Page 113 of The SEAL and the Sheriff

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—