maybe, maybe not, because somehow most of them survived, including Noemi, his brother Ranger’s wife, who had been an humanitarian aid worker in Nigeria.

It didn’t mean that God was actually looking out for Colt. He attributed God’s favor to Noemi and Selah, the other humanitarian aid worker, and maybe even the doctor Colt had been tasked to protect.

Thankfully, the doc had survived, but no thanks to Colt.

Bottom line, he’d failed.

Sometimes, before he dropped off into his sweaty nightmares, he backed all the way up to the moment they’d found the dead bodies of the villagers in the church. In that moment, he listened to his gut instincts that said, Run.

Or he shot first and then threw his body in front of the doctor, taking the bullet.

Instincts he’d honed during his years as a Delta Force operator. Except he wasn’t that guy anymore. Wasn’t even a security pro for Jones, Inc., at least not until he healed up from his broken bones and bruised insides.