Page 58 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

“Sure. You and I can sit here and come up with a thousand scenarios about how he should have done this and you should have done that. And maybe that’s all true. But it also means that if he’s not to blame, neither are you.”

Kate stared out into the darkness, Templeton’s headlights picking up the snow coming down and the trees rising high on each side of the road, while her heart kicked at her as if she were running for her life. “I didn’t ask you to forgive me.”

“And here I am, doing it anyway.”

Kate opened her mouth to say something rash, along the lines ofThat’s what you do, isn’t it? You ignore what I say and do what you want anyway.

But she didn’t. Sanity reasserted itself, or more likely, she accepted that the real, honest truth was that she likedthat about him. She liked that he seemed to know exactly how wicked she wanted him, no matter what she might say to the contrary.

That kind of contradiction felt a whole lot like a deep, smoky gray sort of area, and Kate had no idea what to do with it. She wasn’t supposed to feel things like that. She was black and white, right or wrong, all the way through.

Though she didn’t feel like that at all when Templeton was around.

“It’s dark,” Kate said instead. “But it’s not that late. We could be down in Nenana by dinnertime.”

“You think that’s the right move?”

“You don’t?”

Behind the wheel, Templeton slid a look her way. “That wasn’t a loaded question. I’m not afraid of a little brainstorming. You know the people in question better than I do.”

Kate thought about her cousins. Liberty had been the next oldest girl, eighteen months younger than Will, her brother. Kate’s memories of her were patchy, threaded through with her feelings about her father and her own growing realization that the Holiday family wasn’t the force of good her father claimed it was. She remembered being jealous of Will and Liberty’s father, Uncle Joseph, who had always seemed so much kinder and more approachable than her own father. But she’d also always thought that Liberty too closely resembled her mother, the pinch-faced Aunt Darlene.

Their cousin Russ was a wild card. Six years younger than Kate and the son of yet another Holiday brother, he’d been her responsibility in her role as oldest girl and therefore caretaker of the younger kids. It was hard to imagine chubby little Russ as a grown man, filled with opinions and capable of barricading himself in another place like the compound. By choice.

She said as much to Templeton, and for a long moment there was nothing but the sound of their tires against thesnowy road and thethwackof the wipers against the windshield.

“It’s hard to ignore that they went back to the scene of the crime,” Templeton said.

Kate would have said that she liked teamwork, in a general sense. She considered herself a part of the Trooper family. She’d enjoyed working with the partners she’d been paired with at different points in her career. Templeton was another assigned partner, nothing more, and the kind of brainstorming that he and his Alaska Force buddies liked to do in the lodge every morning was a perfectly valid way of working through problems with a case.

But it felt a lot like more of that uncomfortable intimacy when she turned a little in her seat, in the cab of yet another SUV hemmed in on all sides by the Alaskan night, and agreed with him.

“Something about it doesn’t sit right. And that’s before I even get eyes on the situation. My father’s compound wasn’t the sort of place to inspire nostalgia.”

Templeton nodded. “The other thing that jumps out at me is that cousins don’t normally set up house together.”

“Insert Appalachian joke here,” Kate said dryly.

Templeton’s laugh filled the vehicle. And Kate would have to be truly dead inside not to feel a little warmer because of it. But she tried to deny that, too.

“My inclination is to wait until tomorrow,” Templeton said after a moment, traces of that laughter like an undercurrent in his voice. “My thinking is that it takes longer to get anywhere in the snow, so that puts us in later tonight. And that’s if we don’t get worse weather on the way or spin out on the ice somewhere. Then we have to do a little basic recon, because I’m not walking into a potential Samuel Lee Holiday situation in the dark. I think it would be a lot easier to do it in whatever kind of weak-ass daylight we get tomorrow.” He made a lownoise, as if he was mulling it over. “Then again, could be your cousin Will is on the phone right now trying to ingratiate himself by telling them we’re coming. Maybe it would make more sense not to give them extra time to prepare for our arrival.”

Kate frowned out the window, not quite seeing the streets of Fairbanks before her. “I honestly don’t know which way he’ll go. But Will could have called the minute we left. We have to assume they’ve already been alerted.”

“If your gut feeling says that we need to go tonight, let’s go tonight.”

Kate waited, but that was it. That was all he said. And there was nothing the least bit passive-aggressive or challenging in his tone. Of all the things she was worried about when it came to Templeton—or anyone in Alaska Force, for that matter—it wasn’t that garden varietyI know more than you because I’m a mannonsense that she’d been drenched in as a child and had learned how to handle when she’d started in law enforcement.

“You’re not really a big mansplainer, are you?” she asked.

Templeton threw another look at her, something glinting in his dark gaze. “Was that a compliment? I don’t know if my heart can take it. You might need to call the paramedics.”

“I’m not sure it’s a compliment to have someone tell you that you’ve achieved the bare minimum of common decency. But sure, take it as one if you want.”

“I’m impatient with people who should know their stuff but don’t.” Templeton’s voice was even. His gaze was on the road. “That doesn’t apply to you.”

“That sounds like straight-up flattery.” But she couldn’t deny that it warmed that same once-hollow place inside her, even so.

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