Which meant he had plenty of time to focus on Tae and her crazy story about being chased by international terrorists all the way to his backyard in Alaska.

“While you were learning to fly, I was climbing and rappelling,” Colt said now to Dodge. “And don’t forget that one year I actually worked at the Denali Base Camp, coordinating Sky King Ranch flights.”

“I remember,” Dodge said as he pulled out crampons from his pack and hooked them to a carabiner. “Dad was afraid you were going to actually attach to one of the climbing crews and head up the mountain.”

Colt also dug out his crampons and hooked them to the outside of his pack. The snow was soft, but it didn’t mean it wasn’t lethal. “I was seventeen. I wasn’t allowed up.”

“Since when do you follow the rules?” Dodge handed Echo the rope, one end already affixed to his harness. She clipped in.

Colt hiked up his own harness. “When it matters.” He turned to Tae, who was struggling with her rig. “You could wait here . . .”

“I know how to climb. I used to climb the wall back at my gym in Seattle.” She stepped away from him when he reached to help. “Besides, I want to be there when you see that I’m telling the truth.”

“I never said you weren’t telling the truth.” He glanced at Dodge, whose eyebrows rose.

“Really?” She rounded on Colt. “When I told you my story, you stared at me so long, I thought maybe you were suffering from a hit on the head.”

Yeah, well, he was, a little. “It’s just . . . the whole thing sounds like something out of a Brad Thor novel. You being kidnapped off your cruise ship by your boyfriend—”

“A Russian spy!”

“Right.” He held up a hand. “A Russian spy named Sergei. Who then forced you on a plane to hijack you to some secret lab in Russia.”

“I never said that.” Her mouth tightened. “I said that I thought he might be taking me to Russia. And that’s why I freaked out. Why I opened the door to the plane—”

“Because you were trying to crash.”

“Wouldn’t you?” She was tightening her harness. “Isn’t that part of your oath as a soldier? Escape, survive—or something like that?”

“But you’re not military.”

“My father was. And . . . well, I wasn’t going to . . .”

And then she stopped. Again. Right where she always stopped—before she told him the why behind everything.

Secrets. Tae was full of them, and he wasn’t going to let them get him, or his family, killed.

“See, you don’t believe me, again.”

“What?”

“It’s your face.” She moved her open palm in a circle before him. “You think I’m crazy.” She turned to Dodge. “Do you think I’m crazy? That I dreamed all this up?”