by Megan Crane
Templeton knew of only one man who wanted to get his hands in all that rain. But then, Isaac had always been a breed apart.
“Fog’s coming in fast,” Caradine said flatly. “Doesn’t look like either one of you is leaving Grizzly Harbor tonight. And don’t think I’m cooking dinner for you.”
Templeton only shrugged. Caradine stomped off, likely to work on that thunderous scowl, and he watched his new favorite trooper fuss around with her phone.
“If the fog’s bad, you shouldn’t fly in it.” He smiled when she frowned at him. “No worries. We can find you somewhere to stay.”
“I can find my own accommodations, thank you.”
“I’m sure you can, but Alaska Force keeps a room ready for clients at the Blue Bear Inn. It’s empty right now. You’re welcome to it tonight.”
He told himself there was no reason why his skin felt tight the longer she looked at him.
“Thank you,” she said, nothing in her voice betraying the slightest hint of emotion. Or reaction. As if he’d made up that flush of heat on her cheeks when he knew he hadn’t. “I may have to take you up on that offer.”
“Just promise me you won’t try to outfly the fog,” he said, as if they were buddies. “That tends to end badly.”
“Your concern for my well-being is touching,” Kate replied, evenly enough. But he could tell she didn’t find it touching at all. “If you’ll excuse me.”
She stood up, taking her phone with her as she headed toward the back of the café, where there was a bathroom—and privacy.
Templeton stayed where he was, lounging at the table until she disappeared. Then he fished out his own mobile and called in.
“Report,” Isaac said when he picked up.
“Nothing to report,” Templeton replied. “Looks like I might be fogged in here tonight. Can’t say whether that will help or hinder the investigation.”
“And Alaska Force is the target of that investigation? Or is this a fishing expedition?”
“You have two choices, Isaac. The right one or the wrong one. It’s that simple.”
“Great.” Isaac sighed. “One of those.”
“The trooper has put in a request to visit the heavily armed fortress that is Fool’s Cove,” Templeton said. “Assuming we get a break in the fog tomorrow, I’ll bring her out.”
“Do you have a sense of what she’s looking for?”
“Aside from a scapegoat? No.”
“Maybe try charming her, Templeton. If you think you can manage it.”
Templeton made a genial, anatomically impossible suggestion, which only made his friend laugh.
And he was sliding his phone back into his pocket when his own personal trooper emerged from the back of the café, her uniform looking even more crisp than it had when she’d gone back there. Armor, he thought.
He liked the fact that she thought she needed it around him.
And he ignored the alarm that sounded deep within him. Because enjoying something wasn’t the same as breaking his own rules.
“Visibility is deteriorating by the moment,” Kate said briskly. “It looks like I’ll be utilizing that room after all.”
“Fantastic. I’ll just—”
“I don’t need anything further from you, Mr. Cross,” she said in that smooth, certain cop way that he definitely shouldn’t find so . . . stirring. “I can handle things from here. What I’d like you to do is use this evening to reflect on the things we talked about and see if you can find your way to a different conclusion.”
“I’ll be sure to do that,” Templeton drawled. “I get real reflective down at the Fairweather. By the third drink, I’m practically a philosopher.”
“Wonderful,” she replied crisply. “Because what everybody wants from the local neighborhood commando is drunken philosophy.”
She turned to Caradine then, who was lounging in the door to the kitchen like she was watching premium cable play out there before her. “I’d like to ask you a few questions, if I could.”
Caradine’s brows rose. “I don’t really do questions.”
“Nonetheless,” Kate said, in that friendly yet implacable way Templeton figured they had to teach them at the academy over in Sitka, “I’d like to chat with you all the same.”
Caradine scowled but nodded. Once, and clearly with reluctance.
Templeton’s trooper turned to him and lifted a brow. “Can I anticipate that when I arrive at the Blue Bear Inn, my accommodations will be ready for me? Or are there more hoops to jump through first?”
“I can call Madeleine. She’s usually on the front desk when there’s someone staying, though it’s the off-season.”
“You do that. And I’ll take your mobile number, so that I can reach you, should I need to.”
Templeton obediently rattled off his cell phone number and watched her jot it down in her notebook. Then she tucked it back into her pocket.
“Does this mean we’re dating?” he asked.
Because he couldn’t seem to help himself.
“It means I’ll let you know when I’m ready to see you again, Sergeant,” Kate said. And then she nodded toward the door, dismissing him. “But for now? You can leave.”
Templeton met Caradine’s gaze and assumed he looked as astonished as she did entertained. Because he couldn’t recall the last time anyone had ordered him around. Not even Isaac, and that was only because they’d worked together so long that Templeton tended to anticipate his orders.
He didn’t argue. He sauntered over to the hook where he’d left his jacket, shrugged it on, and then offered a theatric salute before he let himself out into the dark.
And waited to see what his brand-new favorite Alaska State Trooper was going to do next.
Three
The door slammed behind Templeton, and for a strange, dizzy little moment, it was like all the air, light, and heat went with him.
