Chapter 15
The evidence bag containing the casings rode heavy in Hudson’s jacket pocket as they descended the ridge.
His mind kept reconstructing the engagement as he picked his way down through tangled bushes, snow sliding loose at the side of his boots.
Two rounds.
One measured correction, then nothing. No follow-up and no attempt to exploit their movement. A shooter at that distance with that level of skill didn’t miss twice by accident. Whoever had lain on that ridge hadn’t been guarding Cord’s hiding place. The shots hadn’t said stay away from the cabin.
They’d said stop looking beyond it.
It was good tradecraft. Hudson almost respected it. Whoever had planned this understood investigations. Give law enforcement one obvious answer and they’d spend hours proving it wrong before asking what had disappeared while they were busy.
“You good?” Sarah threw the question over her shoulder as she navigated a steep section.
“Fine.”
She hadn’t guessed, she’d seen the firing lane before he had. He didn’t examine that too closely. Didn’t trust himself to, not yet, not with the adrenaline still singing in his blood.
He spotted Captain first—a dark shape against the white birch trunks, head high, blowing hard enough that the breath came off him in short, furious clouds. The horse’s hooves had churned the snow into a ragged circle, the lead trailing loose and chewed-looking where it had caught on a low branch.
Bon Jovi was worse. He’d wedged himself sideways against the same stand of birch, eyes white-rimmed, dancing left and right as if the ground itself might still be the enemy. His lead had nearly slipped free of the branch it had snagged on. One more good pull and he’d be gone entirely.
Hudson reached for Captain’s lead.
“Don’t.” Sarah touched his elbow.
When he stopped, she didn’t grab for the lead. Hands loose at her sides, voice low and even, she waited.
Captain’s ears swiveled toward her. The stamping slowed. After a long moment, the horse took one step, then another, until his nose was pressed into her open palm and his breathing had dropped back to something steady.
This was how she worked. No grabbing or forcing. Just patience and the quiet certainty that whatever she was waiting for would come to her on its own terms, if she gave it enough room. He looked away before the thought found somewhere else to go.
Working with Sarah felt unfamiliar. He wasn’t carrying her. He was thinking with her.
Neither of them said much on the ride back. Hudson let Bon Jovi choose the trail. His attention remained elsewhere. The timber to the west. The open ground behind them. The ridge they’d just left, shrinking between the trees. Old habits. Some things would never leave him.
The cold sank deeper into his jacket now that the adrenaline had finally burned through and left nothing behind but tired muscles and the dull ache where his lungs had worked harder than he wanted to admit.
He didn’t need to fill the quiet. There wasn’t much left to say, and Sarah seemed to feel the same, riding a horse length ahead of him with her hat pulled low, her shoulders finally loose.
Bon Jovi edged closer to Captain until the two horses walked almost shoulder to shoulder. Sarah glanced over at him and gave him a tired smile. He let Bon Jovi walk where he was.
The stable was dim when they got back, the last of the light coming gold and low through the open door. Sarah dismounted and led Captain inside. Hudson swung down and followed with Bon Jovi, hooves loud on the wooden boards, the day finally catching up with both of them.
Sarah went straight to Captain’s side, already reaching for the girth as though her hands needed something to do.
Hudson caught the girth before she loosened it. “Give him a minute.”
She looked up at him.
“He’s still keyed up,” Hudson said. “Give him a minute before you ask anything else of him.”
Captain stamped once, as if in agreement.
Sarah straightened, considering the horse and him. She didn’t argue. They waited together until Captain calmed and his ears stopped flicking at every small sound. Only then did Hudson reach past her and loosen the girth himself with the same patience she’d used on the trail.
“You’re good with him,” she said.
“I had a good teacher.” He didn’t look up from the buckle. “Bossy, though.”
That got the smallest huff of something almost like a laugh out of her. They worked in comfortable quiet after that—blankets, brushes, the soft, ordinary business of putting two animals away for the night.
But his attention kept sliding to Sarah, and he brushed the same patch of Bon Jovi’s shoulder three times before he noticed. The line of her shoulders had eased, snow still melting in pale tracks through her hair where her hat had slipped. He hadn’t seen her this relaxed all day.
He’d stopped thinking of Sarah Meyer as Wyatt’s little sister.
It wasn’t a revelation. It was an admission.
He’d stopped comparing her to the girl she’d been. The woman in front of him required no comparison at all.
She bent to brush the last of the snow from Bon Jovi’s flank and muttered something dry about the playlist needing an update after a day like this.
Hudson laughed, and she looked up at the sound.
Bon Jovi shifted his weight. Leather creaked softly somewhere behind him. Dust whirled gold in the last of the light.
She stepped around Bon Jovi’s shoulder at the same moment Hudson did. One moment there had been comfortable space between them. The next it had narrowed to a breath.
Sarah’s eyes lifted to his, and his heart leaped.
He had the absurd certainty that if either of them spoke, the moment would break.
A lock of hair lay against her cheek, damp with melted snow.
His hand lifted to brush it away.
Stopped.
He wanted her too much to make the touch casual.
He let his hand fall.
Sarah’s breath hitched, and she stepped back. She looked down at the brush still in her hand as though she’d forgotten why she’d picked it up in the first place. She gave a small shake of her head, almost to herself. “Good night, Hudson.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She set the brush on the rail, gathered her jacket tighter around herself, and walked out into the dark toward her truck and didn’t look back.
Everything in him wanted to follow. But he stayed where he was and let her go. Fifteen years ago he’d walked away because he’d believed leaving was the kindest thing he could do. Rushing her now would only prove he hadn’t learned a damn thing.
Maybe she’d stepped away because she wanted to. Maybe because she needed to.
Either way, Sarah got to choose what happened next.
Bon Jovi shoved him hard enough to make him stumble. Hudson caught himself against the stall rail. Bon Jovi nosed him and exhaled a long, gusty sigh into his palm.
Hudson looked toward the empty stable door. “That obvious, huh?”