Page 24 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

“I suggest you change your unbridled so-called honesty to something more respectful,” she managed to say, sounding almost like herself again. “And quickly.”

“Here’s the thing, Kate.” And Templeton had the audacity to grin at her, and not the way he had before. Because this time he wasn’t doing much to hide the glint of steel in his gaze. “I spent a long time figuring out who I was. I’m not about to change that on a dime because an uptight cop doesn’t like me. You don’t have to like me. In fact, I’d be a little insulted if you did, since I don’t really speak cop and never have. But I’ll remind you that calling you by your name—or by any name—isn’t breaking a law.”

There was no reason she should be gritting her teeth together. She made herself stop.

“That entire speech is problematic, Sergeant.”

She expected one of his booming laughs, but instead he gave her more of that steel and intensity, and she found she was holding her breath.

“I was born problematic, Trooper. I don’t know how to be anything else. And I didn’t come looking for you. You came to us. To me. If you find all of this”—and he waved a hand in the general direction of his impossibly perfect torso, then out toward the rest of Fool’s Cove and, presumably, all of Alaska Force—“a problem, go ahead and remove yourself from the problem anytime you like. But if you’re going to stick around, maybe stop lecturingme. Maybe do your actual job and realize that we’re not the threat. Just a thought.”

And the worst part of that speech, she thought when he stepped around her and kept going, sauntering on down the beach as if it weren’t cold and frigid and as if he could hang out outside all day long without noticing the temperature, or her, was that he was right. She’d gotten personal.

When had she allowed herself to getpersonal? Kate would have been the first to point out to anyone who asked that she didn’t have that in her. She didn’t get personal. She got to work.

She ordered herself to do that now, feeling a bit grim as she marched down the cold beach after him.

She’d come here expecting to find more evidence to indicate that Alaska Force was exactly what and who she’d assumed they were. Instead, she found them disconcertingly... sane. Her gut told her they were on the level.

It was her history that argued otherwise, and she didn’t like that at all. She didn’t understand it, either. The rugged Alaska wilderness did seem to lend itself to peoplewho sometimes banded together with ill intent, and Kate had distinguished herself as the investigator best equipped to determine if the group in question was headed for the kind of danger zone that led people to throw around words likecult.She’d investigated a handful of other such groups already this fall. Two were family groups looking to live off the land, no matter how harsh. Another was religion-based, seeking to step away from the modern world. All were no danger to anyone except, arguably, themselves—if they weren’t up to the rigors of the Alaskan winter.

But Kate hadn’tfelt thingswhile she’d been investigating these groups, except a profound sense of gratitude that she was no longer an unwilling member of a group like theirs.

She had no idea why this was any different. She wanted to believe it was because Templeton and his friends were the questionable mercenaries she’d imagined they were, but she didn’t think they were. She wanted to believe they were either sick or greedy, but that wasn’t the impression she got anywhere in this pretty little cove.

The only problem she could find reliably was herself.

And she could blame it on Christmas all she wanted, but she thought that actually, the trouble was her.Inher. And she didn’t need to hang around these islands compounding her errors. She needed to get herself back to Juneau and her actual life and away from this man who for some reason made her feel like she was someone else entirely.

“I’d like you to take me back to Grizzly Harbor,” she told Templeton when she caught up to him at the base of a different set of stairs leading up to the sprawling cabins farther up the steep hill. “I’ve seen all I need to here.”

“Why am I guessing that’s bad news?” he asked, but he didn’t sound particularly worried.

“It’s neither good news or bad—” she began, grabbing hold of her tattered professionalism as best she could, but his mobile went off.

And his entire demeanor changed. He went from lazy and easy to powerfully switched-on and completely focused the moment he picked up the call.

“Yeah, she’s over here with us,” he said, and his dark gaze locked to hers.

Kate stiffened. Templeton made a few noises, then hung up, never shifting his gaze.

“That was the harbormaster back at Grizzly Harbor,” he said. “When was the last time you checked that seaplane of yours?”

“What do you mean?” But when he didn’t elaborate, she blinked. “At approximately seven forty-five this morning, before meeting you on the docks. I stowed my overnight gear and called in.”

“The ferry came in a little while ago,” Templeton said. “And they thought maybe some fool got drunk and froze to death overnight, the way they do.”

“Are you telling me there’s a person in my plane?” Kate demanded. “Why wasn’t I called directly?”

“They called the Troopers, Kate. But then they called here because people in town know you’re already out here with us and a whole lot closer than the nearest Trooper station.” Templeton studied her in a way she didn’t like at all. It sent a dark, tumbling shiver of foreboding straight down her spine. “There isn’t a person on your plane; there’s a body. And he didn’t freeze to death. He was stabbed.”

Six

Suddenly, Kate felt as if she were starring in a movie about her own life, one she was both acting in and watching at the same time.

It was a movie about an Alaska State Trooper who had to make her way back by boat from a remote cove packed full of military operatives to a small fishing village where her seaplane was now a crime scene. And she had the distinct, dislocating sensation that she was watching this strange movie, shot through with dread and uncertainty, unspool right there before her.

Kate had felt like this before. She recognized it was what her court-appointed psychological counselor had calleddisassociation, back when she’d been a teenager. She’d just never imagined that she would ever have the occasion to feel this way again.

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