by Megan Crane
The only problem she could find reliably was herself.
And she could blame it on Christmas all she wanted, but she thought that actually, the trouble was her. In her. And she didn’t need to hang around these islands compounding her errors. She needed to get herself back to Juneau and her actual life and away from this man who for some reason made her feel like she was someone else entirely.
“I’d like you to take me back to Grizzly Harbor,” she told Templeton when she caught up to him at the base of a different set of stairs leading up to the sprawling cabins farther up the steep hill. “I’ve seen all I need to here.”
“Why am I guessing that’s bad news?” he asked, but he didn’t sound particularly worried.
“It’s neither good news or bad—” she began, grabbing hold of her tattered professionalism as best she could, but his mobile went off.
And his entire demeanor changed. He went from lazy and easy to powerfully switched-on and completely focused the moment he picked up the call.
“Yeah, she’s over here with us,” he said, and his dark gaze locked to hers.
Kate stiffened. Templeton made a few noises, then hung up, never shifting his gaze.
“That was the harbormaster back at Grizzly Harbor,” he said. “When was the last time you checked that seaplane of yours?”
“What do you mean?” But when he didn’t elaborate, she blinked. “At approximately seven forty-five this morning, before meeting you on the docks. I stowed my overnight gear and called in.”
“The ferry came in a little while ago,” Templeton said. “And they thought maybe some fool got drunk and froze to death overnight, the way they do.”
“Are you telling me there’s a person in my plane?” Kate demanded. “Why wasn’t I called directly?”
“They called the Troopers, Kate. But then they called here because people in town know you’re already out here with us and a whole lot closer than the nearest Trooper station.” Templeton studied her in a way she didn’t like at all. It sent a dark, tumbling shiver of foreboding straight down her spine. “There isn’t a person on your plane; there’s a body. And he didn’t freeze to death. He was stabbed.”
Six
Suddenly, Kate felt as if she were starring in a movie about her own life, one she was both acting in and watching at the same time.
It was a movie about an Alaska State Trooper who had to make her way back by boat from a remote cove packed full of military operatives to a small fishing village where her seaplane was now a crime scene. And she had the distinct, dislocating sensation that she was watching this strange movie, shot through with dread and uncertainty, unspool right there before her.
Kate had felt like this before. She recognized it was what her court-appointed psychological counselor had called disassociation, back when she’d been a teenager. She’d just never imagined that she would ever have the occasion to feel this way again.
She could remember too well being fifteen and swept up into the criminal justice system when she’d finally made it out of the dark and cold and into that Trooper post in Nenana. It had taken years for her to stop feeling like she was playing a role instead of just . . . living.
She didn’t really welcome the return of those feelings.
But this time, at least, she knew what needed to happen while she felt outside herself. This time she hadn’t pulled off an impossible escape on a stolen snowmobile and then her own two feet; she was doing her job. She called in to report the potential crime. She relayed the information she had, then—once she’d arrived at Grizzly Harbor on a boat packed full of men she’d been ready to convict as criminals twenty-four hours before—she called in again once she’d done a preliminary sweep of the crime scene, to confirm that there was indeed a homicide in Grizzly Harbor.
Not only in Grizzly Harbor, but in Kate’s plane.
Templeton hadn’t been exaggerating. He’d been relaying facts. There was a man Kate had never seen before strapped into the cockpit of her little plane. With a hunting knife planted in the middle of his chest.
“Does anybody recognize this man?” Kate asked after she’d called in and then climbed back down to the dock, having made certain not to disturb anything.
The man Templeton had identified as the harbormaster shook his head. “He’s not a local. And he’s not dressed like a tourist.”
Kate found herself looking to Templeton as if he were her partner, not an enemy. Something she was going to have to question herself about later, and sternly. Because her gut feeling wasn’t evidence, no matter how often it was correct.
“Could he have come in on the ferry?”
“A question I intend to answer,” Templeton replied, nodding at the harbormaster in a manner that had the other man bustling away as if he’d received a direct order.
And she should have asked what that unspoken order was, but it was already getting colder as the morning wore on. The clouds up above were dark and grim, and Kate couldn’t tell if it was the weather that was making her feel so chilly or if it was the sheer creepiness of such a grisly discovery. Maybe both.
Kate was ordinarily more than prepared to handle any kind of crime scene on her own, but she couldn’t think of a circumstance quite like this one. There was only a brief window of time in which this could have happened, and there had actually been some cloudy daylight then. And the reality of life in tiny villages was that it was very difficult to do much without someone noticing something.
Which meant, Kate thought, as she watched Alaska Force fan out into the village, that it was entirely possible it hadn’t really looked like anything while it was happening. Certainly not like what it was.
But she didn’t mention that, because it occurred to her that what she was actually watching as three of the men she’d met in Fool’s Cove climbed the hill was Alaska Force interfering in an active murder investigation.
