by Megan Crane
All those thoughts chased through her head as he smiled at her, and she wished that she’d slept a bit more and fought off her Templeton memories less. Also that she’d kept her mouth shut.
“Yes,” he said, with that endless amiability that she now knew enough to find alarming. “I have family to visit. But the good news is, I can take point on what’s left of the separatists and their farm commune, since I’ll be up there anyway. You’re welcome.”
She did not point out that she hadn’t thanked him, though it was on the tip of her tongue to do so. Because apparently, Kate on a forced vacation liked to live dangerously.
And it wasn’t until they’d left the lodge together, as ordered, that Templeton shook his head at her as if she’d had a narrow escape. As if she didn’t know she’d had a narrow escape, to be more precise.
“I wouldn’t lose focus and mess with Isaac,” Templeton said out on the deck outside the lobby. Below, the waves were making a ruckus on the shore, and Kate wasn’t sure she liked the fact that she was starting to find that soothing when she’d always preferred to admire the ocean and its raw power from a safe distance.
It felt like another metaphor she’d rather not poke at.
“I wasn’t messing with him,” she said, fighting to keep her voice even. “It was a valid concern. Bear in mind that I’m here, ready and willing to work. Perfectly focused on the task at hand. I thought we all were.”
Templeton studied her a moment, and there was no smile on his face. No gleam in his dark eyes. Kate knew that once again, she was seeing his real face. And maybe it should have scared her that he didn’t do anything to conceal that fact.
Maybe what Kate really didn’t want to admit was that it did scare her.
“I would follow that man anywhere.” Templeton’s voice was as serious as his expression. “But I don’t ever forget who he is. Or what he’s capable of. Neither should you.”
Kate accepted that she’d been duly chastised and decided the best course of action was not to dwell on it. She nodded once, jerkily. She said nothing. She turned and went off to her cabin, packed her go bag, and met Templeton back down on the docks.
It had started to rain, but that hardly mattered. Because they were headed north, where rain would be the least of their problems. Everyone in Alaska Force had agreed that anyone could handle traffickers or religious separatists, but whether she liked it or not, Kate was best suited to deal with her own family.
And when she set aside her own revulsion and considered it the way she would if she were advising someone else on how to handle the situation, Kate knew they were right.
Which meant Kate and Templeton were headed to Fairbanks. To see a cousin she hadn’t seen since they’d both been teenagers. Kate had been testifying against their parents in court. William had been two years younger than Kate and not exactly supportive of her position. Or her willingness to discuss, in open court, the things they’d been repeatedly told were private and for family only.
Kate and Templeton flew to Juneau first, then caught a ride on a private plane to Fairbanks. The sun was already setting as they flew in a little before three o’clock that afternoon. She’d put in a year or two as a brand-new trooper here, but it was the winters of her childhood that she remembered the most vividly, with sun dogs in the morning and afternoon, when ice crystals in the atmosphere made the sun into art against the ever-present snow.
It was already snowing when they landed, and the snow kept coming as they climbed into the waiting car, then headed toward one of the less desirable neighborhoods within the city limits, which contained Kate’s cousin’s last known address. He’d gone from the compound outside Nenana to Anchorage, where he’d spent the remainder of his adolescence, then moved farther and farther north every time he’d changed addresses until he’d ended up in Fairbanks a couple of years back. And as far as Kate could tell, he’d been here ever since.
“You seem tense,” Templeton said cheerfully as he navigated along the road, leaving the relative traffic of the Fairbanks airport behind and driving along streets that Kate recognized from the years she’d been stationed here. “Want to talk about sex?”
Kate laughed despite herself. “Why would I want to talk about sex?”
“Why wouldn’t you want to talk about sex? I always want to talk about sex.”
And for some reason, his outrageousness struck her as so ridiculous that she forgot to be angry. She shifted in the passenger seat, shaking her head at him as he drove the way he did absolutely everything else. Lounging there, one hand draped lazily over the steering wheel, looking like he might drift off to sleep at any moment when what he was actually doing was navigating a fairly treacherous road through inclement weather.
“So while sitting there, right this minute, you thought to yourself, I know. While on the way to meet up with a family member who might actually express his disinterest in seeing her, violently, what Kate really wants to do is discuss sexual escapades that didn’t even really happen.”
“Oh, let’s not play that game. It happened.”
Kate rolled her eyes. “I told you that you had an opportunity. You wasted that opportunity. That’s it. It’s gone, never to return.”
He threw her a dark look that brimmed with his particular brand of amusement, which made her want to smile back. Obviously, she frowned instead. But that look danced around inside her, making her feel all the things she’d been telling herself she didn’t feel since she’d woken up that morning-after with a hefty dose of buyer’s remorse.
“Tell yourself whatever you have to, Trooper,” Templeton drawled. “We’re just getting started.”
“And again, that’s a giant pass from me.” Kate smiled at him, cool and faintly malicious, which she found settled her nerves considerably. “You can start whatever you want. You have two hands. Go wild. But I very rarely repeat myself. And I never repeat mistakes.”
