скачать книгу бесплатно
A pang stabbed through him. Why did she have to be the one to come? Isaiah couldn’t stand that it was Heidi with them. Not on this mission. But he’d better not say that to Heidi. Still, she had to see that Zach appeared intent on using her against Isaiah and Cade.
Isaiah thought back to the good times they’d shared since he’d met her. He’d run from Montana to hide in Mountain Cove, Alaska. Even changed his name to start a new life.
He’d been struck by her soft, kind and huge brown eyes and that dark mahogany mane of hers. But the most beautiful part of her was on the inside. What man wouldn’t be attracted to her? He’d done well enough, keeping his distance. They worked together for one thing. Or used to before he’d changed his schedule around. But he’d been able to keep his relationship with her as an easy friendship, that is, until that day not quite a year ago.
The sunset had dazzled them with the most amazing hues of orange and pink as they stood looking out over the channel, waiting for Cade and Leah to return from another trip to Seattle. Isaiah’s gaze had veered from the sunset to Heidi, and he’d made the mistake of letting himself take her in for a little too long. When she looked at him—something happened between them. Something and yet nothing at all. He couldn’t put words to it. But they’d connected. He’d felt it. She’d felt it. He knew she had. Maybe it had been building for a long time.
He also knew that he’d hurt her by backing away.
But what else could he do? He couldn’t let himself get close to anyone like that. Not after everything he’d been involved in. He was almost thankful the wind howled outside the tent as it drowned out his sullen thoughts. On the other hand, it brought him back to their deadly predicament.
FIVE (#ulink_9746059e-b01c-5d81-bdc9-f4a68c50fb4d)
Heidi opened her eyes. Something had jarred her awake.
She couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. The storm wailed outside. What could she have heard over the din? Was Rhea still asleep, or moving around in the tent? Maybe she planned to smother Heidi in her sleep.
Or was it one of the guys scraping the snow off their tent? Liam had informed them earlier that he and Jason had been tasked with the job.
Wary, she shifted inside the insulated sleeping bag, grateful for the smallest of comforts, but concerned about sleeping in the tent with Rhea. Thank goodness they had both collapsed with exhaustion, or at least Heidi thought Rhea had conked out first. The woman had creeped Heidi out from the beginning of this ordeal, and she hadn’t relished the idea of sharing tent space with her, but better Rhea than one of the others in Zach’s mangy troop.
Rhea was a weird person, and had to be more than a little disturbed to be with a guy like Zach. To admire him. Heidi sensed Rhea’s pure and lethal hatred toward her because of Zach’s unwarranted attention. Couldn’t the woman see that Zach was simply using Heidi against Cade and Isaiah?
Except that wasn’t completely true, either. There was something about Heidi that Zach liked. A girl just knew these things. A chill scuttled over her, even though the inside of the tent was relatively warm.
Why had she let her mind take her down this path? She needed sleep, and thinking about the crazy people who could kill them at some point didn’t help. They had to get out of this.
Heidi repositioned herself and sighed.
“What’s with all the racket over there?” Rhea asked.
“I’m not doing anything. It’s the storm.”
“I hear you sighing and huffing and puffing. Every time you move in that sleeping bag, I hear it.”
Maybe Heidi had been the one to make the noise and had woken herself up. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know why I had to be in here with you instead of with Zach.”
“Do you love him, Rhea?” Now, why had Heidi asked the woman such a question? Why else would she be with a man like that?
“Why? You think you can have him? Well, he’s mine. All mine.”
“That’s not why I asked. I can’t sleep. I’m just trying to figure out why this is happening to me, Cade and Isaiah. I can’t figure out why you would love a criminal.” Or maybe Rhea had been in on the heist. Heidi had better keep her mouth shut. Rhea snorted. “Zach is brilliant. He needed money to get started, that’s all. Wealthy people aren’t going to miss two million dollars.”
Two million dollars? Heidi held her breath. Did Rhea realize she’d just shared that information? Zach wouldn’t be happy to hear that, but Heidi wouldn’t be the one to tell him so it probably didn’t matter that she knew.
But...two million dollars. Oh, God in heaven, help us out of this.
“Now that I told you about the money, don’t think you can steal Zach away from me. I’d kill you first.”
Heidi frowned. What kind of person thought like that? Had Rhea been institutionalized at some point? She sounded like some sort of female Praetorian Guard, an elite bodyguard for her emperor, Zach, whom she worshipped. Besides looking and acting crazy, she sounded crazy, which meant Heidi was in even more danger. They all were.