“You can’t run around doing police work.” She was standing between Templeton and Isaac on the dock, waiting for her colleagues to find their way here from Juneau and Sitka. “This is a murder investigation. You must know that you’re civilians now, no matter how many tours of duty you did in the military.”
“We’re concerned citizens, that’s all,” Isaac said with a winning smile. “And this is our hometown. I’m not a big fan of burning boats, and I’m even less entertained by dead bodies.”
“I’ll have to ask you to wait for the troopers just like anyone else,” Kate replied. Sternly. “Just like me.”
“Let me go round up my men, then,” Isaac said in such a friendly manner that it took her a minute to realize that all he did was walk away from her, toward the shore. What he did not do was rattle off orders into his comm unit, which presumably would have stopped his men in their tracks and had them return to the docks without . . . doing whatever they were doing.
And the craziest part was, she didn’t even have it in her to argue with that the way she should have.
“I have to assume that the scene is staged,” Kate found herself saying, because it was only Templeton there then, and he wasn’t whistling any longer. His gaze was dark, his eyes gleaming with something it took her long moments to realize was fury.
On her behalf, she understood after a moment of shock.
She had never seen someone that angry for her before. Or angry for her at all. Ever. She had no doubt that if she gave the slightest signal, this man would do everything in his considerable power to assist her. Help her. Or whatever the hell else she asked him to do.
She didn’t know where that thought came from. She tried to shove it away, but it was no good. Because Templeton was focused on her as if, were it in his power, he would start ripping apart the dock they stood on with his hands if that would get them answers.
Kate should have been horrified.
But that was definitely not the reaction her bod
y had to all that focused, controlled fury.
“Agreed,” Templeton was saying, because he couldn’t know how he’d shook her. He can never know, she told herself resolutely. “The only question is whether this is a message to you? Or to us?”
“I don’t normally receive messages in the form of homicides,” Kate said, afraid she sounded less in control of herself than usual. “I’m not sure you can say the same.”
“Why your plane, then?”
“My plane, yes. But not my plane while it sat here all night. My plane right after I left for Fool’s Cove with you.” She frowned. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. More troopers are coming, and we’ll figure this out.”
Templeton’s gaze got harder. “We will.”
Kate frowned again, looking up at him.
And when his mouth crooked up in one corner, it was like no smile she’d seen from him before. It made everything in her shimmer, then go still. Then seem to hum, as if she were spinning around and around to the music he made, though she knew he wasn’t whistling any longer. Not out loud.
He reached over, and she was sure that he was going to do something inarguably inappropriate—
But all he did, very carefully, was flip the collar of her jacket into place. And she would have sworn he took particular care not to brush his fingers against the exposed skin of her cheek and neck while he did it.
Kate couldn’t have said why that ache inside her seemed so large it nearly overtook her where she stood. Nearly took her right down to her knees.
Or why it took her another long moment or two to recognize that while she didn’t approve of all this emotion, right out here in public, it was better than that dislocated feeling of watching herself on a screen.
And she didn’t understand how he did that. How he put her back into her body.
“There’s no we, Templeton,” she managed to say, trying to keep her frown in place.
“Look at that,” he said, his deep voice a rumble of satisfaction. It struck her as particularly male and too intensely hot for a cold December day as it wound around and around inside of her. “You do know how to say my name after all.”
And then he left her there—out on the dock with the wind kicking at her but failing entirely to cool her down—as she took another call from her captain in Anchorage.
It wasn’t until later, when her fellow troopers had handled the crime scene, and she’d flown back to Juneau and the temporary office where she’d been deployed to conduct her Alaska Force investigation, that Kate realized what a close escape she’d really had.
Not from whoever was running around blowing up buildings and stabbing people with hunting knives but from Templeton Cross.
Because back in Juneau, Kate couldn’t access either the strange feelings she’d had while she was out there or, even worse, the things Templeton himself had made her feel.
Deliberately and more than once.
She was happy, or maybe relieved, that she hadn’t crossed any lines.
And then horrified, as she sat in her temporary office with her colleagues, talking through everything she’d done and seen since she’d headed out to Grizzly Harbor, that she’d even put herself in a position to consider the crossing of lines. Kate Holiday, who prided herself on following the law.
And sure, the troopers were given some fairly broad allowances, given where they lived and worked, but this was different.
Kate couldn’t help feeling that if she hadn’t left Grizzly Harbor when she had, she might have crossed not only the sorts of lines she maintained as a trooper but a good number of her own personal boundaries.
And she really couldn’t think of anything that appalled her more.
That night, Kate let herself into the little apartment she’d rented. She’d chosen it for its efficiency and convenient location a few blocks away from her current office. She liked it. Or she had when she’d left it the other day.
Kate couldn’t bring herself to live in the sort of stark, scary hovels like the ones where she’d been raised, so she always rented furnished places. But tonight she couldn’t help but think that she was living in the odds and ends of other people’s lives instead of making her own. Tonight it felt . . . makeshift and discordant.
