Hudson: SEALs of Honor Book 27 Read online

  Hudson slipped in through the rear loading zone and made his way up to the main floor. He was careful to stay away from everybody. He wasn’t even sure what drove him to come back here, but something did. Something was off, and he couldn’t quite figure it out. His only excuse for this was his joy at seeing Avery again—sending his usual investigative instincts into some dormant hibernation.

  And, if that were the case, if Avery could cause such a jolt in his life, where just being with her rivaled his training, then in absolutely no way should he let Avery walk out of his life again. Mason was correct there. Hudson only hoped that, by making an adjustment to realign his relationship with Avery, he would regain his instincts too.

  Hudson expected the police to be barricading every door, but luckily they hadn’t gotten that organized. Hudson slipped in through one of the stairwell exits and headed upstairs. This side of the building was completely undamaged. He couldn’t hear any people, but still a lot of other noises and crackling remained, with sirens sounding outside. As he made his way up to the second, third, and finally the fourth floor, he opened the stairwell door and headed down to where his room was.

  It wasn’t very long before he came upon smoke filling up the hallway. A couple room doors were here. He kicked them open and checked inside but didn’t find anyone. As he kicked open the second-to-last door, using his shirt to hold over his nose and his mouth, he caught sight of one man lying on the floor. He raced over, bent to check if he was breathing, but that bullet hole in the center of his forehead completely nullified that.

  It was one of the two uniformed men Hudson had noticed earlier; he quickly checked this room for the second man. But the main room and the bathroom were otherwise empty. He pulled out his phone and took the best photo he could under these circumstances, before quickly stepping out into the hallway again. He checked the other rooms on this floor but found nobody here.

  Making his way back to the stairwell, he hesitated, went down to the third floor below, and did the same thing—searching the rooms for people. By the time Hudson made it to the second floor, where he’d seen the older lady, he went through the rooms on that floor. Checking one of them, Hudson found an older man lying on the floor. He checked him over and realized he was dead too. Frowning, he quickly took a photo of him and searched the room, looking for anybody else here. There was no one.

  Hudson made his way back down the stairway, snuck out the rear of the hotel, and walked to the front, where the chaos remained, and there he saw Dennis. He pulled him aside and said, “I know you didn’t authorize it, but I went back up and checked the four floors on that far end.” He pointed, while Dennis immediately frowned. “I opened every hotel room door, and this is what I found.” He held up a picture of the first man, in his uniform, with the bullet hole in his forehead, while Dennis swore and cussed. And then Hudson held up the photo of the second dead man. “And this older guy is on the second floor.”

  “Jesus,” Dennis said. “Smoke inhalation? Heart attack?”

  “I don’t know,” Hudson said quietly. “But it’s the same area where I found the older lady, who nobody can seem to confirm was registered here at the hotel.” Dennis looked at him in surprise. “Surely you don’t think she had anything to do with this?”

  “No,” he said in a blank voice. “I don’t think anything about it. I just think it’s, … if the older lady and this older man are related, I don’t know if she, even now, is still looking for him. Or, for that matter, if they were in completely separate rooms and don’t even know each other.”

  “But still it’s odd, isn’t it?”

  “Well, let’s just say I’ve seen odder things in my life, but this one definitely makes me stand up and take notice.”

  Dennis nodded and said, “Forward those photos to me.” And he quickly wrote down notes as to where they were located. “What are you doing now?”

  “I’ll check out the crowd,” Hudson said.

  Dennis looked at him sharply and then nodded. “Send me anything you find.”

  “Will do,” he said, and he disappeared into the shadows. He knew Dennis was trying to keep his gaze on him, and so Hudson deliberately slipped into a crowd where he wouldn’t be seen. It would take an awful lot for somebody to track him at this point. And that was his intent. He wanted to quietly watch the crowd, not raise any attention to himself, making sure that anybody here who was suspicious and who was focused on the chaos got Hudson’s undivided attention. For, if they had caused this event, they often hung around to watch it.

  Particularly firebugs. They liked to watch the results of their handiwork. The fire itself attracted them. The bigger, the better. They started off small, and then that wouldn’t be enough, and they had to go bigger and bigger, which is when the real upheavals came. But they almost always stuck around to watch. This hotel damage wasn’t so much from a typical arson fire as much as he was afraid it was terrorism on some level. He just wasn’t sure what he’d seen.

  He quickly sent the photo of the dead guys to Mason by text. Look what I found.

  Mason called him a few minutes later. “Jesus,” he said, “you got a week off. What are you doing there poking around, finding a murderer?”

  “More than one perhaps but definitely one,” he said. “And maybe I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” he said. “We’re still doing some checking on this end. It might help if we can find out who your dead military-looking guy is. I’m sure there’s some benefit to having you there. I just don’t know what it is at the moment.”

  Hudson snorted at that. “I can’t really say that there is any. But I can get some idea of what’s going on here at least. I’ve been talking to one of the local detectives—Dennis, the one you spoke to earlier, I guess—and I showed him the photos of the two dead men I found. I’d just gone back up, looking for survivors.”

  “But you didn’t find any, did you?”

