Sergeant's Christmas Siege

by Megan Crane

  “I’m sure you are,” he said in a low rumble that affected her the way his mouth had against hers. And lower. “But you don’t have my legs or my training. You set the pace. And don’t try to show off at these temperatures. I wouldn’t want to have to carry you back.”

  “That will never happen.”

  “Because you’re not at all competitive and would never try to show off, especially after some guy said he was faster than you?”

  “You will never have to carry me anywhere,” Kate clarified. Icily.

  And shoved her hat down hard over her ears as they headed outside, though that did nothing at all to block the sound of his laughter.

  It was definitely a Fairbanks winter morning. The cold sucker punched Kate instantly, then seemed to settle hard in her bones. Breathing in was sharp, like a machete. It felt like clarity.

  The snowfall had stopped for the moment, and the lights from the front of the house showed Kate that Temple­ton had been out already this morning, shoveling grooves into the few feet of snow that had fallen in the night, which would make it easier for them to drive out later. And made it easier now for Kate to set off toward the main road.

  Running in fresh snow was fun. Kate had always enjoyed it, in her years in cold and snowy places like right here in Fairbanks. It was the potential ice packed beneath the snow from warmer temperatures that was the problem, so quickly could it take a runner down. And then the real trouble happened, out in the dark with a broken ankle or worse, risking hypothermia with potentially no cell phone service.

  But Kate wasn’t worried about that today. On the main road, the snowplows had already been out this morning. Kate could run in the street, parallel to the snow berm the plow had pushed to the side. It was as much a test of agility as it was of regular endurance, with her headlamp casting a little circle of light before her and the strange, somehow comforting and yet unsettling awareness of the big man keeping pace with her at her back.

  She didn’t know what she expected Templeton to do. Make noise, make his presence known the way he always did. Something.

  But all he did was run. The only sound was her breath and his and their feet crunching against the snowpack. It was like they were the only people alive and awake in all of Alaska, when Kate knew better.

  Once again, Kate felt the embrace of it. That damnable intimacy, wrapping around her like the sort of hug she would decline if it was offered to her.

  It made her mad. It made her run faster, as if she could outrun it—­and not because she was trying to show off to an ex–­Delta Force Army Ranger whose very physicality was a testament to his commitment to keeping himself battle ready. Kate had spent almost fifteen years building up her walls, creating and bolstering her boundaries, and policing the vast gulf of distance—­physical and emotional—­she kept between herself and other people. She’d weathered the uncomfortable silences, the “lost” invitations to group activities she didn’t want to attend anyway, the whispers behind her back when her “attitude” inevitably caused offense. She was happy with where she’d ended up in her career, able to do her own thing without worrying about office politics.

  Kate was well known as an ice queen, and she liked it that way.

  And all it took was one visit to Templeton and his friends and it all started crumbling.

  Like it had been dominoes all along, instead of stone walls and sheets of arctic ice.

  She wasn’t a good judge of the male half of the species, but everything she’d witnessed as a child suggested that Templeton was nothing like the men in her family and was much more like the troopers who had listened to her, understood what was happening, and made sure she never had to go back out into the bush to the compound she’d escaped. Then died because they’d protected her. And the more adult truth she had no desire to acknowledge was that she already had more of a relationship with Templeton than she’d had with any of the other men who’d walk-­on roles in her life.

  Kate wanted absolutely no part of this, whatever it was.

  Seeing her cousin yesterday had crystallized that for her. Will was family. He was the least offensive member of her family, as a matter of fact, and she had no desire to do anything about the state of her broken relationship with him. If it hadn’t been for her Alaska Force investigation and that body in her seaplane, she never would have looked him up. She would have let that bridge burn down into dust, and if she’d thought about it at all, she would have roasted marshmallows in the flames.

  Kate didn’t want intimacy. She didn’t want cozy chats over red wine in cheerful log cabins with women she barely knew. And she had never been all that interested in oral sex, with all that forced vulnerability. She still didn’t want any of it, she snapped at herself.

  She pumped her arms, moving faster over the frigid ground, because her body was warm and limber now despite the cold—­and she didn’t like the fact that Temple­ton seemed to have his own private access to her body and its reactions no matter what she thought about it. She didn’t like that at all.

  Kate liked sugar, too. A lot. Yet she knew that it was far better to moderate its use than to indulge herself, because no matter how good it tasted, it was never worth how she felt afterward. Templeton was no different. He was just . . . sugar in male form. Tempting, impossible to consume without that little bit of a head rush, but no good for her.

  She was solitary like a rock and alone like an island, like the old song had always told her.

  “Are you running toward something?” came Templeton’s amused voice from behind her. That was when she realized she was practically sprinting at breakneck pace down a snowy, treacherous road with only the faintest stirrings of approaching daylight lightening up the dark sky. “Or is something chasing us?”

