Page 82 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

“You can pretend to be of the world all you like, Katie. Inside, in your bones, you know the truth.”

“That you’re mentally ill?” She let her faint smilewiden. “A malignant narcissist with hefty doses of psychopathic impulses and sociopathic tendencies? I knew that a long time ago.” She decided that rather than fight the link between them, she should lean into it. She settled her hands on the table, lacing them together in that way that mirrored his. And when that flush of temper got a shade or two darker, she knew he’d seen what she had. And liked it about as much as she did. “I visited Liberty and Russ yesterday.”

Was that a flash of irritation on her father’s face? Or was it something else?

“Your cousins were always obedient. They honored their parents and the family above all things, as good children should. It would never have occurred to either of them to betray the family’s trust. Not like you.”

“You say that, but you never threatened them with the ritual, did you?”

“The ritual is a gift,” her father intoned, as if he were trying to stir them up the way he’d liked to do back in the compound. “That you don’t see it that way only proves your unworthiness.”

“If that were true, there’d be no need to keep threatening me with death by exposure. Would there?”

“Deep down,” he said. “Deep down, you know where you’re going. You know what waits for you. You know.”

That was creepy enough that Kate had to remind herself that they were sitting in a maximum-security prison. One her father would never leave unless he was transferred to another facility. Because he might have a long memory for all the slights he felt had been visited upon him, but he had nothing on the police.

They never, ever forgot their own.

“I wasn’t visiting Russ and Liberty to catch up on old times,” Kate told him. “I’m in the middle of an investigation. And this time, the target appears to be me. Guess who tops the list when I start thinking about who might have a psychotic little grudge?”

“Are you scared?” her father asked, that sick gleam in his eyes. “Did you beg?”

“All of the attempts on me have failed, of course,” Kate said, dry and unbothered. Because he didn’t get to see her stomach clench. He didn’t get to know that her palms were slightly damp. “This should come as no surprise to you. You’re an old man rotting away in a jail cell, becoming more irrelevant by the day. I’m a highly regarded law enforcement officer who lives in the real world, not the one you made up for us all those years ago. Whatever scraggly little plot this is, if you’re involved, it only makes you look that much more sad.”

“And yet you’re here,” her father said. “Why would you bother to come see a sad old man you’re not afraid of?”

That was an excellent question.

Kate discovered that she didn’t have an answer.

She stood, holding her father’s gaze while she rose.

“I forgot,” she told him quietly. “All these years, I built you up in my head. I forgot what it was like in all those courtrooms. You were so small and angry, and for once, it didn’t matter. No one listened to you or waited, breathlessly, for you to speak. You were only ever powerful when I was small and stranded.” She didn’t look away from him. She didn’t cower or avert her eyes. She didn’t shrink in any way. “I’m not small any longer. And I’m definitely not stranded.”

She turned and nodded to Templeton. His intense gaze touched her face as if he were checking for marks, but once again, he moved as if they’d done this a thousand times. He went over and knocked on the door for the guard.

“You can tell yourself any stories you like,” Samuel Lee said bitterly. “But believe me, Katie, you might run from the consequences for your actions, but they’ll catch up to you. They always do.”

Kate turned when she reached the door, looking back over her shoulder at this man who had loomed so largeall her life. But it was high time she stepped out of his shadow, even inside her own head.

“I’ll be sure to check back in with you more often,” she said, smirking a little at him. “So I can get a close, personal look at all those consequences. Because they look good on you, Dad. They really do.”

Testifying against him in court had been satisfying. But she’d been so much younger then, so unable to imagine that there really could be an existence without him choking the life out of her. Kate was older now. This was better.

She should have visited him a long time ago. Because if she felt alien, cut off from the world, it wasn’t because she was off and wrong, as she’d always assumed. It was because that was what he’d taught her.

And she didn’t have to allow a single thing this man had taught her to take hold. Her childhood was nothing but weeds, choking out the real plants. And she was ready to do a little blooming.

Templeton nodded for her to lead the way out the door. Neither one of them looked back, as if the man they walked away from was nothing. Because that was exactly what he was.

And she heard the satisfying sound of her father’s hands—too much like her hands—slamming down hard on the tabletop.

The man who claimed that he was ruled by reason and righteousness was locked in a cage and forced to express himself like any common criminal. Impotently.

Kate wasn’t sure she’d ever understood the magic of Christmas until this very moment.

Once they were back outside and tucked up in the front of yet another SUV that had been waiting for them when their plane had landed, she let out a long, cleansing sort of breath.

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