“You don’t have to worry about me. I have no interest in Zach. I’ve learned the hard way that people can’t be trusted when it comes to relationships. I don’t want to love anyone.”
First, Isaiah had distanced himself. Then Lon... Pain knifed through her heart—he’d been a married man, for crying out loud. She could never get over the fact that she’d been romantic with a married man. How his wife must feel about her. She turned in the sleeping bag, not caring if she made Rhea mad. A hot tear slid down the side of her face and right over the bridge of her nose. It dropped to the bedding below. Then she’d learned that her own father, whom she’d loved and adored and admired, had cheated on her mother.
She swiped at the tear then thrust her hands back in the bag.
Rhea didn’t say anything to Heidi’s comment about relationships, so she added, “Be careful, Rhea. Zach could break your heart.”
Heidi should be more concerned about living through this than whether or not Zach would break Rhea’s heart, which he would undoubtedly do. She didn’t want to trust or love again or feel that pain, but every time she looked at Isaiah, she wished she could feel a different way. Wished he hadn’t hurt her.
What had happened between them?
Earlier tonight, he’d been right there, helping her through her panic as if he’d never left her side—physically or emotionally.
“You’re a liar,” Rhea said.
“What have I lied about?”
“There is someone you want to love.”
Heidi held her breath. What had she done or said to give Rhea that impression? “You’re wrong.”
Rhea’s laugh was deep and raspy, a sick, mocking sound. Where had Zach found her? Heidi’s pulse ratcheted up, although it was already near racing. Would Rhea tell Zach, causing him to use Isaiah or Cade—both of whom meant everything—against her?
Wait. Isaiah meant everything? “I don’t love anyone. And I don’t want anyone. But I’ll make you a deal.”
“What’s that?”
“Remember when Zach punched Jason in the nose because he almost told us how much money you stole?”
Rhea was silent, but Heidi knew she remembered. They all did.
“Zach doesn’t want anyone to know how much, but you just told me that he stole two million dollars. That can be our little secret. So I’ll keep your secret, if you’ll keep mine. Do we have a deal?”
“Yes.” Rhea’s voice cracked. Was the woman that scared? “Zach will kill me if he finds out.”
Tension crept back into Heidi’s body. She wouldn’t fall back asleep now. Heidi had some power over Rhea, but she could never use it because then Rhea could tell Heidi’s secret. Not that she’d admitted to anything.
But the images of what Zach could do tormented her like the howling wind outside.
* * *
The radio squawked. Funny the places those things would pick up, and then sometimes when you needed them the most, they failed. But that’s why the SAR teams carried a couple of different kinds as well as a SAT phone. Isaiah also took his cell on rescues, which would give off a ping if kept on. Zach had commandeered all their communications equipment except, well, the avalanche beacons, but those weren’t exactly communication devices unless you were buried in the snow. Isaiah had turned on his beacon to transmit, anyway, but where they were, nobody was near enough to pick up that signal. No one even knew to look.
Snuggled inside the sleeping bag with his hands tied, he bolted up, oriented himself to his surroundings and spotted the radio on the floor next to Zach’s sleeping bag. Didn’t the guy hear that? Admittedly, the noise had to burrow into Isaiah’s head to get him to wake up.
David was calling to check on his team. Isaiah figured it might be better if he didn’t answer, let them start worrying sooner, except there was no getting them out of this place with the inclement weather and gale-force winds still screaming outside. At least morning had broken. That was an advantage they hadn’t had last night, and yet somehow they had survived.
He’d give God the credit.
David sounded agitated. Maybe...maybe Isaiah could somehow let David in on what was happening. Give him a clue, if nothing else, but only if Zach and Liam slept through this.
Isaiah worked his way free of the bag and scrambled over to pick up the radio with his hands tied. “I’m here, David!”
The next thing he knew, Zach sprang from where he slept and pressed his gun against Isaiah’s temple. Tension corded around his throat and tightened. He couldn’t speak.
“Isaiah! Finally. I thought you ran into trouble.”
He found his voice. “You could say that.”
Zach shoved Isaiah’s head with the gun. A clear warning.
Isaiah quickly added, “We’re still weathering the storm. But you can be sure we’re going to deliver the climbers down the mountain into the right hands.”
He wasn’t sure why he added those last words, but he had every intention of doing just that. However that played out. Whatever Zach thought he would pull off here, wasn’t going to happen if Isaiah—and he knew Cade and Heidi would be with him on this—had anything to do with it. He’d think of something before this was all over. Something before Zach killed them.
“How’s Adam? Did his team make it back yet?” Isaiah knew that Cade and Heidi would want to know about their younger brother.