Or she did.
“Get over yourself,” she muttered, rubbing a hand against that weird hollow sensation in her chest.
She went to the bedroom, peeled off her uniform, and threw all her clothes into her hamper. She stood in the shower, let the hot water pour all over her, and told herself she was fine. Because she was always fine. Because nothing had changed, out there on those mysterious islands.
Because the one thing—the only thing—Kate had ever depended on was herself.
And Templeton Cross was a problem, that was for certain. But he wasn’t her problem.
That was what she kept telling herself, all night long, hoping that somehow that would keep her from dreaming that same desperately erotic, wickedly dirty dream about him.
But it didn’t.
That night or any of the nights that followed.
* * *
• • •
Ten days later, Kate pushed her way out of her office building into a blustery Juneau afternoon with no idea what to do with herself.
You haven’t taken leave in years, her captain had told her over the phone from Anchorage, no doubt sitting there at the same desk where he’d promoted her time and time again.
I was under the impression that the fact I haven’t taken leave is why I’ve been promoted as often as I have, she’d replied. Perhaps unwisely.
But it had been a long ten days. She wasn’t entirely surprised when her boss sighed.
The thing is, Kate. This is a weird one. I don’t want to suspend you.
You have no grounds to suspend me, she hadn’t been able to keep herself from saying.
No one is accusing you of anything. But the fact of the matter is, somehow you’re smack in the middle of this. Which means you can’t be involved in the investigation. Which means I’m down the one person who could probably make sense of this whole mess. And look at that. It’s the holidays. Perfect opportunity for you to take a holiday break, which gives us enough time to tie some bows around what we already know.
Kate had needed a moment to fight to keep her voice calm. Which is that I had nothing to do with a body turning up in my plane.
Of course you didn’t, her boss had said. This is procedure, nothing more.
But she’d heard that note in his voice. That this was happening. That she had no control over it.
We’ll reconvene in the New Year, he’d said. Hopefully with some answers.
“Merry freaking Christmas to me,” Kate muttered to herself now, but the cold, damp wallop of the wind and the mountains took her breath away.
It had been snowy and in the twenties this morning. Now it was a relatively cozy thirty-seven degrees or so, though it was already tipping into twilight at two thirty in the afternoon. Kate could smell more snow in the air as she trudged out of the temporary office she was now no longer using, not far from the Capitol Building.
She went and got in her car. Then sat there, waiting for it to warm up.
Waiting to have some idea what she was supposed to do with time off she didn’t want. During the one time of the year when she needed to be busy. When she depended on it.
Should she stay in Juneau? Or go back to Anchorage, where she could try to convince her captain to reinstate her when they were face-to-face? Though he hadn’t sounded as if there was any wiggle room—
When the rap on her window came, she jumped.
She expected to see someone from work at her window, possibly out here to commiserate with her unwanted leave—not that Kate had made a huge number of friends in her couple of months here, chasing down Alaska Force leads. No
t that she was much for making friends, full stop.
She fixed her work-appropriate smile on her face anyway—
But it was Templeton.
And for a long, hard kick of a heartbeat that made her a little too dizzy, she couldn’t make sense of what she saw.
Templeton Cross. Standing in a parking lot in Juneau, when he was supposed to be roaming about the islands or off doing military maneuvers or running missions abroad.
And the thought that she was gaping at him like a starry-eyed schoolgirl made her jab her finger on the window’s down button.
“What are you doing here?”
He smiled, infuriating man that he was. That big, careless grin. “Waiting for you, obviously.”
“You can’t lurk around outside—”
“I don’t lurk, Kate. Men my size are too big to lurk.”
“Does that mean that you had me under surveillance? Because that’s not acceptable. And I should tell you that I take a very dim view—”
“Hey. Trooper. Breathe.”
It was a distinct order, and Kate . . . obeyed him.
She actually obeyed him.
That gold, gleaming thing in his dark gaze brightened. Making her feel hot and itchy all at once, which she chose to interpret as a good opportunity to turn her car heater down.
“I know how to track people, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “I know where you live. But I would never turn up there, because that’s exactly the kind of potential threat I think you really would take a dim, possibly armed, view of.”
“You know where I live?”
“Juneau is not a big city. It’s not hard to figure out where anyone lives.”
“That’s really not the point.”
“Here I am at your current, if temporary, place of business, filled with various cops of all shapes and sizes,” Templeton said. “As harmless as a lamb.”
The idea of him as either harmless or any kind of lamb was so ridiculous that it didn’t bear commenting on. Kate frowned at him instead.
“What could you possibly want? Let me rephrase. What could you possibly want that you couldn’t achieve through a phone call? An e-mail? Or any of the time-honored forms of communication that do not necessitate a personal appearance at twilight?”
