Colt’s fault, really, and for a moment he was back at the cabin two weeks ago, after he’d seen her picture taken from an assassin’s phone, targeting her. He’d practically ran her down, shoved his hand over her shoulder, holding the cabin door closed so she couldn’t escape, and said, his tone tight and serious, “Spill.”

She’d morphed right in front of his eyes from quiet, hidden Florence Nightingale—his nickname for her—to Marie Curie, fierce, determined, and brave.

Even, maybe, a little bossy.

“You sure you want to know?” she’d asked.

Maybe he should have said no. Because now, as they prepared to climb down the mountain, he sort of missed Florence.

“Let’s go,” Colt said.

Dodge was right. The boulders created a natural stairway down the mountainside, into the valley where the glacier spilled over the side of the cliff.

Colt watched as Echo trekked in front of him. She had also grown up in Alaska and had the sure steps of a mountain goat.

But Tae handled herself just fine, holding on, checking her steps, careful.

Deliberate.

The sun still hovered high, although by Colt’s guesstimation, it might be nearly six in the evening. Maybe they should have camped on the ridge after their hike from the valley floor where Dodge landed. But Colt was as eager to prove Tae right, or wrong, as she was.

He was rooting for wrong. Because the idea of some terrorist after her—and as a by-product, his family—had Colt’s gut in all manner of knots.

Then again, if she’d made it up . . .

So maybe right wasn’t such a bad option.

Dodge reached the edge of the glacier field. Maybe a thousand feet across, the glacier was a quietly moving river, with thousands of tributaries running through cracks in its gnarled, veiny blue surface. The frozen river fell from the top of the valley down to the edge of a cliff that dropped another thousand feet to a glacial lake below.

Working its way over the cliff, maybe ten feet from the edge, sat the mangled six-seater Beechcraft Bonanza, its wings shorn off, the fuselage twisted. When it landed, it had dragged the tail, which broke off, spinning the aircraft so that it then cartwheeled, taking off the wings.

It had ended up on its back, a fallen albatross, wheels up.

A stiff wind caught Colt’s jacket, slipped down his back. He sat on a boulder and attached his crampons, then unhooked his ice axe from the pack.

“Maybe just Colt and I should go,” Dodge said.

Colt nodded, brutally aware of the way his heart had started to hammer. Sheesh. He wasn’t scared, but the sweat down his back and his hard breathing had him thinking that if someone went down . . . he might not be able to pull them back up.

So, if Dodge fell, they would both die.