  “Nope,” he said, “and here’s another weird thing. I helped an older lady down earlier from the second floor and got her safely outside. But, when I went back in now, in one of the rooms, third on the left from the stairwell on the north side, close to where I found her,” he said, “was that older man on the floor, deceased.”

  There was a contemplative silence for a moment on the other end, before Mason said, “Do you think it was a heart attack?”

  “I have no idea. No sign of any outward trauma. No obvious cause of death. It didn’t look like he’d been trying to get to the door or anything, and his expression wasn’t stressed or pained, nothing like that. He was just lying there, dead.”

  “Interesting,” Mason murmured.

  “Well, I don’t know about interesting,” Hudson said, “but I did tell Dennis about him.”

  “Well, they’ll have to retrieve the body, if nothing else.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “Right now I’m just keeping an eye on the crowd to see if anybody here is a little too happy about the whole mess.”

  “You can bet the police will be too.”

  “I hope so,” he said. “The last thing we need is to miss anything here.” He went to ring off, with Mason telling him to keep in touch. “And I mean, keep in touch,” Mason said. “We know very well how quickly this can turn into a bad deal for everyone.”

  “I know,” Hudson said, “but I’m really hoping it’ll be better than that.”

  “Still, the fact that you were there and that you saw these military-type men and then you found one of them dead …” Mason’s voice trailed off, as they both contemplated just what the hell that would mean. “Did they see you?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” he said quietly, “they did.”

  “Hell,” Mason said. “You know what that means.”

  “Oh, I do know what it means,” he said. “I just don’t know if it means anything in this particular instance.”

  “There were two of them, so are you thinking one killed the other?”

  “Do
n’t know, but it wouldn’t be shocking,” he said. “When you think about it, I really didn’t see anything. I just saw two men get off the elevator, and now one of them is dead.”

  “But if you were seen with them or if they saw you, there could be problems. Then the fact that an explosion occurred literally minutes after you saw them.”

  “Yeah, but the only way it makes any sense is if the guy who’s still alive had something to do with it and is trying to hide.”

  “Which we have seen plenty of too,” Mason said in exasperation. “Why can’t you guys ever just have a nice vacation?” he said.

  “Well, I’d like to, but, you know, that just doesn’t seem to happen very often.”

  Mason laughed. “We do find trouble even when we’re not on duty.”

  “And why is that?” Hudson asked in disbelief. “That shouldn’t be happening.”

  “Nope, it shouldn’t be. Except that we are trained to notice these things. Now watch your back.”

  “And Avery’s,” he said heavily. “I’m worried now that I shouldn’t have come here.”

  “Do you really think that you brought this into play?”

  He stopped for a moment, shook his head, and said, “No, I don’t, not really, although you mentioned that one terrorist wanting a deal just yesterday.”

  “It’s a potential we’re looking at, but we have nothing so far, so you being there is actually a help for Avery while all that’s going on, not a negative.”

  “I guess,” he said. “I just wish it hadn’t happened.” Just then he caught sight of something in front of him. He frowned. “Talk to you later.” He put away his phone and walked toward the guy shuffling around behind the crowd. He kept glancing around, as if trying to not be seen or looking for somebody, maybe both. But he was acting in a nervous manner that made Hudson immediately suspicious, what with the guy’s shoulders hunched and his hat pulled down over his face, as he looked side to side.

  Hudson got up behind him, so, when the guy turned to make a dart for freedom, he slammed right into Hudson. He reached over and picked him up, as he stumbled backward, then grabbed him by the shoulders and gave him a shake. “Hey, are you okay?” Immediately he snatched the hat off the guy’s head and took a good look. He didn’t recognize him at all.

  The guy went wild. “Lemme go, lemme go, lemme go,” he said.

  “Well, I would,” Hudson said, “but now you’re acting damn suspicious.”

  The guy looked at him in shock. “I didn’t have anything to do with it,” he said. “Nothing, I swear.”

  Hudson frowned and then shook his head. “Yeah, I’m not all that convinced.” He noted the temporary police headquarters set up on scene, and he marched the stranger up beside Dennis.

  The stranger screamed the whole way, and they were attracting a lot of attention.

  As they approached, Dennis turned toward Hudson and frowned. “What’s going on here?” Then he studied the man in front of him and groaned. “Gordon, is that you?”

  “Yeah, it’s me,” he said. “I didn’t do anything. Honest.” He looked over at Hudson. “This guy’s accusing me of something.”

  “I haven’t accused him of anything,” he said, “but he was acting damn suspicious.”

  “That’s because our friend here has a problem with fires. Don’t you, Gordon?”

  The guy shrugged uneasily.

  “What kind of a problem?” Hudson asked.

  “He likes to set them,” Dennis said. “He only got out of jail four months ago. And he’s been warned, well warned, to stay the hell away from anything like this.”

  “And what if he did it?” Hudson asked, studying the man quietly. He looked shifty and scared, but he didn’t necessarily look guilty.

  “Did you?” Dennis asked Gordon, his tone bored.

  Immediately Gordon shook his head frantically. “No, I was just watching. I figured if I watched, then I wouldn’t want to burn things, you know?”

