“No,” Echo said, saving him. “We go together.”

Dodge’s mouth made a grim line, but he nodded.

“My steps, your steps,” Dodge said and started out.

Echo followed, then Tae, and finally Colt, his chest tight.

Quiet. Footsteps crunching in the snow. Dodge pressed the handle of his ice axe into the snow, testing for strength, step by step.

They edged out—ten feet, twenty, thirty.

“Stop,” Dodge said, and Colt froze.

“There’s a bridge here. We’ll need to go around.”

An ice bridge. The kind that spanned a crevasse. The kind that could disintegrate with weight and bring them all down.

Dodge backtracked while they stayed put, and rerouted. He found where the crevasse ended, and they crossed over.

The pain in Colt’s chest had started to ease. See, they’d be just fine.

“It looks like the door is missing,” Dodge said as they drew closer to the plane. “Is that how you got out, Tae?”

“I don’t know. I woke up outside, strapped to my seat.”

Dodge stepped up to the empty metal carcass, looking through the open tail.

“Any dead bodies?” Colt asked, catching up. Dodge had left about twenty feet of rope between them. Echo caught up to him, then Tae.

“I think so,” Dodge said.

Tae started inside.

“Wait.” Dodge held his arm up. “This plane is sitting on ice. One wrong move and this whole thing could break free, go over the cliff.”

“I need my pack,” Tae said.

“I’ll get it.” Colt shot a look at Dodge. “Anchor in?”

Dodge nodded and pressed his ice axe into the glacier. Echo wedged hers in too, and then they both unclipped their carabiners and affixed them to the axes. The rope from their anchors stretched out to first Tae, then Colt.

“I’m going with you,” Tae said.

“Stay here.” Colt looked at her. “I promise to get your pack.”

She opened her mouth, closed it. “Please don’t die.”

Huh. Well, well. He gave her a smile.

She drew in a breath. “You’ll see I’m not lying.”

Right. He turned to the wreckage.

The back seats had been ripped from the body of the plane, one of them gone—probably Tae’s, given her story. The two middle seats had fallen and lay mangled on the ceiling-now-floor. Colt eased up, through the wreckage, to the front. An odor of gas hinted the air.

Wind whistled through the cockpit window, but as he drew closer, he spotted a corpse hanging from a seat in front. The pilot.

“I have a body!” he shouted. He came closer, pulling up his scarf. The man had frozen, clearly, but with the thaw, had started to decompose.

“What about Sergei?” Tae shouted to him.

He grabbed a dangling seat belt, listing in the wind. “Where was he sitting?”

“He wasn’t— He was . . .”