Chapter 34
Hudson kept his eyes on the road and failed spectacularly to keep his mind off the kiss.
Fifteen years.
Fifteen years of convincing himself that what they’d almost been was over. That wanting her would eventually stop.
Then she’d leaned into his hand.
Kissed him.
And the careful life he’d built around never expecting to see Sarah again had collapsed. Part of him was scared shitless. Another part kept glancing at her, unable to believe he’d somehow been handed the possibility of a second chance.
She was looking out the passenger window. The silence between them was warm and strange, full of the thing that had happened but neither of them had figured out how to talk about yet.
He drove into town with Cord’s phone call sitting beneath everything. Whatever had changed between him and Sarah would have to wait. He parked in the station lot and was out of the Volvo and around to her side before she’d unclipped her seat belt.
This time there was no look, no lecture about how she was the sheriff and perfectly capable of opening her own doors.
“Thanks.” She gathered herself to climb out without looking at him.
He reached across, pressed the release on the seat belt and guided the webbing clear before it could snap back across her ribs. Then he stepped back and offered her his hand.
She glanced at it for the briefest moment, then slipped her fingers into his. “Okay,” she said softly.
They crossed the lot together. On the station steps his hand was light at her elbow, and she let it stay. But once they were inside, he let go. Some things still felt too new to test in daylight.
Walter was standing inside the entrance.
His eyes went to Sarah first, and his whole face tightened with the furious protectiveness of a man who’d spent years watching her back and hadn’t been there the one night it counted. Then his gaze dropped to the space between them. The space where Hudson’s hand had been a moment ago.
His eyes came up and met Hudson’s. The same low disapproval had been banked there since Hudson’s first day in town. But beneath it was a man revising a private conclusion.
Hudson held his gaze.
Walter tipped his head toward the interview rooms. “He’s in interview room one. Walked in an hour ago. Alone. Asked for you by name. Says he’s Cord Blake.”
The name went through Hudson’s chest like a round finding its mark. All these years, and now Cord had walked through the front door, sat down, and asked for Sarah.
“Did he say why he’s here?” Sarah crossed the bullpen, shrugging off her jacket with a wince Hudson didn’t miss.
“He won’t say. Said the only person he would speak to is the Sheriff.”
“Asked for me?” Sarah’s surprised glance flicked to Hudson.
“Yup.” Walter folded his arms.
“Okay.” She motioned to Hudson. “This way.”
Hudson followed her. He’d waited so long for this moment.
He had a shape for Cord in his head. A traitor, the man who’d traded their location for money and walked out the other side into a new name and a clean life.
All while a better man went into the ground.
Hudson had needed that shape. A monster was easier to hunt than a man.
He put his hand on the door.
Sarah’s hand landed briefly on his forearm. “I’ve got the room. You watch.”
With a nod, he let her go in first.
Cord was sitting, hands knotted on the table. He looked up with haunted eyes as Sarah and Hudson entered. This wasn’t the composed operator Hudson remembered, the man who’d been better than anyone at going still and unreadable when it counted. This was someone who hadn’t slept in days.
Cord’s sleeves were shoved past his elbows. His nails were bitten raw. Underneath the table, his foot never stopped moving. This was the man Hudson had once trusted with his life, stripped of every trace of the operator he’d been.
Hudson hated that pity arrived before rage.
Cord’s eyes landed on Hudson’s face. Emotion passed and then was gone again. “Kane.”
Hudson didn’t answer. He didn’t trust what would come out.
Sarah pulled out the chair across from Cord and sat, her badge catching the fluorescent light. Hudson took the wall by the door where he could see all of it and let her run it.
She didn’t hurry. Hudson folded his arms and waited.
“Mr. Blake. I’m Sheriff Meyer. You asked for me.”
“My wife Nora is missing. I can’t find her on my own. I need help.”
Hudson had seen seasoned investigators mistake speed for control. Sarah didn’t.
“Nora’s missing?” Her voice remained even. “Start with the last time you knew she was safe.”
“Two days ago. I watched her leave work and get home safely. Yesterday she wasn’t at the house.
” Cord dragged a hand down his face. “Her car was there. Her coat was there.” His hands closed into fists on the table.
“She never hurt anyone. She’ll be terrified.
