by Megan Crane
Templeton had never fished, unless it was back in the hazy days of his early childhood in Mississippi before his father had started his life sentence, no possibility of parole, thanks to the state’s three-strikes law. If so, Templeton had gone ahead and buried it along with any other stray memory of the man who’d disappeared into Mississippi’s notorious Parchman prison and had refused to let anyone visit him there. Ever. Because he might as well be dead, he’d said, and they needed to grieve him and move on.
Thinking about his father made Templeton want to hit something. Preferably Isaac Gentry—founder of Alaska Force and also Templeton’s best friend and brother-by-battle, a relationship forged in some of the worst fires imaginable. They had both been recruited into what was sometimes called Delta Force. Isaac had come from Marine Force Recon and Templeton from the Army Rangers, and they’d both made it through separate, grueling selection processes to the same qualification course. They’d both managed not to wash out of that six-month adventure into what a man was really made of—otherwise known as hell—and they’d been working together in one form or another ever since.
Templeton would die for Isaac in a heartbeat, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed being sent on this errand to play cops and robbers with a trooper while the rest of the team tried to figure out who was trying to come at them. It made him wish he could indulge his temper after all.
Or, worse, the other appetites he kept on lockdown while on a job, because he liked his life free of complications.
The thing was, Templeton couldn’t help but notice, Trooper Holiday had a seriously complicated mouth.
It was distracting.
Templeton had taken her number before he’d walked in, since she’d chosen to sit at a table where he could study her through the window without being seen. And while he’d messed around with his coat, hanging it up neatly like he was in any way domesticated, he’d been comparing what Oz, Alaska Force’s computer whiz, had told them about Investigator Kate Holiday of the Alaska Bureau of Investigation to the actual flesh-and-blood woman waiting for him in Caradine’s Water’s Edge Café.
Caradine might have been the most relentlessly unfriendly person Templeton had ever met, which was only one of the reasons he liked her, but she could always be depended on to open up the café if needed. Even on slow winter afternoons, because she was always happy to be paid for her trouble. And Templeton preferred the home-court advantage.
Kate Holiday was exactly who he was expecting. Trim build, with lean curves that told him how dedicated she was to keeping fit. It was another way of letting him know that she cared deeply about her competence, and he approved. Templeton knew she’d flown herself here in one of the little jumper seaplanes that everybody and their uncle seemed to have in this part of the world, which told him she was practical and independent. Because the Alaska State Troopers were spread thin as it was, like a bunch of shiny blue marbles flung across a big, wide, endlessly wild and rugged table. Templeton was always hearing stories about the troopers having to take commercial flights or ferries to conduct their investigations. Unless, of course, they had their own transportation at the ready.
In the file Oz had compiled, Templeton had seen a picture of her in the traditional Trooper uniform, her brown hair pulled back severely and that unsmiling, authoritative cop look on her face. It didn’t make her any less pretty, but it suggested that her prettiness came with a punch.
In person, she was less severe. She still had her hair scraped back, but there was something about her face in motion that got to him. That generous mouth, maybe, that made him want to keep looking. Made him want to reach out and touch.
He didn’t. And not only because it was clear that Trooper Holiday took her boundaries seriously. Very seriously, if the stiff way she was sitting was any indication.
The thing was, Templeton shouldn’t have wanted to touch her. He had strict rules against getting involved with women he met through work and might have to contend with in his professional sphere.
One disaster in that arena was enough, he’d always thought. He’d had his already.
“You seem to have drifted off there,” she commented in that cool voice that reminded him that whatever else she was, she was sharp. And not particularly charmed by him, which, perversely, made him think more highly of her. After all, an act was an act, and Templeton never could bring himself to unreservedly like anyone who bought his. “Dreaming of fishing?”
Templeton smiled. “All the time. Even in the middle of rousing conversations with law enforcement officials, my heart is out there with my bait and tackle. Makes a man feel alive inside.”
“I’m thrilled for you.” She folded her hands before her on the table, and the smile she aimed back at him was laced with steel. He liked that, too. “So what is it you think someone would gain by framing you?”
“Off the top of my head, I think the first thing they’d gain was the Alaska State Troopers all up in our business.” He tipped his head toward her. “And check it out. Here you are.”
“I like to flatter myself that our reputation is fierce indeed, but I somehow doubt that we’re an endgame.”
So did Templeton. Which begged the obvious question. If siccing the Troopers on Alaska Force wasn’t the endgame, what was?
“You’re skeptical. I get it. But ask yourself this. Who stands to gain from Alaska Force being taken apart?”
She regarded him steadily, in a manner calibrated to induce spontaneous confessions of wrongdoing. “You mean aside from the citizens of the great state of Alaska, who can look forward to healthier and happier lives with a band of petty criminals taken off the streets?”
“For the sake of argument, pretend that Alaska Force isn’t your run-of-the-mill survivalist cult,” Templeton suggested, and it cost him to keep that smile in his voice and on his face. “Pretend that instead, we are men of honor. Men who served their country well and aren’t quite ready to become civilians. Men who instead dedicated their lives to solving problems law enforcement can’t.”
