Dodge held up his hand in surrender. “I think we’re wasting time.”

Probably. Because although the sun was still high, Colt’s chest was really starting to ache from the lack of oxygen.

He took the rope from Echo, tied a figure eight knot and attached a carabiner to it. Turned to Tae. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, Tae. It’s that you’re not telling me everything, and I know it.”

Her mouth tightened, and he had interrogated enough people to know he’d hit on truth. “Do you know how to—”

“Yes.” She took the carabiner from him and attached it. Met his eyes. “You’ll see. We’ll get down to that plane and you’ll see two dead bodies. And then I’ll get my backpack and prove that it’s all true. I’m not crazy.”

“For the last time, I never called you crazy.”

She hiked an eyebrow at him.

Okay, when he’d first heard her story, he might have paused for a long moment, let it sink into his head, let the what-ifs surface.

What if her story was true—that she had been kidnapped by the Russian mob? Why? And sure, he’d tried to pry that bit of truth from her, but she’d clammed up.

Almost as if she didn’t trust him.

So maybe their little trek out to the bush to confirm her story had as much to do with her trusting him as it did with him trusting her.

He clipped the tail end of the rope to his harness.

“Here’s how this will work,” Dodge, always the boss, said. He also wore a Gore-Tex outfit and a wool hat. The fact that Dodge had agreed to come along on this crazy search . . . well, maybe things were going to be okay between him and Colt, after all. “The climb down isn’t terrible, but once we reach the glacier, walk only in my steps. I’ll test the snow, but this time of year, the ice can give and then—”

“You could fall a thousand feet to your death,” Colt said.

Dodge gave him a look.

Well, maybe someone, and he wasn’t saying who—ahem, Tae—should think about what she was getting into.

“If that happens,” Echo said, rolling her eyes at Colt’s words, “hit the ground with your ice axe, and hold on. You’re the only one stopping said person from”—she gestured at Colt—“what he said.”

He shot Tae a final look.

“Please. I hiked through the wilderness, alone, for five days. Survived a blizzard.”

“Barely,” Dodge said, probably remembering that day when he and Echo had found her, nearly frozen, in the snow near a ranger cabin.

Tae gave Dodge the same look she’d given Colt. Gone was the quiet, sweet girl who’d made them all soup.