But that was absurd. And more of that fanciful nonsense from which Kate normally steered clear. She ordered herself to get it together and focused her attention on Caradine, who still stood in the kitchen doorway with reluctance written all over her.
For a moment, Kate only gazed at the other woman, because the scowl on her face was interesting and Kate knew well the power of an awkward silence.
But all Caradine did was continue to scowl, without saying a word. Which was very unusual in the average civilian with no experience being interrogated by law enforcement. Then again, out here in remotest Alaska, people tended toward prickly and uncooperative by nature. It didn’t make them criminals.
“What is your relationship to Alaska Force?” Kate asked crisply when it was clear the silence wasn’t going to prod the other woman into revealing anything.
If possible, the scowl on Caradine’s face deepened. “I would never call anything between me and them a relationship.”
“Call it whatever you like. What is the nature of it?”
Caradine looked as if she’d swallowed something sour. “I run a café in a very small village. They live in and around the same small village, and they eat at my café. The end.”
“Mr. Cross mentioned that you opened today, just for him. Or did I misinterpret something?”
Caradine crossed her arms, and Kate wondered if she knew that the gesture on her looked belligerent more than defensive. She suspected she did know. But Caradine’s surliness didn’t bother her. Alaskans weren’t always fit for human interaction. It was a side effect of living in the midst of so much relentless nature. Besides, while many people came to Alaska for a job or because they loved the idea of all that nature, Alaska was also a place a lot of folks came to disappear.
Kate would stake her reputation on the likelihood that Caradine was one of the latter.
She studied the café owner carefully. Caradine, which Kate very much doubted was
the name she’d been born with, was a beautiful woman, though she clearly preferred to downplay that fact. Her dark hair was pulled back in a careless ponytail that looked as if she’d slept in it. There wasn’t a trace of makeup on her face, her nail polish was black and chipped, and the jeans she wore were at least a size too big. Her baggy T-shirt used a cartoon fox in place of a curse and the apron she wore wrapped around her waist looked about as battered as her jeans. And of course, there was the deeply prickly body language turning all those things into a deliberate suit of armor.
But it was the wary, combative light in the other woman’s eyes that made the back of Kate’s neck itch.
“If someone in the village calls and asks me to open, I usually do,” Caradine said flatly. “That’s just part and parcel of the service I provide to my friends and neighbors.”
“And you consider Alaska Force friends? Neighbors? Both?”
“I try not to consider Alaska Force at all.”
Kate smiled. “This is not a productive conversation. The question is, are you being unhelpful out of loyalty to Mr. Cross and his associates? Or are you trying to make it extra clear to me that you don’t like the police?”
“I don’t like anyone, Trooper,” Caradine said. “I wasn’t aware that was a crime.”
“How long have you lived in Grizzly Harbor?”
“Am I under investigation now? Because let me be the first to tell you, I’m no commando. When danger comes calling, I hide.”
Kate studied the woman before her. “Now, why do I find that so hard to believe?”
“I’m a cook,” Caradine said, and she even smiled. “I live on an island in Alaska, where nobody is going to irritate me by demanding gluten-free, dairy-free, food-free alternatives, and if they do, I can tell them to leave. I can serve what I want. I can open when I want. I don’t have to make small talk, or chitchat with anyone. I can just cook. That’s it. That’s my whole story.”
“Do you live alone?”
“I can barely tolerate my own company, much less anyone else’s.” Caradine sighed when Kate only gazed at her. “Yes, I live alone. And no, I don’t have any kind of relationship with anyone in Alaska Force. Thank the Lord.”
But that was a lie. Kate could see it on her face. She didn’t go after it, but she did take out her pad and make an ostentatious note in it, just to watch Caradine stiffen in response.
“And where did you live before you came to Alaska?”
“What makes you think I haven’t always been right here, marking my territory in the Last Frontier?”
“I’m from here,” Kate said. “It’s not hard to tell who’s from Outside. No matter how long it’s been since they came.” She smiled. “Besides, I’m assuming you would have had to live somewhere with a lot of gluten- and dairy-free options to find it so annoying.”
Caradine’s gaze glittered. “And here I thought I blended.”
“Okay, let’s try this.” Kate considered the stubborn, mulish set to Caradine’s jaw. “What are your impressions of the members of Alaska Force? Like Templeton Cross, for example. Or what about Isaac Gentry, their leader?”
Something flashed in Caradine’s gaze. “I don’t have anything nice to say about them. But I don’t have anything not nice to say, either. I can’t stress to you the extent to which I don’t like people and am therefore entirely neutral about them and what they do. But they’re not a cult. They’re not really commandos. People come to them for help, and they help them.”
“Why does it sound like you’re telling me these things under duress?”
“Look, I’ll deny it if you ever bring it up again, particularly in front of anyone connected to Alaska Force, but the truth is that none of them are bad men.” And the look Caradine gave her then was frank. There was a kind of dark knowledge there that made Kate stand a little straighter. “I know about bad men. This is not that.”
