Chapter 46
Sarah had left Miller with Nora.
She’d driven the ten minutes back through town with the radio turned up.
Now she stood in the station break room making coffee she didn’t want.
The spoon clinked against the mug. She added sugar.
Stirred. Set the spoon down, then put it in the sink because holding it was giving her hands ideas about shaking, and she wasn’t having that.
Eleven minutes since Hudson’s last check-in. Four minutes until the next one.
Hudson knew how to survive impossible days. She’d trusted his competence before she knew what the cold did to his lungs. But now she couldn’t unknow it.
God.
She wrapped both hands around the mug. The second hand swept forward. Three minutes. She took a sip.
Walter appeared in the doorway. One look at his face was enough. “Hudson’s on the radio.”
Sarah set the mug down, coffee slopping over the rim.
The dispatch room was twelve steps down the corridor. She covered them in six and snatched up the handset. His breathing reached her before his voice.
Ice slid down her spine. “Hudson. Report.”
“Cord’s gone.” His voice was stripped raw, each word dragged through damaged lungs. “Ambush. Mercer stabbed… past Bowhill Ridge.”
Static tore across the transmission.
“They took Cord. Logging road… southwest?—”
She thumbed the handset. “Hudson?” Nothing. Only the hiss of white noise and the faint ghost of a carrier signal.
“Hudson, say again.”
More static. Shit. Sarah pressed the handset against her forehead. Behind closed eyes she saw him as he’d been that morning—holding a mug of coffee, hair still sleep-mussed, smiling at her.
The memory lasted less than a heartbeat. She opened her eyes. “Walter. Map.”
Walter followed her through to dispatch. The wall map was crowded with highways, logging roads and years of dry-erase notes. Sarah tracked the route the ambulance would have taken. Bowhill Ridge. The last confirmed check-in. The most likely location where Hudson’s transmission had died.
Walter dragged over a chair and climbed onto it, one finger landing on the main arterial south of the ridge. “Ambush happened somewhere here.”
Sarah nodded. “He said logging road. Southwest.”
Walter’s finger slid down the map. “Three logging roads cut southwest between the ridge and Dawson Junction.”
“The first?”
“Loops back to the highway after four miles.” He traced the route.
She shook her head. “Too exposed.”
“The second ends at the old quarry.”
“Nope.”
His finger tapped the third. It peeled away from the highway and disappeared into dense forest, twisting along the contours of the hills before narrowing into little more than a line on the map. No winter maintenance. No plowing. A road that only existed if you already knew it was there.
Sarah stepped closer.
Walter stepped down from the chair. “It’s a dead end.”
She didn’t answer. The road ended, but a few miles north, a narrow finger of land reached into the bay.
Morrow Point. The cannery.
“It’s not a dead end.”
Walter followed her gaze. “Morrow Point?”
“Yes. They’re not escaping by road.” The pieces locked together. “They’re driving to an extraction point.”
Walter swore under his breath. “The water.”
“It’s closer than the airfield. Quieter.
No checkpoints. And once they’re on the water, we’ve got miles of coastline to search.
” Her finger followed the road toward the point.
“Right now they’re trapped on one road. Once they hit the water, the search area explodes.
They don’t have to outrun us. They just have to reach the boat. ”
“If we’re wrong?”
Sarah looked back at the map. “If I’m wrong, we’ll redeploy. If I’m right and we wait, we lose them.”
Walter held her gaze for a second. “I’ll bring the truck around. Long guns and plates?”
She nodded. “Give me five minutes.”
He was already moving before she’d finished speaking.
Five minutes later, Sarah carefully shrugged her body armor over her winter coat. She headed outside, where Walter was already behind the wheel of a department truck.
“I called the Coast Guard,” she said as she eased in, careful of her sore ribs. “Nobody gets in or out by sea.”
“Wyatt?”
She secured her seat belt. “I called dispatch first. Then Wyatt. Doesn’t hurt to go direct.”
The truck pushed through the snow, the wipers fighting a losing battle against flakes plastering themselves across the windshield.
“State Troopers are responding to the ambush. EMS is en route. Statton’s securing the scene until they arrive.”
Walter kept his eyes on the road. “And Nora?”
“Miller’s with her.”
That was everyone. Everyone except Hudson. She stared out at the white blur beyond the glass. Hudson was alive. That was a fact. She wasn’t going to turn it into a fear. And if he could move, he would head for the cannery.
Walter glanced across. “You think we’ll beat them there?”
“If Hudson’s still in the fight, they’re already behind schedule.” Her gaze returned to the dark road unspooling ahead. “We’ll get there first.”
Walter grunted. “I never liked that building.”
“No.” Neither had she.
The sheriff’s patrol boat was freshly repaired, fueled, and waiting at the municipal dock. They changed vehicles without words. After they pulled on life jackets, Walter stowed the long-gun case and Sarah cast off the lines.
The diesel caught on the second turn.
She pushed the throttle forward, and the boat surged away from the dock.
Within seconds, Aurora Cove disappeared behind a curtain of snow.
The bow slammed through the chop, rising and dropping, spray exploding across the windshield.
The impact jarred through every bruised inch of her body.
She locked her elbow against the console until the pain receded, then pushed the boat faster.
Beside her, Walter braced against the console, one hand gripping the rail.
Snow drove sideways across gunmetal water.
The channel south of Morrow Point was the only deep-water route out. Once the Coast Guard were in position, Hale’s path to open water was gone.
And if Hudson arrived first?
The engine protested, but she didn’t care. Her face was numb with cold when Morrow Point emerged through the blowing snow.
The cannery stood on its stilts above the water exactly as it had three days ago. The processing hall. The packing room. The cold storage beyond. The covered dock where Petey had spent ten minutes complaining about the drainage.
Her radio crackled. ““Coast Guard response boat to Aurora Sheriff.”
Wyatt.
Sarah lifted the receiver. “Coast Guard, this is Aurora Sheriff, copy. Go ahead.”
“We’re established south of Morrow Point. Suspect vessel moored. No visual compromise.”
Sarah watched the dock through the blowing snow. “Maintain a covert position. Hold unless they break for open water.”
“Copy.” A beat. “You got enough people?”
Waiting for backup meant giving them time to put Cord aboard. She looked at Walter. He lifted one unimpressed eyebrow.
“Enough for now.”
Seconds passed.
“Sarah...”
She knew exactly what Wyatt meant. “We’ll bring everyone home.”
“Roger that. Coast Guard holding.”
Sarah throttled back a hundred yards from the cannery.
The engine dropped to a low growl as she angled toward the lee of the dock, using the pilings and the abandoned loading structure to hide their approach from the warehouse windows.
She eased the patrol boat into the shadow of the loading structure and killed the engine.
A light crossed an upper window, vanished, then reappeared in the next window farther along. Someone moving through the cannery.
Okay.
Sarah shrugged out of her life jacket, drew her rifle from the case and checked the chamber before slinging it across her chest. Her sidearm stayed holstered.
If Hudson was mobile, he’d keep coming and find a way to reach Cord. This time, he wasn’t doing it alone.
Sarah scanned the warehouse doors and the dark line of windows facing the bay. “On me, Walter. We clear together.”
Walter took his rifle, caught one of the dock pilings and pulled them alongside.
Sarah stepped onto the ice-slicked dock. “Let’s go.”