Page 70 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

“I think Liberty wanted me to feel threatened, but I don’t think she was being specific so much as mean,” Kate said after another little while passed. “On the other hand, I’m not sure I see my father masterminding any of this from behind bars. For one thing, how would he even know what Alaska Force was, much less where you keep old storage facilities?”

Templeton grunted. “Excellent point.”

He made another call into Alaska Force HQ while Kate stared out at the road. The temperature kept dropping, mirroring how cold she felt, but she ordered herself to remain calm.

Will last night. Liberty and Russ today. And now, potentially, her father tomorrow?

It was more family than she’d been forced to contend with in years. It was too much family, by any tally. And the real trouble was, being around them was even worse than thinking about them. They made her feel dirty. Tainted.

As if proximity to her cousins had exposed her. The messy, unhinged, potential-cult-member truth of her that she’d spent her whole life trying to hide.

What she didn’t understand was why she wasn’t doing everything in her power to put distance between herself and Templeton, if not physically, then verbally. Because he’d seen. Because he knew. Because there was no pretending now.

She wasn’t going to fling herself out of a moving vehicle on the Parks Highway in the middle of winter while a cold front moved in. Kate had always hated theatrics. But she couldn’t help noticing that she hadn’t shut down. She was talking to him, when he wasn’t on the phone with the rest of Alaska Force. Shewantedto talk to him. Her brain wasn’t madly spinning, trying to come up with escape plans.

When her pulse kicked up, drumming panic throughout her body, she had the sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t Templeton or what he’d seen that was making it happen. It was the fact that she didn’t mind that he’d seen the truth about who she was as much as she should have.

She was still stuck on that anomaly when they made it back to the little house they’d left this morning, what seemed like whole lifetimes ago. Kate remembered their run, in the razor-blade cold, but it almost felt as if that had been someone else.

She felt cracked wide open like an egg.

And the last thing in the world Kate wanted to do was muck around in all that yolk.

Okay, she told herself testily after Templeton plugged in the car so it would start again in these temperatures when they needed it, then jabbed in the numbers to open the padlock on the front door.Enough with the egg.

“Isaac is setting up a flight right now,” Templeton told her. “Can you be ready to go in fifteen?”

“I’m ready to go now,” Kate replied. And wassomewhat astonished that she sounded like her regular old self. As if nothing much had happened today. As if there were no yolk risk. “I’ll grab my bag.”

Templeton’s phone buzzed as they got inside, out of the cold. She ran up the stairs while he answered it, picking up the bag in question and starting back down.

“Why do you have that look on your face?” she asked him, coming to a stop halfway down the steps.

“Ice fog,” he said succinctly. “We’re not going anywhere.”

Kate blinked. The sun had already been down as they’d driven up to the house. The dark was coming in, swift and dangerous, with the temperature already at negative forty and dropping, and she didn’t need Templeton to explain to her why ice fog blanketing Fairbanks would keep them grounded. The ice particles in the air made it far too dangerous to fly. It had trapped Kate before, and would again.

She made a show of shrugging and pretended she couldn’t feel the way her own heart started to beat too hard, too loud, and too slow beneath her ribs. “That’s Alaska,” she said, trying to sound as unbothered as she should have felt. “I guess if I was ever really in any kind of hurry, I’d have to think about living somewhere else.”

“You’ve never thought about living anywhere else?” Templeton asked, his voice curiously... blank, almost. Maybe it was that he was being careful with her, and she wanted to let that ruffle her feathers. But she couldn’t quite get there. “I can see you not wanting to stay in the state where most of your family lives.”

“I thought about leaving,” Kate admitted. “A lot, when I was younger. Trouble was, I couldn’t think of any place I wanted to go badly enough. There are nice places out there, don’t get me wrong. But none of them are Alaska.”

Something shuddered deep inside of her when Templeton failed to smile. He didn’t flash that grin. He didn’t letout one of his huge laughs. He stood there at the bottom of the stairs, an almost stern expression on his face.

And there was no pretending he wasn’t an attractive man. A beautiful man. When he was smiling, laughing, throwing that booming voice of his around, he was like a thunderstorm in the summertime, washing everything clean all around him whether it wanted it or not.

But when he was still, he reminded her of all the reasons she loved it here in her home state. He was that astonishing. Rugged and infinitely dangerous. And he made something deep in her belly tremble every time he looked at her.

“I’ll get the stove going,” he said quietly. Hushed, even, as if he felt it, too. This heavy tension between them that coiled inside of Kate until she was afraid it might pop at any moment.

He moved off toward the kitchen and Kate pulled in a breath, only aware then that she’d been holding it. She felt a loose kind of relief, but she didn’t sit there and dig around in the feeling to see what it was made of. Maybe she didn’t dare. She turned around, carried her bag back upstairs, and marched herself into the bathroom to splash a little water on her face.

And get herself back under control.

The rest of the evening slid easily enough into another night that Kate might have called pleasant if she weren’t so on guard. Against herself.

And against how easy it was to spend time with Templeton.

---