Kate hoped her own dark knowledge wasn’t showing on her face. “There are a lot of ways to be a bad man, don’t you think?”
“There are a lot of ways to break a law, sure. But a bad man is a bad man. Inside. Whether he breaks the law or doesn’t. Are you going to tell me you don’t know the difference?”
Kate wanted to smile her cool, unbothered cop smile. Brush off the question and carry on firing questions at Caradine. But somehow, she couldn’t. There was something about the stark honesty of the question. About that too-certain expression on the other woman’s face.
It was this time of year, she told herself. This endless dark and the run-up to Christmas and New Year’s, which always got to her. Too many anniversaries this time of year. Too many memories she blocked out a lot better the rest of the time. Every year she told herself she wouldn’t let the darkness and the holidays get to her. And yet every year they did anyway.
Whatever the reason, she found she couldn’t brush Caradine off.
“I know from bad men, if that’s what you’re asking,” Kate heard herself say, as if she weren’t here on business. As if she were having a conversation like a regular person.
Caradine’s gaze gleamed. “Of course you do. Welcome to being female.”
“But I don’t make the distinctions you do when it comes to breaking laws. There’s right and there’s wrong. Or there’s chaos.”
The corner of Caradine’s mouth kicked up into something a little too wry to be a smile. “This is Alaska, Trooper. What other people call chaos, we call a pissant little winter storm.”
“But that’s why I’m a trooper, Ms. . . . ?”
“Scott,” Caradine supplied. Grudgingly. “Caradine Scott.”
“That’s why I’m a trooper, Ms. Scott,” Kate repeated, and something seemed to pass between them then, woman to woman on an already too-dark December afternoon. “I can tell the difference between weather and major crimes.”
They went around and around a few more times, but after that moment of telling honesty, Caradine seemed to fall into her scowl with a vengeance and stay there. Kate thanked her for her time, shot off a note to one of her friends in the department to pull up information on one Caradine Scott, currently of Grizzly Harbor though clearly from the Lower 48 originally, and smiled as she let herself out.
Night had come down, hard. It was after four p.m., and it could as easily have been four in the morning. And Kate didn’t have to go check her instruments or check the flight databases, because she could see how bad the fog was with her own eyes. It was a heavy curtain in and around everything, making the dark thicker. As if December had teeth and weight.
Kate had always thought so.
And Kate was more than capable of flying by her instruments, but she didn’t like to risk it when the weather got questionable. She wasn’t much for taking risks, full stop. There were too many stories of small crafts like hers going down in weather like this because the pilot had depended too much on the instruments and run straight into the side of a mountain.
That was the thing with mountains, especially here. They were wily. And not always where they were supposed to be.
It looked like she’d be spending the night in Grizzly Harbor.
She tucked her hands into her jacket, grateful that the village was on the water, making the temperature more reasonable than the winters she remembered off in the interior of the state, out there in the frigid, subzero bush. She’d seen snow on the mountains here as she’d flown in, but there was none on the ground. Then again, it was early yet. She’d expect any serious snow to set in after the New Year.
Even in the foggy afternoon, Grizzly Harbor was pretty. The buildings were clustered together, lit up against the pressing night and the creeping fog. Lights punched out into the dark, some of them brightly colored to announce the coming holiday, others there to make sure the residents could find their way. But either way, it felt festive today. Or at least, that cross section of festive and f
unctional that was an Alaskan winter.
The wooden pathway that took the place of a street was easy enough to navigate from light to light. Kate followed it all the way down to the docks at the bottom of the hill, where she’d left her seaplane. She called in her position and her plans, shared a few of her observations, then retrieved the go bag she kept in her little plane. Because getting stranded out on a job was par for the course, and troopers always came prepared.
Kate slung her bag over her shoulder and settled it against her hip, but when she went to start the steep walk back up the hill toward the inn she’d seen earlier, she paused.
Because Grizzly Harbor clung to the side of the mountain, covered in fog but gleaming like a Christmas card. The weathered houses were clustered together, as if huddling for warmth. In the weak daylight earlier, Kate had noticed how ramshackle they were. How rugged.
But night and fog were kinder, softening all the edges, and Kate’s breath left her in a rush.
Once again, she blamed the time of year.
This was always when she was at her weakest. And weakness led to outrageous reactions, like the outsized one she’d had to Templeton Cross. She flushed again, here in the dark, where at least this time no one could see her betray herself so thoroughly. She told herself it was temper, but she could feel that heat all over her body. Even in places she’d decided long ago didn’t work for her the way they did for others. She was hot. Everywhere.
It was him. Templeton Cross.
That too big, too loud, too deliberately inappropriate man who was very likely a criminal . . . got to her. He made her body behave like it belonged to someone else. Someone significantly less disciplined than Kate.
Someone who would actually consider a man on the wrong side of the law, which was so decidedly not her that something like a sob welled up deep inside Kate, as though her body was trying to rebel against the things it felt.