Untraceable by Elizabeth Goddard Read Free Book Online Page A

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