Page 27 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

Ten days later, Kate pushed her way out of her office building into a blustery Juneau afternoon with no idea what to do with herself.

You haven’t taken leave in years, her captain had told her over the phone from Anchorage, no doubt sitting there at the same desk where he’d promoted her time and time again.

I was under the impression that the fact I haven’t taken leave is why I’ve been promoted as often as I have, she’d replied. Perhaps unwisely.

But it had been a long ten days. She wasn’t entirely surprised when her boss sighed.

The thing is, Kate. This is a weird one. I don’t want to suspend you.

You have no grounds to suspend me, she hadn’t been able to keep herself from saying.

No one is accusing you of anything. But the fact of the matter is, somehow you’re smack in the middle of this. Which means you can’t be involved in the investigation.Which means I’m down the one person who could probably make sense of this whole mess. And look atthat. It’s the holidays. Perfect opportunity for you to take a holiday break, which gives us enough time to tie some bows around what we already know.

Kate had needed a moment to fight to keep her voice calm.Which is that I had nothing to do with a body turning up in my plane.

Of course you didn’t, her boss had said.This is procedure, nothing more.

But she’d heard that note in his voice. That this was happening. That she had no control over it.

We’ll reconvene in the New Year, he’d said.Hopefully with some answers.

“Merry freaking Christmas to me,” Kate muttered to herself now, but the cold, damp wallop of the wind and the mountains took her breath away.

It had been snowy and in the twenties this morning. Now it was a relatively cozy thirty-seven degrees or so, though it was already tipping into twilight at two thirty in the afternoon. Kate could smell more snow in the air as she trudged out of the temporary office she was now no longer using, not far from the Capitol Building.

She went and got in her car. Then sat there, waiting for it to warm up.

Waiting to have some idea what she was supposed to do with time off she didn’t want. During the one time of the year when she needed to be busy. When she depended on it.

Should she stay in Juneau? Or go back to Anchorage, where she could try to convince her captain to reinstate her when they were face-to-face? Though he hadn’t sounded as if there was any wiggle room—

When the rap on her window came, she jumped.

She expected to see someone from work at her window, possibly out here to commiserate with her unwanted leave—not that Kate had made a huge number of friends in her couple of months here, chasing down Alaska Forceleads. Not that she was much for making friends, full stop.

She fixed her work-appropriate smile on her face anyway—

But it was Templeton.

And for a long, hard kick of a heartbeat that made her a little too dizzy, she couldn’t make sense of what she saw.

Templeton Cross. Standing in a parking lot in Juneau, when he was supposed to be roaming about the islands or off doing military maneuvers or running missions abroad.

And the thought that she was gaping at him like a starry-eyed schoolgirl made her jab her finger on the window’s down button.

“What are you doing here?”

He smiled, infuriating man that he was. That big, careless grin. “Waiting for you, obviously.”

“You can’t lurk around outside—”

“I don’t lurk, Kate. Men my size are too big to lurk.”

“Does that mean that you had me under surveillance? Because that’s not acceptable. And I should tell you that I take a very dim view—”

“Hey. Trooper. Breathe.”

It was a distinct order, and Kate... obeyed him.

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