Page 114 of The SEAL and the Sheriff

A dark SUV exploded out of the tree line, its suspension bottoming out as it cleared the ditch and accelerated into the ambulance’s rear quarter.

The impact threw Hudson sideways. His seat belt locked across his chest. His shoulder hit the door. His head cracked against the side window. The ambulance spun.

Snow. Sky. Road. Trees. Everything rotated in a blur of white and steel.

Archie’s body snapped against his belt, his forearm sweeping across the switch panel. Red and white lights burst to life across the windshield.

From the rear, equipment tore free from its restraints. Julie cried out. Cord’s cardiac monitor became one continuous alarm.

The tires hit a ditch with a bone-jarring impact. The ambulance lurched before coming to rest at a drunken angle, hood buried in snow, the engine sputtering into silence.

Crimson and white strobes pulsed through the storm, washing the snow in slow, rhythmic flashes.

Hudson squeezed his eyes shut, ears ringing.

Sarah.

45

Blood-red light pulsed through Hudson’s eyelids.

His cheek was pressed against the dashboard. Blood ran from his temple, pooling in the hollow of his eye socket. His collarbone was a fiery point of vicious agony. Somewhere behind his left ear, a high-pitched tone sang.

Sound arrived in pieces. The muted tick of an engine cooling. The hiss of a ruptured hose beneath the hood. Julie crying behind the partition. Boots on compacted snow. Outside. Coming closer.

Hudson kept his eyes closed, waiting.

The rear doors shrieked open. Clipped professional orders. A language Hudson had spoken himself for years. No shouting. A team, not hired guns. The passenger door handle clicked, and the door swung open. Cold air poured into the cab, making his diaphragm clench. He held the spasm in. Let his head rock slightly with the movement of the door. Dead weight.

The operator leaned in. Gun oil, cold sweat, and the synthetic bite of tactical fabric.

The gun barrel touched his temple. The operator’s free hand reached across Hudson’s chest, heading for his holster.

Hudson let him commit. Let the man’s weight shift forward, his balance extending past the point of recovery, his attention split between the weapon he was reaching for and the unconscious man he’d already dismissed.

Hudson’s hand closed around the barrel. The other hooked into the man’s vest. He yanked the operator into the cab.

The confined space stole the man’s room to maneuver. Hudson drove the heel of his palm upward beneath his jaw. The man’s knees buckled. Hudson shoved him backward through the open passenger door, followed him out, hooked a boot behind his ankle and dumped him hard onto the packed snow.

Before the man recovered, Hudson drove a knee into his ribs and ripped the weapon from his hand. The operator curled around the impact. Hudson reversed the pistol in his grip and brought the butt down hard against the side of his attacker’s head. The man went limp.

Hudson tossed the pistol beneath the ambulance then shoved himself upright. The road tilted hard to his left. He caught the ambulance door before his knees followed it.

The cold wrapped around him like a closing fist. His lungs constricted, registering the temperature drop with vicious, intimate precision.

Air shifted. Hudson pivoted.

A second operator brought his pistol up. Hudson caught the barrel with his left hand and ripped it offline. The weapon discharged, the muzzle flash blooming white. Heat seared across his palm.

He seized the man by the back of his vest and drove his face into the ambulance’s side mirror. Bone crunched, blood smearing the glass dark. The pistol dropped into the snow.

The man staggered back, then came at him again.

Hudson stepped onto the running board, and his left leg gave. He hit the ambulance hard with one shoulder, barely staying upright as the operator swung. The punch skimmed past him.

Hudson didn’t try to recover his balance. He stayed low, then drove his good boot into the man’s knee and hauled on his vest as the leg collapsed, using the man’s momentum to slam him into the side panel. The man slid down, leaving a bloody streak.

Hudson sucked in a breath. Too shallow.