  “But it’s watching and making you feel good that causes all this trouble.” Dennis’s gaze narrowed. “If I find out you had anything to do with this,” he said, “you know what’ll happen.”

  At that, the man trembled and grew pale. “No, no, no, no,” he said, “I didn’t do it. I didn’t.”

  Dennis looked over at Hudson and nodded.

  Hudson let him go. “Well, if I ever find you close to a fire again,” he said, “you can bet I won’t be as easy on you as Dennis was.”

  Gordon looked at him in a frantic manner. “I didn’t do anything,” he shouted.

  “Maybe not,” Hudson said, “but I want to make sure you’re not hanging around with somebody who did.”

  At that, Gordon’s face paled. He looked over at Dennis with a wary look and stammered out, “I didn’t do or know anything,” and bolted from them both.

  “Interesting reaction,” Dennis said. He studied the weasel running away.

  “You don’t want to go after him?” Hudson asked, studying the detective and wondering at what point in time things became official or not.

  “I know where he lives,” Dennis said. “Up till now he’s kept his nose clean and pretty well stayed away from all of us.”

  And, with that, Hudson had to be content. While he perused the rest of the remaining crowd, his phone vibrated. He found a text message from Avery.

  Still on time?

  Already four hours had gone by. He gave her a call and, when she answered, he smiled. “I’m only a couple blocks away.”

  “Good, so you’ll be here in what? Ten minutes?”

  “Something like that,” he said. “And, if you keep talking to me, I’ll be there in just a few minutes.”

  She chuckled. “Are you still okay to go out for dinner?”

  “Is there ever a day when I’m not up for a good meal where I don’t have to cook it?” he asked.

  She laughed. “Hey, I like my cooking too, but I’m even up for something different tonight.”

  “Good enough,” he said. “They also have good surf and turf there too, don’t they?”

  “Well, they used to,” she said. “I haven’t done that whole social scene for a while.”

  “Well, when you’ve done your work for the day, what do you do?”

  “Usually go home, watch a movie, and crash,” she said, “And weekends I’m out skiing most of the time.”

  “Alone?”

  “Well, sometimes alone. I belong to a club—about sixty of us—and we meet up on the mountain and find somebody to ski or board with.”

  “Well, at least you are not going alone,” he said. He wasn’t even sure how to feel about the fact that she was out boarding without anybody because that spoke to just how empty her life really was. “Isn’t it past time you had a partner?”

  She asked in exasperation, “Isn’t it past time you had a partner?”

  “I think so,” he said. “I’m really starting to think so.”

  “Oh, so what does that mean?”

  He hung up the phone and picked up his feet, racing toward the truck.

  Chapter 3

  When Hudson knocked on the door, Avery opened it and let him in with a big smile. “Wow, look at that. You’re not even damaged.”

  “I haven’t been that damaged over the years, have I?”

  “Absolutely you have.” And she listed off a litany of injuries that he’d had at different times when they’d met over the years.

  “Wow.” When she went on to add injuries specific to the last week off they had shared together, he admitted, “I forgot about those.” He shook his head. “You’ve been keeping better track than I have.”

  “Well, somebody needs to keep track,” she said in exasperation. “And somewhere along the line you need to keep yourself in better shape.”

  “I’m doing pretty well,” he said.

  “Maybe.” She waited until he grabbed a drink of water, then said, “Now, how about some food?”

  “I’m ready,” he admitted.


  “Good, let’s go.”

  Instead of driving, they decided to walk, since it was a beautiful late-September evening. She tucked her arm in his. “I’ve never really spent much time playing like a tourist around here, never taking time to enjoy the perks of this place. It just seems like I work and then go home again.”

  “Which is why it’s an interesting choice for you to be here. It’s been a couple years since I was here last, as we met in California the last few times.”

  She nodded. “I was freelancing back then, teaching seminars to wannabe bookkeepers, so doing a lot of traveling,” she said, “so California made just as much sense back then.” They kept on walking through the cool evening air, enjoying each other’s company and being outside. “I feel sorry for those people in that hotel,” she said, “and for the conventioneers.”

  “Yep, it’ll really be quite a mess trying to sort out all the reservations they had scheduled.”

  “Well, hopefully all of that was online and backed up,” she said. “I can’t imagine anything worse than trying to take care of that now.”

  “But it’ll also impact the flights due to come in,” he said. “Lots of people will cancel, though many probably didn’t find out in time, since the convention was due to start tomorrow, with out-of-towners coming in tonight, I bet.”

  “What a mess.” There seemed to be a weird buzz to the atmosphere as they walked. They heard people talking, others hugging each other in the midst of the recent disaster, but, in this case, it appeared to be mostly a property disaster.

  “I would like an update to find out if anybody was killed in that hotel,” she said.

  He stiffened ever-so-slightly.

  She looked over at him. “What? Is that a ghoulish thing to say?”

  “Not at all,” he said, but his voice was odd.

  “What do you know that you aren’t sharing?”

  “Well, if I’m not sharing, it’s because I don’t know if I should be sharing it,” he said in that odd tone again.

  “If you know something,” she said, “I’d appreciate it if you would tell me.”