She hauled herself upward with everything she had. Her boots scraped the wall, caught for half a heartbeat, slipped again.The rope lurched, lighter—then heavier, as if the glacier itself had grabbed hold of Elliot.
Her stomach dropped. The ledge had given way.
“Elliot!” she screamed, and suddenly his weight yanked her down another brutal inch. Instinct took over—she reached, grabbed,caught him.
They slammed together chest to chest, their harnesses tangling, the rope the only thing tethering them to the world. For a breathless second, they dangled nose-to-nose in the white void. His face was raw with frost, his eyes wide with terror and something else—something that steadied her.
Rue forced a smile, voice pitched low and calm, even though her pulse hammered like a war drum. “When I said I’d keep you warm in Antarctica, this isn’t what I had in mind.”
An exasperated laugh escaped him. Typical Elliot.
Then the rope above them shrieked. Fibers popped, snapping one by one like gunfire.
Rue tipped her head back just in time to see the last threads fray.
Shit.
eighteen
Dominic Wilde couldn’t rememberthe last time he’d slept.
Two days?
Three?
The hours blurred together in a haze of frantic phone calls, emergency meetings, and the constant, gnawing dread that had settled in his gut like a block of ice since Elliot had gone dark.
Elliot wasn’t like the rest of them. He never—never—missed a check-in. His brother was meticulous to the point of obsession about protocols, especially communication protocols, so if he wasn’t responding, it wasn’t because he’d forgotten or decided the rules didn’t apply to him.
Something was definitely wrong.
Elliot was in trouble, and the thought made Dominic’s chest tighten until he could barely breathe.
“How long has it been since his last check-in?” he asked, pacing the length of the Wilde Security ops center for what felt like the thousandth time. The massive digital clock on the wall showed 3:17 AM, but time had lost all meaning.
Davey looked up from his laptop, the blue light casting shadows under his eyes. “Fifty-eight hours, seventeen minutes. Nothing since his first check-in with Rowan and me.”
Dominic ran a hand through his hair, which already stood on end from the countless times he’d repeated the gesture. “And we’re sure the satellite uplink is working?”
“Triple-checked,” Daphne confirmed from in front of her massive bank of computers, her voice tight with worry. Daphne never showed too much emotion, so the fact that she was now told him all he needed to know about how bad the situation was. “The signal’s not getting through from his end.”
“That’s it,” he said, spinning toward Davey. “I’m going after him.”
Davey’s head snapped up. “Dom?—”
“Don’t ‘Dom’ me. Our brother is out there, and if he’s not responding, it’s because he can’t.”
The image of Elliot trapped somewhere in the Antarctic wilderness, injured or worse, filled his head. Nightmare fuel kind of stuff, and he wanted to punch something.
“I understand how you feel,” Davey said, his voice softening. “Believe me, I feel it, too. But we need to be strategic about this. Charging in without a plan won’t help Elliot.”
“We’ve had fifty-eight hours to be strategic! What we need now is boots on the ground.”
He watched Davey’s expression shift into that familiar look of older-brother patience that usually made Dom want to punch something. But behind it, Dominic saw the same fear he felt. Davey was just better at hiding it.
“Griff is already in Chile,” Davey said, rising from his chair with a slight wince—his old injury always acted up when he was stressed.
“He needs a team.”
