Page 53 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

“Oh, let’s not play that game. It happened.”

Kate rolled her eyes. “I told you that you had an opportunity. You wasted that opportunity. That’s it. It’s gone, never to return.”

He threw her a dark look that brimmed with his particular brand of amusement, which made her want to smile back. Obviously, she frowned instead. But that look danced around inside her, making her feel all the things she’d been telling herself she didn’t feel since she’d woken up that morning-after with a hefty dose of buyer’s remorse.

“Tell yourself whatever you have to, Trooper,” Templeton drawled. “We’re just getting started.”

“And again, that’s a giant pass from me.” Kate smiled at him, cool and faintly malicious, which she found settled her nerves considerably. “Youcan start whatever you want. You have two hands. Go wild. But I very rarely repeat myself. And I never repeat mistakes.”

His laugh filled the SUV. It filled her, too, and she told herself she hated that feeling. But that was a lie. A definite, no-wiggle-room, full-on lie. She was melting inside and between her legs, she suspected he knew it, and now she waslyingto herself.

Talk about slippery slopes.

“Keep telling yourself that,” Templeton murmured with that total confidence of his that should have made her want to heave. But that wasn’t the reaction she had at all.

And when they pulled up to a squat little house, witha variety of questionable outbuildings and surrounded by run-down looking cars, Kate realized that she’d forgotten to get as anxious as she might have otherwise.

Kate told herself Templeton couldn’t possibly have done that deliberately, that there was no method to his madness, but she couldn’t quite make herself believe it.

She shook that off as best she could and tried to concentrate on the task at hand.

Her cousin lived in the sort of community that troopers always found challenging. It was impossible to have any element of surprise, pulling up in recognizable state vehicles, particularly when the people who lived in places like this were typically well acquainted with all the local law enforcement officers.

But this wasn’t Kate’s division. And Templeton’s SUV didn’t look like it was Trooper issue. It was too glossy. Too impressive.

“They’re going to think you’re a drug dealer,” Kate pointed out.

“Whatever gets them to open the door,” Templeton replied as they both pulled on their gear and adjusted their weapons.

Kate had studied her cousin’s file. She knew that he was on his third wife. That he had all kinds of kids. But he didn’t live with them off in the bush somewhere, under harsh conditions and even harsher rules that he made to exalt himself. And he didn’t direct them all to break laws and try to literally blow up the government, so she was inclined to think of his life as an upgrade.

It didn’t feel much like an upgrade when she climbed out of the car, pulled her hood tighter around her face to block out the snow, and trudged toward the uninspiring front door of the prefab house painted a sullen, peeling blue, with its huge icicles hanging down, proclaiming its lack of insulation. She ignored the anxious churning in her belly, made sure to stand close enough to the door to avoid the icicles if they fell, and knocked. Hard.

“We’re being watched,” Templeton said quietly. That didn’t surprise Kate at all. She’d seen the lights in the other frosted-over windows in this sad little neighborhood, and particularly in the house in the next clearing. She knew that the neighbors were watching. It was par for the course.

She knocked again.

“William?” she called loudly. “It’s your cousin Kate. I just want to talk to you.”

She heard the usual sounds of shuffling and banging around inside. A loud television suddenly muted. She waited, angling her body, as the dead bolt was thrown.

The door swung open, and the light spilled from inside into the drawn-out twilight with the snow coming down. And then Kate was face-to-face with a family member for the first time in years.

William wasn’t the kid she remembered. He’d grown up. He looked like an odd mix of Kate’s father and his own, and he sported a dark mustache, a scraggly beard, and a visible neck tattoo that crawled up toward one ear.

And he looked about as thrilled at this reunion as Kate was.

“What the hell, Katie,” he said after a long pause, his dark eyes glittering in a way that reminded her, against her will, of her father’s long monologues and the cold, stark rooms they’d all huddled in for warmth on days a lot like this one. “If I wanted the family over for Christmas or whatever this is, it wouldn’t be you.”

Thirteen

Templeton watched Kate’s reaction while he kept one eye on the cousin who stood in the doorway looking anything but welcoming, but she didn’t crack. She gave no indication that the guy staring down at them from the step above her was anything to her besides another person of interest in an old investigation.

What he couldn’t tell was whether Kate was simply showing her professionalism or if it was true.

And this was definitely not the optimal time for Templeton to consider all the things he didn’t know about Kate Holiday. As opposed to obsessing over the things about her he did know. Like her sweet taste. Like those sounds she made, there in the back of her throat.

Once again, dumbass,he growled at himself.Try to focus. This is not the time.

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