Page 38 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

Before she did something she couldn’t blame on her least favorite time of year.

Nine

It didn’t surprise Templeton that his trooper’s response to what had happened between them in her cozy little SUV was to pretend it hadn’t happened at all. He knew all about compartmentalization.

Once she decided to go back to Fool’s Cove with him, she snapped back into her ultra cop mode. She drove down the hill and asked him only one thing as she navigated the streets through the evening snow: where she could drop him off.

Because she obviously didn’t plan to spend one more moment of that evening with him than necessary.

“I was thinking dinner and a show,” Templeton drawled. “Now that we’re dating.”

“Your options are to give me an address of a place I can drop you off or I’ll leave you on the street right now,” she replied, all clipped and cool and not there for his nonsense.

It was his own personal curse that he found her standoffishness refreshing. Especially when he still had the taste of her in his mouth.

Templeton laughed, then gave her the address of one of the places Alaska Force considered a safe house inJuneau. Which was to say, a house belonging to one of their network of helpers and friends, who could be depended on to come up with an extra bed when needed.

And in the morning, Kate picked him up at the precise dot of 0900 and drove them both to the airport north of Juneau, where Templeton had a buddy waiting to fly them out to Fool’s Cove.

It was another gloomy, gray day, but that didn’t change the beauty of the landscape they flew through. All these years later and Templeton still couldn’t seem to get enough of it. The clouds clinging to the mountainsides. The brooding sea.

And best of all, that stretch of cove that was the best and only home Templeton had ever had as an adult.

He waved off his buddy. Then he turned to Kate, who was standing on the end of the dock, looking up at the lodge and the assorted cabins with an expression he couldn’t read on her face. It was windy today, making it feel much colder than it was, but Templeton enjoyed it. He liked the way the weather slapped him in the face, prickling him into life. He liked to be reminded that whatever else he was, whatever he might do in the course of his day, first and foremost he was alive.

He reached down and snagged her bag, hoisting it up and starting down the dock.

“I don’t need you to carry my bag,” she said in what sounded like a combination of surprise and outrage.

“Noted.”

“I can carry it myself.”

“Yes,” he said patiently, without adjusting his stride. He could hear her feet hit the dock behind him. “I understand you’re able-bodied. Good talk.”

And he let her fume as he kept going, doing absolutely nothing to shorten his stride this time as he led her up the stairs and into the lodge itself.

The team was finishing up the morning briefing, which was an extralong one today, with the deadtransient and arson to puzzle over on top of their other current missions. Templeton marched inside, tossing Kate’s bag into an empty chair, then claiming one for himself. And he settled in to watch with maybe too much amusement as Kate looked around at the assembled collection of Alaska Force members, fixed that cool smile to her face, and stood where she could keep her back to the wall. At attention.

With them, but certainly not one of them.

Isaac was standing over by the flat-screen TV, where Oz normally put up various schematics and photographs. He smiled.

Because Isaac always smiled directly at any potential threats.

“Trooper Holiday,” he said, with a genial sort of chuckle in his voice that made a wise man sit up a little straighter. “If you can’t beat them, join them, right? It’s a time-honored strategy for a reason.”

But Kate did not disappoint.

“I may not think you’re responsible for the string of crimes plaguing this division,” she replied coolly. “But I’m certainly not joining your private army.”

Blue let out a laugh from where he was sitting, his tablet in his hand. “You tell them,” he said. “Never be a member of a club that would have you. Everybody knows that.”

Templeton surveyed the room. He knew that Rory and Griffin were out doing some recon fieldwork around the sites of each fire. That was in addition to the teams farther afield, in play in more distant locations. But Jonas was here, sitting over by the big stone fireplace, while Bethan was about as far away as it was possible to sit from Jonas—diagonally across the great room—and still be in the same space.

Interesting things about Jonas and Bethan included Jonas’s distinct, unusual objection to her hiring, when he typically offered either no opinion or quiet support tonew members. Also the fact that the two of them never made eye contact. They never sat next to each other, close to each other, or anywhere that could even be loosely described as near each other. And when they were forced to speak to each other, or couldn’t avoid partnering up for some reason during Isaac’s horrendous workouts, they were so excruciatingly polite to each other that it could cause dental trauma to anyone in the vicinity.

Fascinating, Templeton thought, the way he always did, filing away the weirdness between the two of them.

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