It’s eighteen degrees out and she has no coat. ”
“Why didn’t you come sooner?”
“Because until this morning I thought she’d left to visit her mom. Then I found out they had her.”
“We searched your fishing cabin five days ago,” Sarah said. “You weren’t there.”
Cord nodded. “I knew you would.”
“So where were you?”
“Moving.” His mouth twisted. “If I stayed somewhere too long, they’d find me. Cabins. Boats. Hunting shacks. Anywhere I thought I’d bought another day.” He looked down at his hands, pushing his wedding ring around his finger with his thumb. “Turns out I wasn’t the one they were watching.”
Hudson clenched his teeth. Pieces tried to connect in his head. The man who was responsible for Ben Taggart’s death. The man falling apart over a missing woman. They shouldn’t have fit inside the same body, but here they were, three feet away, both of them true at once.
Sarah frowned. “If you knew you were in danger, why come here now?”
Cord hissed out a breath. “Because—” His thumb skimmed his wedding ring.
“This wasn’t supposed to touch her. I gave them everything fifteen years ago.
Took the deal, disappeared and built a clean life with Nora.
Then they found me. They knew my name. My history.
Where Nora worked. What time she came home. ”
Sarah’s expression sharpened. “They threatened her?”
“They didn’t need to say it twice.” Cord shook his head.
“The first job was supposed to buy our freedom. Then there was another. And another. Every time I did what they wanted, I told myself I’d bought her one more safe day.
” His laugh held no humor. “Turns out there was always going to be one more.”
Cord looked at Sarah. “They took her because they think it’ll keep me quiet.” His gaze swiveled to Hudson. “They’re wrong. I’m done. Find Nora. After that, I’m yours.”
Hudson had imagined this moment so many times. None of those versions had ended with Cord surrendering himself to save the woman he loved.
“Who knew where she’d be?” Sarah asked. “Who knew her routine, the house, her schedule?”
“That’s not—” Cord shook his head, leaning forward, urgent now. “You’re asking the wrong questions, Sheriff. You don’t have time.”
Sarah’s face was impassive. “How do you know that?”
“Because I know who’s got her.” Cord’s eyes came up, and for the first time they were steady. “And I know what he does with leverage once it stops being useful.”
Hudson pushed off the wall as Cord’s gaze cut to him.
“The men who ran the sheriff off the road and the shooter at the cabin? Contractors. They do the work, but someone else gives the orders.” Cord leaned back in his chair.
“Who?” Sarah asked.
“The man who found me. The one who’s been cleaning up behind me. He decides whose name goes on the list.”
“Who is he?” Sarah’s voice was level.
“I don’t know his name.” Cord’s gaze bounced from Hudson to Sarah, and the last of whatever he’d been holding onto gave way. “Right now they have Nora, and the man paying them has no reason to keep her alive one hour longer than she’s useful.”
“Where?” Hudson asked.
Cord’s Adam’s apple wrenched up then down. “There’s a hunting cabin north of Black Ridge. Old logging road off Mile Marker Forty-Seven.”
Sarah didn’t move. “How do you know?”
“I’ve been there. It’s where they took me when they found me again.” His voice shook. “That’s where she’ll be. I’ll take you. You have a better chance of getting her out alive than I do.”
Sarah pushed back her chair and stood.
Less than forty-eight hours after a concussion.
A rolled truck. Now she was about to lead a rescue into the wilderness after armed contractors.
Every protective instinct Hudson had screamed no.
But experience told him she would go anyway.
His job was to make sure she came back. Which didn’t stop him from wanting to lock the station door and tell the rest of Alaska to deal with its own damn problems.
Sarah caught his eye. Don’t. The corner of her mouth lifted.
He’d watched her take control of an interview with the man he’d spent a year hunting. She was exactly where she belonged. God, he wished that wasn’t true.
She opened the interrogation room door. “Walter.”
The deputy appeared almost instantly.
Sarah jerked her head in Cord’s direction. “Cuff him. Then call Search and Rescue. Get EMS rolling. Notify State Troopers we’re responding. Pull maps and property records for Mile Forty-Seven. I want approach routes before we leave.”
She looked back at Cord. “We’re bringing Nora home.”
Her hand gripped the doorframe. “Marshal?”
Hudson looked up.
She raised an eyebrow. “You coming?”