Chapter 44
Hudson had spent the first ten minutes learning the cadence of the vehicle. The next ten assessing the road conditions. The last twenty cataloging everything that might become a problem.
Forty minutes on the road. Archie, one of the two critical-care medics, was at the wheel. His partner, Julie, rode in the back with Cord and Marshal Mercer. Owen followed with Gunner in the SUV.
Hudson flexed his fingers. Nothing unusual. So far. The tree line slid past, and the radio crackled.
“Check-in. Status?”
Sarah.
Professional. Calm. As though an hour earlier she hadn’t whispered come back with her hand flat against his chest.
He picked up the handset. “All clear. Making good time. Road’s empty.”
“Copy. Fifteen minutes.”
Three words. He set the handset back into its cradle.
A minute later, the radio clicked over to the convoy channel and another voice broke across the speaker. “How are things up front?”
Owen.
Hudson contemplated the road ahead. “Quiet.”
Static. The ambulance tires hummed over compacted snow.
“So.”
Hudson frowned at the radio. “So what?”
“The sheriff.”
Hudson’s fingers curled against his thigh. “Owen.”
“I’m not saying anything.”
“Good.”
“I’ve never seen you stop scanning a parking lot because a sheriff walked across it.”
Hudson kept his eyes on the road. Snow. Trees. Another sweeping bend disappearing into white.
“How long have you two?—”
“It’s not a discussion, Owen.” Hudson checked the side mirrors.
“It’s barely a question.”
Archie shot him a curious glance. Hudson met it just long enough for Archie to decide he didn’t actually want to know.
The silence stretched.
Owen’s voice came back, stripped of the teasing. “Do you know what’s next?”
Sarah barefoot in his shirt, looking at him over the rim of her coffee cup.
“No,” Hudson admitted. “I don’t.”
“Good.” Owen laughed, warm and genuine. “That’s the right answer.” The radio clicked as he signed off. Hudson switched back to Sarah’s channel.
Outside, the road curved and began to climb. But for the first time in years, the destination was less important than the return. The spruce closed overhead until branches brushed the roof of the ambulance with a dry hiss, shedding powder snow across the windshield.
Hudson reached for the handset. “Sarah, we’re approaching the ridge. Signal’s about to drop. Back in fifteen.”
Her reply came through a wash of static. “Copy. Fifteen minutes, Hudson.”
Then the radio was quiet. He tried the channel once more. Nothing. Sarah would be watching the clock.
Hudson set the handset back in its cradle. The road curved left. Then right. Snow blurred the edges of the asphalt until the forest seemed to lean inward, engulfing everything beyond the headlights.
No traffic.
Another bend slid past. Even with the coast road closed there should have been traffic. A logging truck. A maintenance pickup. A local in an old Ford who thought four-wheel drive made him immortal.
Nothing.
Archie shifted his grip on the steering wheel. Hudson’s hand covered his pistol. Through the partition, Mercer looked up from the rear compartment. Their eyes met in the mirror. Mercer tipped his chin.
You feel it too?
Hudson answered with the smallest nod.
Julie’s pen scratched across Cord’s chart while the cardiac monitor kept its steady rhythm.
The heater rattled beneath the dashboard.
Ordinary sounds. The ones you noticed when everything else went too quiet.
The road straightened. Three hundred yards ahead, something interrupted the clean white line of the highway.
A dark shape across both lanes. Too square to be a snowdrift. A vehicle positioned perpendicular to the road. No hazard lights. No driver standing outside waving traffic down.
Shit. “Stop the vehicle.”
Archie glanced at him. “What?—”
“Brake!”
Archie stamped on the brakes. The ABS hammered through the floor and the ambulance slewed sideways.
The seat belts locked as the ambulance pitched forward. Behind the partition, equipment crashed against cabinet doors, and Julie caught herself against the bulkhead with a sharp gasp.
Cord’s monitor shrieked.
Hudson keyed the radio. “Owen.”
Static.
In the side mirror there was nothing behind them but falling snow. Hudson leaned toward the side window, searching the tree line. More fucking trees. A ditch edged by scraggly bushes.
Nothing moved but swirling snow.
“Owen, we’ve got a roadblock. Vehicle across both lanes, approximately three hundred yards south of?—”
A deep diesel engine bellowed behind them. Hudson twisted in his seat.
A logging truck burst from a snow-covered logging road, its tires throwing slush as it swung broadside across the highway until both lanes to the rear were blocked by steel and timber.
The radio burst into life. “Hud?—”
A heavy impact boomed through the radio. Metal crashed into metal. Beneath the static and the grind of metal came one sharp, explosive bark. Gunner. The radio went dead.
Roadblock ahead. Logging truck behind. Trees and ditches on either side. Owen cut off. No exit.
Fucking kill zone.
Sitting still made them a target. Fifty yards ahead, the ditch shallowed where an overgrown road cut through the trees. The road was narrow and snowed over, but the ambulance would fit.
He jabbed a finger toward it. “Forward. Move!”
Archie floored the accelerator?—
A dark SUV exploded out of the tree line, its suspension bottoming out as it cleared the ditch and accelerated into the ambulance’s rear quarter.
The impact threw Hudson sideways. His seat belt locked across his chest. His shoulder hit the door. His head cracked against the side window. The ambulance spun.
Snow. Sky. Road. Trees. Everything rotated in a blur of white and steel.
Archie’s body snapped against his belt, his forearm sweeping across the switch panel. Red and white lights burst to life across the windshield.
From the rear, equipment tore free from its restraints. Julie cried out. Cord’s cardiac monitor became one continuous alarm.
The tires hit a ditch with a bone-jarring impact. The ambulance lurched before coming to rest at a drunken angle, hood buried in snow, the engine sputtering into silence.
Crimson and white strobes pulsed through the storm, washing the snow in slow, rhythmic flashes.
Hudson squeezed his eyes shut, ears ringing.
Sarah.