No Going Back Read Online Free

direction in the bleak moorland landscape. They certainly wouldn’t be the first to do so.
    The searchers had covered less than half a mile on the new track when conditions changed for the worse. It was Reynolds who noticed it first. Daniel was busy watching the dog work, while trying to keep his footing on the loose stones of the path, when he felt a hand tap his shoulder. Slowing his pace only fractionally, he turned his head.
    â€˜What is it?’
    Reynolds nodded significantly to their right. ‘Look!’ he said urgently.
    Daniel followed his gaze and had to blink and refocus. The world was shrinking. Somewhere between them and where the horizon had been just a few minutes ago, the brown carpet of wet heather now disappeared under a soft wall of greyish-white. Even as Daniel watched, the wall appeared to roll closer, swallowing up even more of the view.
    â€˜Shit!’ He wasn’t worried about the mist interfering with the dog. With a sense of smell forty times sharper than a human, Taz had no need of good visibility to find the lost girls, and the trail seemed to be a good one. His concern was that the dense fog would make the already difficult terrain downright treacherous, not only for his group but also for the youngsters ahead.
    â€˜We will keep going, yes?’ Reynolds looked anxious. He held out a small handheld device. ‘We won’t get lost – I have GPS.’
    â€˜Well, we might need that before this is over, but I’d be happier if it could tell us where the bogs are.’
    A flicker of alarm crossed Reynolds’s face. The chance of blundering into one of Dartmoor’s infamous bogs clearly hadn’t occurred to him.
    â€˜We should be all right as long as we’re on the path, but you’d better tell your brother to stay close. We don’t want to get separated when that lot hits us.’
    Daniel picked up the pace once more, scrambling up the steep rocky path after the eager dog.
    It seemed the girls had had the good sense to stay on the path, for Taz followed it unerringly, over the next rise, down a steep incline to a stream of bright tumbling water and up an equally steep slope to the base of the rocky outcrop. The water in the stream was icy, a fact to which Daniel could unhappily testify, as the only rocks that stood above the surface proved too slippery to use as stepping stones, depositing him knee-deep in the February torrent.
    Daniel cursed as his boots filled with water and he attacked the slope with legs that were beginning to burn with fatigue. From the colourful language behind, he guessed his companions had fared no better.
    Halfway up the hill, the fog caught them, enfolding them in a smothering white cloud, like some huge damp duvet, deadening sound. All at once visibility was a 3-foot circle round their feet and Daniel’s contact with Taz became restricted to the tug of the lead as he leaned into his harness some 10 feet ahead.
    Rocks and low clumps of gorse took on sinister shapes, looming out of the gloom and just as quickly disappearing once more.
    After ten minutes or so, the dog paused, and feeling his way cautiously forward, Daniel found that they were at the foot of the rocky cliff they had seen from the other side of the valley. Taz cast around the base of the rock, apparently unsure, allowing his human followers a grateful moment or two to catch their breath.
    Daniel looked at his watch. They had been on the moor for almost an hour, keeping up a steady pace. Surely the two girls couldn’t be very far ahead.
    As if reading Daniel’s thoughts, Reynolds suddenly said from close behind, ‘When we find them, you must move back with the dog, straight away. Elena will be terrified if it gets too close.’
    â€˜I’ll do my best, but the dog will naturally reach them first.’ Reynolds’s dictatorial tone grated on Daniel, but he didn’t let his annoyance show. The man was under severe emotional