Page 97 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

Kate snapped her attention back to her mother. And when Tracy moved, Kate couldn’t make sense of what she was doing. She leaned down and screamed again as she sort of squatted.

“What are you doing?” Kate demanded. And then she saw what she was doing. “Put down that anchor!”

She braced herself, waiting for her mother to swing the anchor at her—calculating how much it would hurt and whether it would knock her overboard or not—

“I know my worth!” her mother screamed at her.

Then, holding the anchor tight to her chest, Tracy threw herself overboard.

And sank like a stone.

Twenty-three

They tried, but they couldn’t recover Tracy Holiday’s body.

Templeton was inclined to think that was a good thing. Because when a person chose their grave, they should be left to it.

But he had no idea how Kate felt about it.

“Are you okay?” he’d asked when he’d finally gotten to her. When he’d finally put his hands on her in that small, swamped boat. Where she was already too damp and risking exposure by the second.

But she was Kate. So she’d scowled at him while he pulled the emergency blanket around her shoulders, as if he were the one who’d assaulted her.

“I’m fine.”

“Kate, you watched your mother—”

“I said I was fine,” she’d snapped at him. “That wasn’tyourmother. That was the lunatic who raised me, who never should have had a child in the first place. I’m not crying. I’m not going to cry.”

“Kate—”

“Did you come here to save me?” she’d thrown at himwhile the wind from the water and the helicopter rotors churned all around them. “Guess what, Templeton? I saved myself. Again.”

And Templeton’s personal tragedy, aside from the burn of her words, was that he’d had his comm unit on when she’d said that. Loud and clear, so that all his Alaska Force brothers could hear it, internalize it, and use it to mock him forever.

That was exactly what they did. Starting right then, with a low, dark, delighted laugh that Templeton didn’t recognize at first as it lit up the comm channel. And then realized that the reason he didn’t recognize it was because it was Jonas doing the laughing. And Jonas never laughed.

Terrific.

But then the practicalities took over. There were dirtbags to handle and the authorities to call to the scene. Troopers and paramedics and anyone else who wanted to come to the party. Isaac was already on his way, having mobilized out of Anchorage within minutes of that first explosion.

They brought everyone to the Blue Bear Inn, bad Holiday cousins and good Holiday cousins alike. Kate disappeared briefly to change her clothes, then came back downstairs with that same blank expression that Templeton remembered from the first afternoon they’d met.

All Alaska State Trooper. No Kate.

And he was so happy she was alive, it didn’t matter which one she was.

But he was revising that opinion even before the Troopers arrived. There were statements to give, the usual bureaucratic nonsense to wade through. Medical checks to undergo.

All of which intensified when Isaac showed up, because it looked like he was ready, finally, to stop pretending to the Alaskan authorities that he was nothing morethan a local boy with a gun collection and some similarly enthusiastic friends.

Christmas night wore on.

Caradine, the grouchiest Good Samaritan Templeton had ever encountered, kept appearing at intervals. She dispensed coffee and her trademark glares and usually left behind a plate of this or that to keep everybody’s strength up as they sorted through what had happened tonight. And in the months leading up to it.

Tracy had blown up her own plane. Kate had seen her do it with her mobile phone. The blast had been bright but largely self-contained, which cut down on the property damage.

Everyone’s best hypothesis was that she’d wrapped the anchor chain around herself as she sank, so that even when she let go when her air ran out, she couldn’t come back up to the surface.

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