His laugh filled the SUV. It filled her, too, and she told herself she hated that feeling. But that was a lie. A definite, no-wiggle-room, full-on lie. She was melting inside and between her legs, she suspected he knew it, and now she was lying to herself.
Talk about slippery slopes.
“Keep telling yourself that,” Templeton murmured with that total confidence of his that should have made her want to heave. But that wasn’t the reaction she had at all.
And when they pulled up to a squat little house, with a variety of questionable outbuildings and surrounded by run-down looking cars, Kate realized that she’d forgotten to get as anxious as she might have otherwise.
Kate told herself Templeton couldn’t possibly have done that deliberately, that there was no method to his madness, but she couldn’t quite make herself believe it.
She shook that off as best she could and tried to concentrate on the task at hand.
Her cousin lived in the sort of community that troopers always found challenging. It was impossible to have any element of surprise, pulling up in recognizable state vehicles, particularly when the people who lived in places like this were typically well acquainted with all the local law enforcement officers.
But this wasn’t Kate’s division. And Templeton’s SUV didn’t look like it was Trooper issue. It was too glossy. Too impressive.
“They’re going to think you’re a drug dealer,” Kate pointed out.
“Whatever gets them to open the door,” Templeton replied as they both pulled on their gear and adjusted their weapons.
Kate had studied her cousin’s file. She knew that he was on his third wife. That he had all kinds of kids. But he didn’t live with them off in the bush somewhere, under harsh conditions and even harsher rules that he made to exalt himself. And he didn’t direct them all to break laws and try to literally blow up the government, so she was inclined to think of his life as an upgrade.
It didn’t feel much like an upgrade
when she climbed out of the car, pulled her hood tighter around her face to block out the snow, and trudged toward the uninspiring front door of the prefab house painted a sullen, peeling blue, with its huge icicles hanging down, proclaiming its lack of insulation. She ignored the anxious churning in her belly, made sure to stand close enough to the door to avoid the icicles if they fell, and knocked. Hard.
“We’re being watched,” Templeton said quietly. That didn’t surprise Kate at all. She’d seen the lights in the other frosted-over windows in this sad little neighborhood, and particularly in the house in the next clearing. She knew that the neighbors were watching. It was par for the course.
She knocked again.
“William?” she called loudly. “It’s your cousin Kate. I just want to talk to you.”
She heard the usual sounds of shuffling and banging around inside. A loud television suddenly muted. She waited, angling her body, as the dead bolt was thrown.
The door swung open, and the light spilled from inside into the drawn-out twilight with the snow coming down. And then Kate was face-to-face with a family member for the first time in years.
William wasn’t the kid she remembered. He’d grown up. He looked like an odd mix of Kate’s father and his own, and he sported a dark mustache, a scraggly beard, and a visible neck tattoo that crawled up toward one ear.
And he looked about as thrilled at this reunion as Kate was.
“What the hell, Katie,” he said after a long pause, his dark eyes glittering in a way that reminded her, against her will, of her father’s long monologues and the cold, stark rooms they’d all huddled in for warmth on days a lot like this one. “If I wanted the family over for Christmas or whatever this is, it wouldn’t be you.”
Thirteen
Templeton watched Kate’s reaction while he kept one eye on the cousin who stood in the doorway looking anything but welcoming, but she didn’t crack. She gave no indication that the guy staring down at them from the step above her was anything to her besides another person of interest in an old investigation.
What he couldn’t tell was whether Kate was simply showing her professionalism or if it was true.
And this was definitely not the optimal time for Templeton to consider all the things he didn’t know about Kate Holiday. As opposed to obsessing over the things about her he did know. Like her sweet taste. Like those sounds she made, there in the back of her throat.
Once again, dumbass, he growled at himself. Try to focus. This is not the time.
He was still pissed at himself for losing his focus entirely when he’d gone to Kate’s cabin to tell her about the break-in at her apartment and had lost himself in her tipsy come-on instead. God, had he lost himself. But he’d vowed he wouldn’t let even Kate’s naked body distract him from work again, and he’d given himself one last chance.
He had no intention of blowing it now.
Templeton focused on the cousin. William Holiday did not strike him as any kind of significant threat. The overly large neck tattoo looked to Templeton like a small man’s attempt to look bigger than he was. And the guy’s general demeanor struck Templeton as sad-sack territory. He would be very surprised if this guy was running around blowing things up or potentially killing transients to leave them lying around like bait.
People were always surprising, it was true. But Templeton rarely read them wrong to that degree.
“It’s great to see you, too, Will,” Kate was saying, in exactly the same tone her cousin had used when he’d called her Katie. And Templeton didn’t have to delve too much deeper into the mysteries of Trooper Kate Holiday to know that she really, really did not enjoy being called by a nickname. “I figure the last time has to be, what? Eleven years ago, at least.”
