Page 44 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

“Guilty as charged,” Kate said. And reminded herself to smile. Friendly and open, which she was perfectly capable of doing when she was on the job.

And not to start carrying on aboutintimate friend timeagain.

“I should warn you right off the bat that cops make me a little anxious,” Everly announced before Kate could do or say something embarrassing. She was wearing that faintly glazed look that always made Kate smile. She’d seen it so many times before. A littletooalert. A littletooworried. A little too ready to be arrested for no reason. “I can’t help it. I had a whole thing with the Chicago PD. Although if I’m entirely honest, I’ve never been comfortable around the police, without ever having interacted with them much. Does that mean that deep inside, I’m a criminal waiting to get out?”

“You’re talking a lot,” Bethan observed.

“I am,” Everly agreed. “I really am.”

“Alternatively,” Kate said calmly, “we could drink some of that wine over there. Like normal people do.”

“Wine,” Everly breathed, her eyes lighting up as if Kate had offered her the Holy Grail. “Of course, wine.”

“You finish cooking,” Bethan said. “We’ll handle the wine.”

Glasses were found and filled. Everly fussed around with the meal, putting a big bowl of pasta in the middle of the little table in the kitchen, and then, soon enough, they were all sitting down with wine in hand, freshly baked bread that smelled deliciously of butter and garlic, pasta with a red sauce, and a bowl heaped high with meatballs to add as desired.

And for a few moments, there was only quiet as they passed the bread around. Helped themselves to pasta, sauce, and meatballs. Then settled in to take the first few bites, with sips of wine in between.

The next time they all looked up and around at one another, Everly’s shoulders had gone down from around her ears. Bethan was smiling. And even Kate felt nice and mellow all the way through.

“How do you like living in Alaska?” Kate asked them.

“This is my second winter here,” Everly replied. “Blue keeps telling me not to get all full of myself that I made it throughonewinter. He says the second one is harder, because you can’t pretend you don’t know exactly how long the snow is going to last. And how dark it’s going to be, and stay, until the spring ice breaks up.”

“He’s not wrong,” Kate said with a laugh. “But that’s a little dramatic. It’s a hard winter, there’s no getting around that. But the trick is finding out what you find beautiful about it. Even on the grayest, gloomiest, most bitter and uninspiring day, there’s always something beautiful.”

If she was sentimental about anything, it was Alaska.

“I’m personally excited,” Bethan said. “I like a challenging environment.”

Everly smiled. “Why does that not surprise me?”

“Not to ruin the challenge for you, but this is the coast, so you’ll have a pretty mild winter,” Kate told Bethan. “Relatively speaking.”

“I’m from Chicago.” Everly rolled the bowl of her wineglass between her palms. “I would not describe the winters there as mild. I can’t decide which I found worse, if I’m honest. They’re different.”

“It always surprises me when people move to Alaska from places like Hawaii. Which they do a lot, for some reason.” Kate shook her head. “It seems like such a bad idea. It’s the absolute opposite.”

“Opposites attract,” Bethan said with a shrug. “I grew up in Santa Barbara. I used to think the weather was harsh if the thermometer dipped below seventy-two degrees.”

“Alaska’s a whole lot like California, really,” Kate said, surprised to find herself grinning. And without having ordered herself to produce a grin for a specific purpose. “California has three seasons, as far as I can tell. Summer, Fire, and that one day of Rain. Up here in Alaska we also have three seasons. Ice, Mud, and Dust.”

And it was much later when she waved Bethan off, back down on the wooden paths that connected all the cabins close to the waterline, that Kate realized she’d enjoyed herself. Really, truly enjoyed herself. That laughter and easy conversation that didn’t center on work was whatenjoying herselfwas. Most surprising of all, though she’d long since accepted the fact that she was neither charming nor entertaining unless she was playing a part in a work scenario, Everly and Bethan hadn’t seemed to get that memo.

Maybe she would find that baffling, but not tonight, when she was nice and warm from wine and pasta.

Kate shoved her headlamp in her pocket as she made her way past the lodge and the still-lit cabins connected directly to it, where she knew Alaska Force memberswere taking their shifts and running missions all over the world. Somewhere inside, she knew she should look into that more deeply. Maybe nose around a bit, here in the darkness, with fewer eyes on her.

A week ago—even twenty-four hours ago—she wouldn’t have hesitated.

But tonight she kept going, following the path away from the lodge and off to where her guest cabin sat back from the water, built into the hillside.

Because for once—just for once—she wanted to keep holding on tight to this odd, buoyant feeling. Maybe it was the wine. It probably was. But whatever the cause, Kate didn’t have a lot of bright, happy sorts of nights tucked away in her memory. That wasn’t what her life was like. She’d never sat around a table telling stories like that.

Her stories were usually depressing and told at the direction of attorneys. Or chock-full of grim gallows humor appropriate for conversations over hard alcohol with other cops.

She’d never found herself telling stories about her childhood that focused more on the gritty survival element—in a lighthearted sort of way, which she would have said was impossible. She’d never told anyone about what it was like to forage in the frozen tundra when she was a grumpy twelve-year-old who felt nothing but grotesquely misunderstood when her grudging contributions had been unappreciated, or what it was like to grow up so off the grid that her first experience with a television had terrified her into nightmares.

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