Page 117 of The SEAL and the Sheriff

46

Sarah had left Miller with Nora.

She’d driven the ten minutes back through town with the radio turned up. Now she stood in the station break room making coffee she didn’t want. The spoon clinked against the mug. She added sugar. Stirred. Set the spoon down, then put it in the sink because holding it was giving her hands ideas about shaking, and she wasn’t having that.

The clock on the wall read 11:23.

Eleven minutes since Hudson’s last check-in. Four minutes until the next one.

Hudson knew how to survive impossible days. She’d trusted his competence before she knew what the cold did to his lungs. But now she couldn’t unknow it.

God.

She wrapped both hands around the mug. The second hand swept forward. Three minutes. She took a sip.

Walter appeared in the doorway. One look at his face was enough. “Hudson’s on the radio.”

Sarah set the mug down, coffee slopping over the rim.

The dispatch room was twelve steps down the corridor. She covered them in six and snatched up the handset. His breathing reached her before his voice.

Ice slid down her spine. “Hudson. Report.”

“Cord’s gone.” His voice was stripped raw, each word dragged through damaged lungs. “Ambush. Mercer stabbed… past Bowhill Ridge.”

Static tore across the transmission.

“They took Cord. Logging road… southwest⁠—”

She thumbed the handset. “Hudson?” Nothing. Only the hiss of white noise and the faint ghost of a carrier signal.

“Hudson, say again.”

More static. Shit. Sarah pressed the handset against her forehead. Behind closed eyes she saw him as he’d been that morning—holding a mug of coffee, hair still sleep-mussed, smiling at her.

The memory lasted less than a heartbeat. She opened her eyes. “Walter. Map.”

Walter followed her through to dispatch. The wall map was crowded with highways, logging roads and years of dry-erase notes. Sarah tracked the route the ambulance would have taken. Bowhill Ridge. The last confirmed check-in. The most likely location where Hudson’s transmission had died.

Walter dragged over a chair and climbed onto it, one finger landing on the main arterial south of the ridge. “Ambush happened somewhere here.”

Sarah nodded. “He said logging road. Southwest.”

Walter’s finger slid down the map. “Three logging roads cut southwest between the ridge and Dawson Junction.”

“The first?”

“Loops back to the highway after four miles.” He traced the route.

She shook her head. “Too exposed.”

“The second ends at the old quarry.”

“Nope.”

His finger tapped the third. It peeled away from the highway and disappeared into dense forest, twisting along the contours of the hills before narrowing into little more than a line on the map. No winter maintenance. No plowing. A road that only existed if you already knew it was there.

Sarah stepped closer.