“You know how long ago it was.” Templeton wasn’t fond of the way the cousin glared at Kate like she was personally responsible for his bad decisions, including that neck tattoo. More interesting, he didn’t look at Templeton at all. The kind of man who was deep into firebombing and murder would likely pay some attention to a huge, clearly tactically proficient individual who was taller than eye level even though he was standing two steps down. “It was ten years ago at Mom’s appeal.”
“How is your mom?” Kate asked. She made a little show of including Templeton in the conversation with the way she inclined her head, but she didn’t actually shift her gaze from William. “I haven’t thought about Aunt Darlene in ages.”
“You know how my mother is.” William made a derisive sort of noise, like he was sucking on his teeth. “She’s an ex-con. The minute she could leave the state, she did, and she’s never been back. She’s never even met her grandchildren. Merry Christmas, Katie.”
William went as if to close the door, but Katie stopped him. She didn’t throw her hand out or use her body weight. She only smiled and shifted her body enough that it made her seem broader somehow. And William stopped what he was doing.
“I’m afraid this isn’t a social call, Will,” Kate said quietly. “As much fun as it is to catch up out here on your doorstep, I’m going to have to ask you to invite us inside.”
William snorted. “What a surprise. Another Holiday throwing weight around. I’m shocked.”
He sounded bitter. But in keeping with Templeton’s judgment of his character, he did nothing but step back and wave his hand in ironic invitation, beckoning the two of them inside.
Kate marched in with great confidence, but Templeton figured that was for show. She knew he was behind her, proceeding more slowly. Checking out the scene as he went, looking for booby traps and other potential problems that could blow up in their face. Maybe literally, if William Holiday was more fire-happy than Templeton’s gut thought he was.
But it was like any crappy house Templeton had ever walked into. The only booby traps here were the residents. The front door opened up into a shabby living room, piled high with the detritus of unfolded laundry, unwashed dishes, piles of dirty snow boots, and cereal boxes upended on the floor, their contents strewn across the dingy rug. Someone had stapled plastic over the windows to try to create some insulation. It was charming, in other words. Templeton felt like he was back in one of the foster homes he’d been desperate to escape when he was still a kid.
One more reason to dislike Cousin William.
Templeton closed the front door behind him, then stood with his back to it, his gaze moving around what he could see of the rest of the house. A kitchen straight ahead, open to the living room. A small hallway, with a couple of doors leading off it. A back door at the far end of the hall that would provide easier access to the plugged-in vehicles out back.
“Who else is here?” Kate asked. “I wouldn’t want to miss a chance to say hello to your family.”
“I’ll go introduce myself,” Templeton said.
“If this is official business,” William said, still glaring at Kate, “why aren’t you wearing a uniform?”
Templeton left his post by the front door. He scanned the rest of the house in minutes. There was a dull-eyed, lank-haired woman in the bigger of the two bedrooms, who did nothing but glower at Templeton when he poked his head in. Then blew smoke rings as much toward the ceiling as at him. He saw no sign of the kids that had been mentioned in the files. And he had no way of telling whether that was a good or bad thing.
He walked back out to the living area, where Kate was standing in the center of the room, her hands on her hips and that cop smile on her face. He lifted one finger and saw her barely perceptible nod in reply.
“You keep glaring at me like I did something to you, Will,” she said, sounding friendly and encouraging, if still cool. “You’re going to have to explain that to me.”
“Really? It needs an explanation? Or did you somehow forget that you ripped our family apart?”
Templeton eyed Cousin Will, who was a little more yoked than
he liked the average person of interest to be, but nothing he couldn’t handle. And nothing Kate couldn’t handle, for that matter. But he still didn’t get that kind of vibe.
If there weren’t blown-up buildings and boats, and that pesky dead guy, Templeton would have accepted the fact that he was witnessing a messed-up family reunion, thought no more of it, and waited in the car.
Kate, meanwhile, looked about as unbothered as it was possible to be. “‘Ripped our family apart,’” she repeated. “That’s an interesting way to put it. How can you rip something apart that was already sick and broken to begin with?”
“I already know your opinion, Katie,” her cousin growled. “I don’t think there’s a courtroom you didn’t share your thoughts in when you had the chance. I don’t need to hear it again here.” He stretched his arms out along the back of the couch where he was sitting, in a manner Templeton could only describe as aggressive. Which made him marginally more interesting. But not interesting enough that Templeton felt he needed to move to a more strategic position. “I don’t care.”
“I really want to believe you,” Kate said. “But is it true that you don’t care? Or are you pretending that you don’t care, when actually all you really want is to finish what our parents started?”
Will made a derisive noise. “Finish what they started? Like what? Does it look to you that I’m living off my wits in the bush?”
“I don’t know what you’re doing,” Kate said calmly. “To me it looks a whole lot like wasting your potential.”
“You try getting a decent job when your name is William Holiday.”
“My examination of your file suggests that it’s holding down the jobs that’s a challenge, not getting them.”
“It’s not exactly a walk in the park to convince people to give me a chance. They always believe the name, not me.”
