Sergeant's Christmas Siege

by Megan Crane

  “I’ve already had a public reckoning in court,” she said, mildly enough. “They called me a hero. They still do. That’s not a word they use for you, Dad.”

  “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 smile widen. “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 large all 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.

  “That was fun,” she said. “But that’s all it was. He might 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, only this 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 tugge
d 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 changed between 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.

  Kate knew it couldn’t last. Real life might not be the hole her father had wanted to bury them all in, but that didn’t mean that it was this, either. Still, she tipped her head back and let herself fall head over heels into all the happiness anyway.

  Because she doubted that she would ever feel like this again. The only other time she’d come close was in Temple­ton’s arms. And she wasn’t sure, given the way he’d closed down today, that she’d get to experience that again, either.

  She couldn’t bear that thought. Kate reached across the center of the vehicle and put her hand on Templeton’s leg. The way he’d done before they’d hit the prison. And when—­after a long, frozen moment—­he covered it with his, she smiled. And for a couple of hours on the strangest Christmas of her life, Kate didn’t worry about what came next. She basked in the now.

  And she knew she’d made the right decision when they made it back to the island that night. Because instead of landing in Fool’s Cove, the plane diverted to Grizzly Harbor instead.

  “I hope we’re going to the Fairweather,” Kate said when they landed. “I could really use a drink.”

  Templeton was staring at his phone, the way he’d been doing since he’d leaned forward and told the pilot to head to town instead of the cove. It seemed to take him an ice age or two to lift his gaze to hers. And what she saw there made her chest feel funny.

  “You have a visitor,” he told her. Tersely, no hint of a grin. “Waiting for you at the inn.”

  “Most of my colleagues know that I’m on leave,” Kate said. She tossed her bag over her shoulder as she crawled off the plane, then waited for Templeton to jump down to the dock beside her. “But I wouldn’t think—­”

  “It’s not one of your colleagues.” Templeton’s gaze had grown even darker. More intense. And Kate was terribly afraid that what she saw on his face was a sort of kindness that edged too close to pity for her tastes. “Kate. I wish . . .”

  Her chest felt more than funny. And now she really did feel numb.

  But he shook his head, tossing off whatever he’d been about to say. “It’s your mother.”

  Twenty

  Templeton watched her change in an instant. From the almost dreamy Kate he’d spent the afternoon with straight back into full-­on trooper, like she had flipped a switch.

  “My mother,” Kate said, as if she had to say it out loud to believe it. Her voice was flat and laced with steel, but she didn’t sound like she’d been gut-­punched. “Tracy Warren Holiday.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “She’s supposed to be in Anchorage. Enjoying her life as an ex-­con while still being married to one of Alaska’s most notorious criminals.”

  “She came in on a seaplane about an hour ago, walked into the Fairweather, and asked for you.”

  Kate looked as if she were sorting out math problems in her head, and Templeton didn’t know what to do with the mess inside of him. Everything Isaac had said kicked at him, mostly because he wanted to deny it. And couldn’t.

  He was right on schedule to do exactly what Isaac had predicted he would. An argument could be made that he’d already done it, given how distant he’d been acting all day. But none of his rules seemed to matter when his trooper looked so deflated. Even if it was only for a moment.

  But this was Kate, so when the moment was up, her chin lifted. Something flashed over her face, and she didn’t waste another second. She charged off the dock, then started up the hill into town, clearly prepared to storm the Blue Bear Inn right this minute.

  “You’re just going to go in there?” Templeton asked, keeping pace with her as she sprinted along the road, such as it was. “Guns blazing?”

  “Metaphorically.” She stormed past the Fairweather. “Unless she gets mouthy.”

  “You already had a face-­to-­face with one of your parents today. You don’t need to deal with both of them.”

  “It appears that I do. Because it never rains, it pours. And in my family, at the first hint of moisture you can expect a flash flood.”

  If anything, she picked up her pace.

  “Kate.” But she didn’t slow down. She didn’t stop. “Baby, come on.”

  She stopped so fast then that Templeton almost tripped over his own feet as he tried to stop along with her. Almost. The Christmas lights were sparkling, making the wooden boardwalk beneath their feet seem to gleam, and the way Kate looked at him made his heart stutter in his chest.

  “Baby?” she repeated in what sounded like disbelief. And maybe something angrier. “Now I’m baby? You could barely look at me all day.”

  He wished she’d hauled off and punched him. He would have handled it better. “I looked at you.”

  The look she gave him then was withering.

  �
��Here’s a word of advice, Templeton. You’ve already witnessed one half of the greatest gaslighting duo in the history of the world today. You’re about to witness the other. My suggestion is that you not try to step into any perceived void here. I was raised by two people who spent their lives trying to convince me and everyone else around them not that we were all insane but that the entire world was insane, except for them.” She shook her head, that mirthless smile almost too much for him to take, especially with twinkling lights all around. “Don’t jump on board this train.”

  “I have rules,” he told her. And then couldn’t believe that sentence had come out of his mouth. Here, now. She glared at him, waiting. “I don’t get involved with women I work with.”

  Kate scowled. “Weirdly, I remember saying something similar and getting a lecture about being grown up enough to make my own decisions.”

  “I decided it would be fine as long as I didn’t get emotionally involved.”

  He expected her to look as if he’d kicked her. To swing at him, maybe.

  What he could not have predicted was her laughter.

  It wasn’t a bark of hollow laughter, tossed out into a night that, at about thirty-­five degrees, felt warm and cozy after a visit to Fairbanks. She really laughed. So hard that she stepped back, covered her face with one hand, and eventually had to wipe at her eyes.

  Templeton was pretty clear that this did not bode well for him. But all he could do was watch.

  “I’ll give it to you,” she said when she could finally speak. “I did not see that coming.”

  Templeton gritted his teeth. “There was an op a long time ago. I can’t tell you where. I got . . . involved.”

  “And the hilarity continues.” She shook her head at him. “I’m not awesome at relationships, or whatever this is, but even I know that you don’t start talking spontaneously about your past flings with the current one.”

  “She died.” He belted that out. Because apparently he could control himself in every single scenario on this earth unless it had to do with Kate Holiday. Something he was going to have to find a way to come to terms with. Apparently. “I dropped the ball, she paid the price. I decided one way to make sure that never happened again was to put down a few ground rules.”