  “I was thinking about sugar,” she said, having to yell a bit to make sure her words made it through the covering she had over the lower part of her face.

  “Sugar makes me cranky,” Templeton observed. Kate noticed that he wasn’t out of breath. At all. That was so annoying that she ran even faster. “It doesn’t make me feel like I need to try to break the land speed record.”

  She made it to the turn of the road that led farther into town. That put them at about two miles from Isaac’s sister’s house—­which Kate would count as four, because she always counted miles as doubles in weather like this. It was that much harder to move. She stopped running, and hated the fact that she was panting a bit. She could see his breath in the air, too, but he looked as if he could run at twice the pace she’d set, straight up the side of Denali and on into forever.

  And sure, that was the entire point of his existence. That was who he was.

  But it still irritated her.

  “And I’m thinking about communities,” she told him. The sky really was getting brighter, so she pulled her headlamp down around her neck and scowled at him, not caring that her eyelashes were frozen. His were, too. It only made his eyes that much more formidable. “Some people are put on this earth to bond. To make connections. To form big and little groups, or whatever you want to call it.”

  “I call it being a person, actually.”

  “But as I’ve already proved more than once, my purpose on this earth is to seek out unhealthy communities and either set them on the path to a healthier future or take them apart. That’s good work. It’s my work. There aren’t a lot of people who can do it.”

  “Is this your résumé?” She didn’t hear that signature laugh of his, but it still seemed to fill the air between them, like the puff of his breath against the frigid air. “I already know what you do, Kate. It’s why we’re up here in subzero weather, preparing to take on the second coming of Samuel Lee Holiday’s freaky family compound.”

  Kate hopped from foot to foot to keep her body temperature from dropping. “All I’m saying is that some people, because of who they are and what they do, need to maintain certain d
istances. Surgeons are cold and off-­putting. People make jokes about their bedside manner. It’s a big cliché, but the reality is, they have to be more scientific than social. Or how could they do what they need to do?”

  “You’re going to have to leave me a trail of breadcrumbs here,” Templeton said, though he didn’t sound confused. He sounded entertained. And maybe a little chilly. “Because you lost me long before you got to bedside manners.”

  “Not everybody can sail through life with a big belly laugh and a few off-­color remarks, Templeton.”

  That landed awkwardly. And distinctly, in that space between them.

  “You know what the song says,” Templeton drawled. “We couldn’t all be cowboys, no matter how much we might want to be. Some of us, it turns out, were always going to end up clowns.”

  “That sounds like a stupid song.”

  “Only because you’ve obviously never heard it.”

  Kate turned then and ran even faster back toward the house. And she couldn’t have said what she was running away from at that point. That tone in his voice. The look she was sure she’d seen on his face. Much too kind. Far too understanding.

  Or worse still, the sure knowledge that once again he had her acting irrationally.

  And making all the things she didn’t like about this situation even worse despite her efforts to stop what felt like a terrible avalanche into emotion and sensation, connection and intimacy, and all the other things she wanted no part of. Ever.

  But once they were back at the house, it was almost like those strange, embarrassing moments in the dark hadn’t happened at all. They both took showers, then packed up and met downstairs again. Kate rustled up a relatively decent breakfast from the kitchen cabinets while Temple­ton made more coffee, and she could almost pretend that she didn’t keep revealing herself to this man.

  Over and over and over again.

  “Are you ready to do this?” Templeton asked.

  Like they had a little holiday shopping planned on the twenty-­third of December. A merry run to the stores for unnecessary items to wrap in shiny paper and foist upon others, or mysterious things people seemed to want only at this time of year, like mulled wine or fruitcake. Instead of a strategic approach to a potentially dicey, cultish operation that would be all the more fraught because said cultish operators were related to Kate.

  Kate had the deeply uncharacteristic and irrational urge to jump all over that question. She wanted to parse it to death and ask him why exactly he was implying that she might not be ready.

  But she bit her tongue. Literally bit it.

  Because it occurred to her that it was possible she was the teensiest bit anxious.

  “Let’s go,” was all she said.

  Templeton called in as he drove, updating Isaac and then Jonas. And Kate knew she should feel pleased that he kept them on speaker, so she could take part in the conversation. Or pleased that she didn’t have to ask him to include her. Because this was a job, after all. Just a job, nothing more.

  No matter all those edgy and awkward and distressingly melty things that felt like a whole lot more than a job kicking around within her.

  “Are you thinking it’s going to be a full-­fledged party down there?” Isaac asked, something on his end making noise, which was unusual. Kate remembered then that even Isaac did a family thing over the holidays.