“That’s very stirring. But if law enforcement can’t solve the problem, that suggests that any civilian-led solutions are illegal.”
“Not illegal.” Templeton considered. “Really, we operate in more of a gray area.”
“I don’t believe in gray areas.”
Templeton didn’t have to pretend to be amused then. He laughed. “You don’t have to believe in gray areas. They’re still there.”
“There’s wrong and there’s right,” Kate replied. “It’s actually simple.”
“Unfortunately, life is very rarely simple.”
“On the contrary. We all want to make life complicated, and we often go to great lengths to do it. But the right choice is always obvious.” Her brown eyes glittered. “People don’t want to take it.”
“That’s easy to say.”
“I’m sure that you tell yourself all kinds of lies to make it okay that you bend the rules, Mr. Cross.”
Once again, her gaze was steady on his. Sure. Most people were intimidated by him. Cowed, whether they wanted to show it or not. But not this woman. She stared right back at him as if they were the same size. As if, should she feel like it, she could surge to her feet and engage him in hand-to-hand combat and who knows? Maybe land a few punches.
It was about the hottest thing Templeton had ever seen.
“But rules exist for a reason,” she said steadily. With that same look that suggested she was wholly unaware that he outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds of pure muscle. “Everybody thinks it’s okay if they cheat a little or tell a white lie. But then before you know it, we find ourselves here. Where a group of mercenaries with combat training can call themselves patriots and terrorize whole islands in Southeast Alaska.”
Templeton studied her. “Black and white. Right and wrong. No deviation. Got it.”
&n
bsp; “It’s not a character flaw. It’s called the law.”
“Alaska Force exists because people are always coming to us for help. Not hired muscle or combat-trained terrorists.” He shook his head. “It seems to me that if you take us out of the picture, you allow other people far less cute and cuddly than we are to move in and do a whole lot worse.”
Again, that smile, as if she were humoring someone remarkably dim-witted. If Templeton had been possessed of the slightest shred of self-doubt where his intellect and abilities were concerned, that smile might have inspired him into unfortunate displays. Luckily, he could sit there and enjoy it as the weapon it was.
“Do you have examples of other bands of desperadoes roaming around the Alexander Archipelago, wreaking havoc?” she asked. “Because so far, the only group by that description I’m aware of is yours.”
Templeton reviewed the situation. The first time something had blown up a little too close to Grizzly Harbor, they’d considered it an isolated incident. That preacher had vowed he’d get his revenge, and there he was, trying to get it. They’d intercepted him, taken him out, and presented him to the authorities—practically with a bow on top.
But the next time it had been a storage facility in Sitka, one of the larger cities out here in Alaska’s rugged southeast islands, which Isaac and Templeton had set up when they’d first started to put this funny idea of theirs into action. Only three of their team had walked back off the field after that last, terrible op, and that was it. They were all done.
Jonas Crow had disappeared as soon as the briefing was done. Like the ghost he was.
Templeton had gone back to Vidalia, but there was nothing for him there. He barely remembered that feral teenager he’d been. He had aunts and uncles he’d never met scattered all over Mississippi, and a father still doing that life sentence in Parchman, but his mother had walked away from all of them when Templeton was still small, blaming everyone and everything in the state for what had happened to her husband. That meant Templeton had never had any use for them, either, in solidarity.
And the truth was that none of that mattered to him now. Not the way the men he considered his real brothers did.
Templeton had never been one for the cold, but he found himself in Alaska anyway, because he remembered the stories Isaac had told him during all the dark nights—of the soul or otherwise—they’d bare-knuckled it through together. Stories of growing up in a place called Grizzly Harbor, where the men were hardy and the women were far tougher, winter came like it planned to stay forever, and summer felt like a dream even while it was happening.
It seemed like the least likely place to build something. And therefore the best.
After a while, they’d gone out and found Jonas, too.
And what the three of them were particularly good at was anticipating trouble, so it made sense to spread things out. The storage facility in Sitka was only one of the places they used to stash equipment. It had been empty that July night when a fire broke out and burned the building down. The fire had been put out before it could spread, but their unit had been damaged beyond repair.
But fires happened. It wasn’t until a second storage unit went up in flames, this one farther afield in Ketchikan, that it occurred to everyone that the first one probably wasn’t an accident. And more concerning, that to target storage units at all meant that someone knew more about Alaska Force’s operation than they should.
They’d moved swiftly. They’d stopped using commercial storage space for equipment drops years back, and it was high time they stopped using them altogether. They’d taken the fires as a sign to do just that and closed out their contracts with the remaining few storage facilities within weeks.
It was hard to say if things kept happening, or if they were all so paranoid that they started to worry if everyday, minor inconveniences were actually something more ominous. A fuel gauge that quit working and registered full when it wasn’t, leading to a dramatic set down of a seaplane outside Anchorage. An accident or sabotage? No one knew.