“Yeah. Last night. Found a little boy who’d gotten lost hiking with his parents.”
“That’s good to hear.” At least someone had found success.
“I need your updates more frequently.”
“Sure, every hour?”
Zach snatched the radio from him. “If you do that again, you can say goodbye to the woman.”
When Zach put the radio to Isaiah’s mouth, his eyes narrowed.
“I’ll try,” Isaiah said, “but we’re getting buried here and we’re busy.”
Zach leaned in and whispered, “Heidi.”
Isaiah closed his eyes at his next words. “Don’t worry about us. You know we’ll be fine. I’ll contact you with coordinates for an extraction point. We’ll hike as far as we can first. Could be tomorrow maybe.”
“Is Cade around? Why doesn’t he answer his radio?”
What? Didn’t David trust Isaiah? But then Cade was his brother. Isaiah should understand that. “He’s outside, brushing snow off. Heidi’s in another tent.”
“Okay, then. You guys take care.”
“Tell him over and out.” Zach nudged him with the gun again.
Huh? They never used that. But Isaiah could use it now. The radio at his mouth, he said, “Over and out.”
Would David hear that for what it was? Would he pick up on the clue that Zach had forced Isaiah to drop?
The radio conversation over, Zach shoved Isaiah to the ground. He couldn’t stop the fall with his wrists tied. “You ever try that again and I won’t kill you. I’ll hurt you and leave you to die a slow death.”
“The radio had been squawking for a while, and you guys snored through it. Next time I’ll just let the command center wonder what happened to us. Let them think we need our own rescue team, if you prefer.”
Zach studied Isaiah, considering his words and that outcome. The tent shuddered, fierce wind breaking through the snow wall.
He growled. “It’s April, for crying out loud. Why is this happening?”
“This mountain range has some of the roughest weather in the world. That’s why. Your plane had the great misfortune of crash-landing here.” Isaiah wanted to know where they’d been heading. Had they come from the Alaska mainland running from an armored-car robbery there? Or were they leaving the Lower 48 on their way to Alaska or Canada? But he wouldn’t make the same mistake he’d made before and ask.
“Let’s pack up. We have to get going.”
“No. We have to wait out the storm.”
“There’s no time. I have four days, now three, to get where I need to be for my ride out of here.”
“If you wanted to go on a suicide mission, why did you call for our help? Huh? Tell me that.” Isaiah didn’t bother to rein in his temper. “You called us to help you out of here. Hear those winds out there? It’s a whiteout. We hike out there now and we won’t be able to see a thing. It’ll be worse than last night. At least we had the night vision goggles then.”
“Maybe he’s right, Zach.” Liam rubbed his tired eyes like a three-year-old. “Let’s at least wait until there’s a break in the storm. We could make some headway then.”
“I need to talk to the others on my team,” Isaiah said. “Figure out the quickest and safest way to the ice field. Believe me, I want this to be over with as soon as possible. Just like you.” Isaiah held out his hands. “Mind untying me now?”
Zach nodded to Liam. “Untie him, then go get the other one.”
Liam’s eyes widened. “You want me to go out there?”
“If you don’t want me to leave you behind when we leave, then yes, go and get him.”
Backing down, Liam shook his head. Zach trained his weapon on Isaiah as if he expected Isaiah to try something as soon as his hands were free. And when Liam left, he just might. But then he thought of Cade and of Heidi.
Liam grabbed his coat and put on his gloves. The tent was small, but at least it was warm.
Isaiah rubbed his hands and wrists. “I’m going to need Heidi, too. She’s part of the team.”
“It’ll get too crowded in here.” Zach shifted on his sleeping bag as if he was already feeling claustrophobic.
“Well, I’m sorry about that, but I need her help to plan our next move.” He needed her to be here with him. Needed to know she was all right after a night with Rhea, although he knew that Heidi could win that battle, if it came to that, hands down.
“All right.” Zach glared at Liam.
The guy unzipped the tent and cold and snow rushed inside. Liam hesitated and Zach kicked him the rest of the way out. There was a chance, though slight, that Liam would get lost altogether and wander into the blizzard, missing the tent. “The next tent over is to your left, Liam,” Isaiah shouted.
He wasn’t sure Liam heard him. He should be the one to go out there. “I don’t know if Liam has it in him to find the other tents in this storm.”
Zach scrunched up his face. “He’s not an idiot. He was out moving snow off the tents half the night. I think he’ll be fine.”
“Have you been out in that yet? Do you even know what you’re talking about?”
