Page 23 of The SEAL and the Sheriff

“The day’s not done with us yet.” She eyed his rental. “That isn’t fit for these roads. We’ll take my truck.”

The drive took fifteen minutes. Sarah drove one-handed around curves that would have had most visitors backing off the accelerator. Every time she turned her head a loose strand of hair brushed her cheek before the heater blew it away again. With an effort, Hudson forced his attention to the road.

The town thinned, then disappeared. Dark spruce crowded both shoulders where the plow had cut through fresh snow.

At some point the road stopped feeling like it led somewhere and started feeling like it led to someone. This was the part he never liked.

The house was small, and a porch light burned yellow above the front door. Two pairs of rubber boots on the doormat. A coat hung on a hook visible through the window.

Someone lived here.

Someone who expected another person to come home and had left the porch light on for them.

He followed Sarah to the front door, spotting that the porch steps were glazed with fresh ice.

His hand closed around her elbow because evidently his body had stopped asking permission before making decisions where Sarah Meyer was concerned.

She looked down at his hand, then up at him. “I know.”

He released her immediately. “Right.”

Sarah rolled her shoulders and knocked.

It took a while. Finally the door opened on a chain. “Yes?”

She was younger than Hudson had pictured. Dark hair pulled back, glasses, pearl drops in her ears. Her eyes went from Sarah’s badge to Hudson and stopped there. Something shifted in her expression—a woman recognizing the arrival she’d spent days dreading.

“Nora Mercer? Ma’am, I’m Sheriff Meyer. This is Deputy U.S. Marshal Kane.” Sarah’s voice had gone into the register she used at the bar—calm, level, designed to keep a room from going anywhere bad. “We’re looking for a man named Jake Mercer. We understand he lives here.”

The chain didn’t come off. “What’s this about?”

“Is he here?”

“No.” Too fast. “He’s been gone four days. Said he had a few days at the cabin. Fishing.” Her eyes went to Hudson again, lingered. “Has something happened to him?”

“We’re not sure yet,” Sarah said, which was true and also not an answer. “Can we come in?”

The math ran behind her eyes—strangers at the door, badges, a man gone four days without contact. She landed on the side of letting them in, because the alternative was standing on her own porch not knowing.

The chain came off.

Sarah went inside first. Hudson took a last glance at the surrounding countryside and followed her in.

Nora wore a pale blue cardigan. One hand stayed wrapped around the front of it as she led them inside, holding it closed at her throat. The house was warm enough to make him loosen his collar with one finger after the dry cold outside.

A wood stove worked hard in the corner and the air smelled faintly of coffee and vanilla.

The kitchen and living room shared the same space. A pound cake cooled on a wire rack beside the stove and a knitted blanket had been abandoned across the arm of the couch. One mug sat in the sink. Another waited upside down beside the coffee maker.

Across the room, Sarah was already cataloging everything.

Photographs lined the wall above the couch. A fishing trip. A Christmas tree. Nora laughing at something outside the frame.

Nora smiling in the arms of a man. Cord.

Sarah took the chair nearest the window. Hudson waited until she was seated before taking up position by the door. From here he could see the kitchen, the hallway. Sarah. The fact that his brain included her in the same assessment annoyed him more than it should have.

Men’s work boots were paired neatly at the door. Hudson looked away. He didn’t need to see that side of Cord.