Prologue
Fifteen months ago
Mt. Everest
6:10 a.m.
Harrison Conrad took a belay stance,watching while Felix and Luka Stenger, twin brothers from Switzerland, made their way across the ladder spanning the crevasse. One at a time, they stepped out over a seemingly bottomless fissure in the ice, their crampons making their steps on the ladder’s rungs awkward.
Felix went first, showing no hesitation, and Luka followed, pausing for just a moment before he took his first step.
“Don’t worry, mate!” Bruce called from the other side near the base of a massive serac, a grin on his face. “If you fall and your harness fails, it will only kill you.”
“Nice.” Conrad grinned, feeding Luka more slack.
He kept both hands on the rope, even though the stubble on his jaw itched from the barley flour that had been thrown at them during the Puja—the prayer ceremony—at Base Camp. He wasn’t religious, Buddhist or otherwise, but given the dangers of this mountain, he didn’t object to a bit of intercession on their behalf.
They’d hit the ice at 4 a.m. It was a perfect day on Everest, the sunrise in their eyes as they headed east up Khumbu Icefall, Everest and Lhotse before them. Today was their second day on the mountain. Yesterday, they’d gone up the Icefall to Camp One then come back down to sleep at Base Camp to give their bodies time to acclimate to the extreme altitude. Tonight, they would sleep at Camp One.
It was Conrad’s third time climbing Everest. He and Bruce had climbed the Seven Summits—the highest mountains on the seven continents. They’d also climbed the rest of the 8000-meter peaks, including K2, Annapurna, Nanga Parbat, and Makalu. But it was Felix and Luka’s first time up an 8,000-meter peak. The brothers had made a name for themselves climbing all over Europe, in North America, and in the Andes. Anyone who could climb the Eiger in winter without ropes could handle Everest.
Luka made it to the other side, stepped off the ladder, then turned to belay Conrad over the abyss.
Conrad waited for Luka to take up the slack, finally scratching his jaw.
“On belay!” Luka called.
“Climbing!” Conrad stepped out onto the ladder. It was actually two ladders lashed together, their ends overlapping in the middle. Beneath their rungs lay nothing but air, the void disappearing into a monotone blue of glacial ice. He took one step and another and another, enjoying the buzz of adrenaline.
A groan. A cracking sound.
The ground shook, pitching him to his knees, the ladder rocking beneath him.
He heard the others cry out and looked up to see the serac falling, tons of ice collapsing onto Bruce and the others.
“Fuck!”
It couldn’t end like this.
Something struck Conrad’s helmet, and he fell, the world around him going black.
* * *
Scarlet Springs, Colorado
Just after 7 p.m.
Kenzie Morgan kneltdown beside Gizmo, stroked the golden retriever’s silky chest to focus him, then unclipped him from his lead. “Okay, Gizmo. Search!”
Gizmo took off at a run, slowing to sniff some fallen timbers then moving on, his powerful canine nose leading him across the site of Scarlet Springs’ old landfill. The place had become an illegal dumpsite, but that made it a perfect location to test the skill of search-and-rescue dogs. Gizmo had forty-five minutes to find the hidden human remains to stay certified in HRD—human remains detection.
Kenzie followed after him, hustling to keep up. She knew that he was more than equal to the task. He was five years old now and had been working as an HRD and SAR dog for four years.
“Wouldn’t it be funny if he found an actual dead body?” JoAnne hurried alongside Kenzie, a clipboard in her left hand.
“Yeah, that would be hilarious.” Kenzie watched Gizmo, who skirted around a rusted box spring and headed toward a pile of discarded lumber.
A mountain cottontail darted out of the pile, catching Gizmo’s attention.