Summer had ended and things quieted down, likely because it wasn’t exactly easy to creep around a tiny village in the high tourist season of summer, much less when the weather started to turn, all the tourists went home, and the only ones left were the real residents who weathered the winters. And knew one another on sight.
Until the end of October, that was, when hikers on one of the neighboring islands found the charred remains of what had once been an off-the-grid residence. That the house had been torched was obvious even to a casual observer, but no motive had ever been found. Except that, on a clear day, the rickety old cabin had enjoyed a view over the water and straight toward Fool’s Cove, the Alaska Force headquarters.
But by that point, they were all convinced that they were running on too much paranoia. Because this was Alaska, where weird things happened all the time. It really could have been a big coincidence.
Burning a boat right here in the harbor felt a whole lot like someone was changing the game. Still, Templeton was here today because Isaac wanted to keep a low profile in the place where he lived as long as he could. And given that the Troopers weren’t exactly idiots, Isaac wasn’t likely to convince them that he was just a regular guy despite his classified military record. No one ever thought that Templeton was a regular guy, either. But he could often convince them that he was nothing more than big and loud, all laugh and no substance.
Though it had been clear from the moment he’d walked in here that Kate wasn’t fooled.
That made her fascinating. And hot, God help him.
And more to the point, dangerous.
“Alaska Force deals with desperate people,” he told her now, because the staring contest looked like it could drag on forever. She didn’t seem to have any give in her at all. Which Templeton obviously took as a challenge, instantly wondering where and how he could find some—he stopped himself. “Desperation tends to breed enemies.”
“Enemies do not breed. They’re made by our choices.” The way she said that caught at him, but she kept going. “Have you and your friends made the kind of choices that make enemies?”
“You tell me. You’re a cop. When you put people in jail, do you explain to them that there’s a choice between right and wrong and they should be grateful to you for making sure they didn’t go too far down the road of the wrong choice?”
She didn’t flinch at that. She didn’t even blink. But Templeton thought he got to her all the same. “Not in so many words.”
“Do you think those people appreciate you for locking them up? Or do you think, given the opportunity, they might try to get their own back?”
“The more you talk about enemies, the more I think that what I’m hearing is unhinged paranoia,” she said. Conversationally. Though her gaze was hard. “And the more I hear unhinged paranoia, the more convinced I become that you and your friends are dangerous. More dangerous, I should say.”
“We might be paranoid.” Templeton grinned lazily. “But that doesn’t mean someone isn’t out to get us.”
She smiled a steely cop smile and held her hands more tightly on the table between them.
And Templeton did not give in to the urge he had to reach over and cover her hands with his.
He was a man who enjoyed his appetites, heartily. That didn’t mean he wandered around, indiscriminately touching people. But something about the starchy way this woman sat across from him, with that sinful mouth of hers and cool challenge in her gaze, made him feel . . . born-again tactile.
Templeton didn’t mess around with women he worked with. It was his one cardinal rule. But Kate Holiday made him wonder if he ought to make a special dispensation to the no women met through work rule for a woman who wanted him behind bars.
“I’d encourage you to view this as an opportunity,” she was saying, clearly unaware of the direction of hi
s thoughts. Or prepared to ignore him. “One that may not be repeated. You have the chance, here and now, to clear this whole thing up. To tell me what’s actually going on and work with me to come to some kind of solution.”
“I thought that’s what I was doing.”
“You have a choice.” She smiled as if they shared something now. As if they’d built that rapport. “You can help me out and make this all go smoothly. Or you can continue to play these games, and I can promise you that smooth is not how it’s going to go.”
“I told you the situation.” Templeton ordered himself not to think of the things he’d like to share with this trooper. “You’re basically accusing the local VFW of being a terrorist cell.”
“Is that what you consider yourselves? The local chapter of a VFW?”
“Essentially. Seems to me you should be more concerned with protecting veterans than accusing them.”
“You appear to think that your status as a veteran should accord you special treatment when you break the law. I assure you, it will not.”
“Tough room.” Templeton wanted to reach out to her, so he sprawled back in his chair instead. He thrust his legs out before him as if he were settling in to watch a game or get his drink on.
“Once again, I would strongly caution you against throwing this opportunity away.” She looked like a Kate, no-nonsense and direct, with all that intriguing fire simmering beneath the surface. “The more I uncover about what’s going on around here, the less interested I’m going to be in doing anything the easy way. You need to understand that now.”
“I was in the Rangers, ma’am,” Templeton drawled. “There is no easy way.”
Though he found that the longer he looked at her, the more he could think of a few very easy ways to get his point across.
And this time, he was positive she fully grasped the direction of his thoughts. She flushed a fascinating ruddy shade, though she didn’t otherwise change her expression. Or even sit back.
Maybe Templeton would have continued to nobly ignore that urge to put his hands on hers, because that was the smart thing to do. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t have, because he’d made a career out of thinking outside arbitrary lines—if not usually the ones he drew himself. But it didn’t matter either way because Caradine was there at the table, scowling, like the prickly little black cloud she was.