The hiccup in her voice made him look at her. She had turned a little wan. “He was trying to strangle me.”

The quietness, the horror of her words simply ripped through him.

“I had opened the door, was trying to wreck the plane.” She offered a tiny smile, a hint of Florence. But he was starting to like Marie. She was brave.

“Maybe he was thrown out, like you,” Echo said.

Tae nodded. “Do you see my pack? It’s purple and has my name on it.”

He searched the front compartment. “Not here.”

“I shoved it under one of the seats,” Tae said and stepped inside the plane.

And that’s when it started to give.

“Tae, stop moving,” Colt said, climbing back toward her.

“That pack has all my research in it.” She hit the floor, searching under the mangled seats.

The plane moved again, this time a bit more, as if trying to break free.

“I see it!” She lay prone, reaching out under a fallen seat. “It’s wedged in here!”

He reached her, grabbed her harness. “Tae, we gotta get out of here!”

“Colt!” Dodge shouted.

And with a crack, the entire plane rocked.

“Tae!” Colt tugged at her.

“I can almost reach it!”

The plane began to slide. Slowly, but, “Tae, c’mon!”

“I’m stuck!”

The plane started to pick up speed. The rope that tethered them to Dodge’s ice axe was coiling out, twenty feet of it that would stop Tae first, then Colt.

And if she didn’t get unstuck . . .

He yanked on her jacket, hard. She shrieked but landed against him. They fell against the wall, and the entire plane shuddered.

He wrapped his arms around her. “Hold on!”

And then, the plane sailed over the edge into the bright blue of the Alaskan sky.

Tae should have gone right on pretending she couldn’t speak, couldn’t remember who she was, and quietly slipped away in the night.

Kept running.

Because then no one else would die.

She screamed as the plane dropped out around her.

“Hang on!” Colt held on to her rope, tucking her against him as they fell with the momentum of the plane.

Her rope caught them, jerking them to a stop just below the lip of the cliff. Below them, the plane dropped, the crunch of metal echoing as it bounced. It hit the lake, some thousand plus feet below, and Tae just barely stopped herself from screaming again.

Above them, a shout lifted. Probably Dodge, trying to keep the axe from jerking free.

Then, silence. Just Colt’s heavy breathing as she lay in his embrace. His arm tightened around her as he gripped the rope, his feet scrabbling for purchase against the icy wall.

“I got you,” he said. “You’re okay.”

They hung maybe five feet below the lip of the glacier, the rope pressed into the ice, their feet dangling in air.