Page 37 of The SEAL and the Sheriff

“What’s wrong?”

He pointed to a stretch of snow a few feet ahead. At first, she saw nothing. Just wind-packed drifts and exposed rock.

Then it clicked. One section lay flatter than the rest. Compressed.

Hudson crouched without disturbing it. “He backed out over his own footprints.”

Sarah stepped around behind him, careful now, seeing what he’d seen. The disturbed snow ran in a long, narrow rectangle tucked behind the shelter of the rocks, protected from the worst of the wind.

Someone had lain here.

Hudson pointed to the uphill end. “Prone here.”

He slowly turned his head back toward where they’d come from, following the shooter’s view. Sarah lifted her head and followed the sightline.

He wasn’t just investigating the scene. He was standing inside someone else’s plan. The cabin sat below them across the frozen lake, insignificant against the white. From here the front door wasn’t just visible.

It was perfect.

“Snow’s compressed in two evenly spaced spots.” Sarah crouched beside the marks, her fingers hovering over them.

“Bipod.” Hudson’s eyes narrowed. “Legs set, weapon stable. He wasn’t improvising a rest off a rock. He brought the right gear and knew exactly how to use it.”

“And he arrived before we did.” Sarah studied the depth of the body impression, the faint crust where his warmth had melted the snow and allowed it to refreeze. “He was here for a while. This wasn’t someone who got lucky finding us. The position was prepared in advance.”

She rocked back on her heels and let the thought land. What the hell was going on here?

“He knew exactly where we’d stop.” Hudson’s eyes tracked down to the cabin below. “This was never chance.”

Cold cinched around Sarah’s ribs as she pushed to standing and scanned the ledge.

Casings.

She found them three feet to the right of the prone position, ejected clean and left without ceremony. She photographed them where they lay, then picked one up by the rim with her gloved fingers.

“Not what most hunters around here carry for moose,” she said. “And nobody lies up on a ridge watching a fishing cabin for deer.”

Hudson took it and held it up to the light as if he was fitting one piece of a larger picture into place. “Six-five Creedmoor.”

“Creedmoor?”

“Flat-shooting. Good ballistic performance at a distance. Popular with precision shooters.” He rotated it, examining the headstamp. “The casing alone doesn’t prove anything. The firing position, the bipod, and two rounds landing that close from this distance do.”

He handed it back to her. “This wasn’t some amateur throwing rounds near us to make noise. Whoever fired could have ended it and chose not to.”

A message, then. A warning delivered by a man patient and skilled enough to ensure either of them would be dead if that had been his intention.

Sarah looked back down the slope at the cabin, small and pale against the white.

The ride in. The search. Hudson making her laugh. The two of them walking out of the cabin together. All of it watched through a scope and then the shooter had opened fire.

Sarah closed her hand around the casing until the brass bit through her glove.

Whoever this was hadn’t just been watching Cord.

He’d been waiting for them.

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