Page 83 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

“That was fun,” she said. “But that’s all it was. Hemight wish that he could get to me. Create some kind of reckoning, or whatever he wants to call it. But he can’t.”

The Templeton she thought she knew would have laughed. Made a joke to lighten things, maybe put his hands on her. But today’s new, brooding Templeton only looked straight ahead as he started the engine, no trace of a smile on his face.

Not that it made him look anything but delicious.

“I couldn’t tell if he knows that someone’s coming after you or if he wanted to pretend he did.”

Kate shrugged. “Either way, the only thing he could contribute to the situation is potentially ordering it. It’s not like he’s out stabbing people.”

Templeton fished out his phone, frowning down at it. “Oz is taking a closer look at his visitor log. Our initial examination didn’t turn up anything interesting, so he’s going deeper, but he thinks it’s unlikely to turn up any bombshells. Your father is pretty closely monitored.”

Kate settled back against her seat and let out another breath. She was letting go of her childhood today. Just opening up hands she hadn’t known were balled into fists and releasing everything in them, straight up into the air.

She was sure that she was going to need to spend some time curled up in the fetal position somewhere with everything that had happened recently, but she couldn’t seem to access the storm now. It was too much, maybe. It had blanked her out. She’d lit up and burned straight through. All the adrenaline and anxiety had melted away into something blessedly numb.

Or not numb, exactly. That wasn’t right.

She was aware of everything. All the words her father had used, which she’d be sure to parse and worry over in the days to come. The shift in Templeton’s behavior that made her stomach drop, suggesting as it did that once again she’d missed whatever clues she should have seen. That she’d dropped the ball the way she always did, onlythis time she hadn’t even realized it. He’d been different from the first moment she’d set eyes on him this morning. Before she’d even been fully awake.

Even now, as he drove them away from the prison, a wool hat tugged down on his head, he looked... grim. No big, inviting smile. No infectious laugh. And she could tell that he was highly unlikely to turn around and tease her with something outrageous to lighten the mood today. That Templeton was gone.

You did it again, she chided herself.

But even as the thought formed, she rejected it. That was a Samuel Lee Holiday line of thinking. That was weeds and mess, having everything to do with a man behind bars and nothing to do with her.

Her normal go-to when things shifted beneath her feet like this was to sink herself into work and pretend she was an Alaska State Trooper robot. She was good at it.

But today, she didn’t have it in her.

“Let’s drive,” she said, staring out the window across Resurrection Bay at the actual town of Seward. The Kenai Mountains loomed this way and that, wearing their snowy winter best against the sudden sunshine.

Templeton shot her a look. “Drive where?”

“You seem to be able to magically produce a plane wherever we go. What about Anchorage?”

He hesitated slightly. So slightly she almost thought she’d imagined it. “There are always planes in Anchorage.”

“Let’s drive there. It’s only a couple of hours, and the road is usually clear.”

She thought he would argue. He gave her an intense, long look, but he didn’t say a word. He just drove. He headed north on Seward Highway instead of back south toward the airport. Straight toward the mountains that would lead them over the spine of the Kenai Peninsula and then into Anchorage, some 130 miles to the north.

At first she thought she would jump in and start interrogating him. Demand that he tell her what had changedbetween yesterday and now. Ask him if she had done something.

But she didn’t.

She dug out her phone instead, connected it to the SUV, and played some music.

And she could feel all the things she needed to think about. All the things she needed to feel. They were right there, looming. Waiting.

But here, now, on one of the prettiest roads in Alaska, she played music. She stared out the window at the scenery that made her heart leap. From Moose Creek to Turnagain Arm. And with every mile, the silence they sat in seemed less punitive and more... perfect.

Because nothing could happen here, on this road that wound over mountains and past alpine lakes. No one could shoot at them as they drove up from one side of this beautiful peninsula and down to another, with views of the Gulf of Alaska and its offshoot inlets. Her family was only here with her if she let them take over her head, so she didn’t. That left her with the man who had somehow wedged his way beneath her skin, this beautiful state she loved so much on a pretty winter’s day, and nothing to do but bask in both.

It almost made her believe in Christmas.

Because for a little while, Kate could suspend herself in the sweetness of it. The winter day unfolding around them, moody in the distance but bright where they were.

For a little while, she pretended that she had always been like this and always would be. Whole. Happy. Fully human, like everyone else.

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