Page 116 of The SEAL and the Sheriff

Julie stared at Hudson from behind trembling hands, her eyes wide and unfocused.

“Julie. Look at me.”

Her gaze connected with his.

“Mercer needs pressure on this wound. Can you do that?”

For a heartbeat she stared, then the medic surfaced. She dropped to her knees beside Mercer, reaching for the trauma kit. Her hands fumbled once before finding what she needed. Hudson squeezed her shoulder.

She drew one steadying breath, tore open a trauma dressing and pressed it against the wound. “Go,” she said, her voice shaky but certain. “I’ve got this.”

Mercer’s face was gray. His eyes found Hudson’s. “Go.”

Cord.

Still on the gurney. Still alive. His lips were blue and his hands trembled, making the metal gurney rattle. A man who’d survived a cardiac event only to discover the universe had a far worse day planned.

“Stay here.”

Cord stared at him. “There’s nowhere to fucking go.”

Hudson dropped out of the rear doors. Icy air hit him. His lungs seized. A full spasm this time, locking down before he could drag in enough air. He blinked. Steadied himself against the ambulance’s bumper. Snow fell around him in throbbing light.

An operator rounded the corner at a run. Hudson shoved the open rear door into his path. The man hit it shoulder-first and spun sideways. Hudson caught his vest, used the momentum already there, and sent him hard into the road.

Another operator was right behind him.

Hudson drew his Glock. His injured arm shook, his fingers sliding on the blood-slicked grip. Oxygen debt hollowed him out as every breath came up short, his muscles burning through fuel his lungs couldn’t replace.

His vision narrowed to a tunnel. The muzzle drifted right. He couldn’t hold the sightline. The operator’s hand snapped up. Yellow housing registered a heartbeat too late. Taser. The probes hit, and the world detonated.

Every muscle seized. Hudson’s fingers opened and his Glock dropped. His legs vanished beneath him. He hit the snow face-first, rigid, every nerve ending ablaze.

Current ripped through him in violent waves. When it stopped, awareness returned in fragments. Cold. Pain. A breath that wouldn’t fill. He couldn’t move. He lay in the snow as they took Cord.

Boots on packed snow. The rattle of the gurney. Cord shouting something he couldn’t make out. A vehicle door slamming. The throaty diesel engine revving hard.

Hudson clawed at the snow and got one shoulder off the ground. His arms shook under the weight of his own body. His lungs dragged in shallow, inadequate breaths and gave back even less.

Tires bit into the snow. A second SUV swung around the wrecked ambulance, plowing through roadside scrub, branches screeching along the side as it lurched toward a narrow logging road.

The taillights dwindled between the pines.

The ambulance lights kept pulsing.

Flash.

Darkness.

Flash.

Darkness.

Hudson forced himself onto one knee.

Too late.

The forest swallowed them whole.