  She should have been more excited to finally be doing something regular people did, even if she was doing it with that typical Holiday family spin.

  “I think it’s going to be an interview,” Kate replied. “Perhaps slightly more awkward than most, given the family connection.”

  “But we’re going in with party favors,” Templeton assured his leader. “Just in case.”

  The drive from Fairbanks to Nenana was slow but unremarkable, except for the inevitable idiot driving way too fast for the wintry road conditions. The sun came up as the Parks Highway split from the railroad that headed left toward the railroad bridge and followed the road over the separate bridge for passenger vehicles. And when they drove into the village of Nenana, over the frozen Tanana river, with its glimpse over the hardy river town on the southern bank, Kate couldn’t help but remember what it had been like to come into this same town that Christmas Day long ago. She’d spent hours on that snowmobile, following this same river in from the east. She’d ditched the snowmobile on Front Street when it ran out of gas, then walked—­stumbled—­south to find the Troopers.

  It had been fifteen years since that walk in weather as unpleasant as today’s. In the dark, after her terrifying ride away from the compound. And yet Kate felt it lodged there beneath her ribs this morning like a deep bruise. As if coming back here, for this reason and at this time of year, had dislodged something inside her. Something hard and heavy that left marks.

  But she didn’t say a word.

  They drove past the village, then turned at the mile marker Kate’s contacts had indicated would lead them to the new Holiday compound. The road was more of a suggestion than anything else, and the rest of the directions were very Alaskan. Drive out past the power lines, then go about five miles until the burned-­out cabin. Take a left and go another few miles—­when you see all the spruce trees, you’re close.

  “My plan is to drive right up to the front door and see what happens,” Templeton said as they left the power lines behind. “Any objections?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  Though Kate could think of approximately nine hundred objections, none of them rational. All of them emotional.

  She checked her weapon, found it as satisfactory as the last three times she’d checked it, and secured it again.

  The day was good and broken by the time they found the spruce trees and saw the curl of smoke that indicated a nearby cabin. The winter light was pale and pretty, lighting up the snow-­covered hills and making the confluence of frozen rivers gleam in the distance.

  And Kate didn’t have any particular memories about this stretch of the land around Nenana. The family compound hadn’t been in this direction. Still, as they bumped along toward the house, there was something about knowing that she was going to see her family members. It made a clearing she knew she’d never been in before in her life seem familiar. Maybe it was the house itself when they reached it, built in ramshackle Alaskan style, with outbuildings and additions slapped on here and there.

  But no people.

  Templeton pulled up in front of the house and cut the engine.

  “This doesn’t feel right,” Kate said.

  The back of her neck tingled. She couldn’t put her finger on why.

  “No lights on,” Templeton said in his low voice. “It’s December. The sun just came up. Where are the lights? And why don’t we hear a generator?”

  But Kate didn’t have time to think that one through.

  Or even answer him.

  Because that was when the shooting started.

  Sixteen

  A split second after the first bullet slammed into the ground in front of the SUV, Templeton and Kate were moving.

  Like one.

  Kate threw herself down, reaching for her weapon as she scanned the scene outside. Templeton tossed the car into reverse, wheeling them back so the SUV was at an angle to the house and could offer some protection.

  “One shooter,” Kate reported. “He’s on the roof.”

  “I see him.”

  Templeton slammed the SUV into park, tossed his door open, and then rolled out of the vehicle. He opened his mouth to order Kate to follow him, but she was already right there, moving smoothly to duck down next to him, with the SUV between them and the house. He was glad they’d both suited up for exposure to the outdoors shortly after they’d turned off the highway—­because you never knew—­or they would be in a lot more trouble than they already were.

  An
d then, without discussing it, Kate kept eyes on the idiot playing sniper from the roof while Templeton checked the surrounding area for any other trigger-­happy maniacs.

  “All clear,” he told Kate in a low voice after a few tense moments and another shot that, like the first few, slammed into the frozen ground in the space between them and the house. “I think that joker is the only active threat.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” Kate said grimly. “I’m seventy-­five percent certain that’s my cousin Russ up there.”

  “Only seventy-­five percent?”

  “The last time I saw him he was a chubby kid. The man on the roof is bearded and could be anywhere between twenty and forty years old.” Kate blew out a breath. Then another. “Cover me.”

  He had an inkling of what she was about to do when she holstered her weapon. And had to check himself, because if any other member of Alaska Force had made the same move, Templeton wouldn’t have blinked. Yet here he was thinking about how much he wanted to keep her in one piece.

  But a man could think like a Neanderthal without acting like one. Or giving in to the things that churned around in him that couldn’t possibly be emotions.

  So he propped himself up against the SUV, ostentatiously pointing his own weapon right at no-­longer-­chubby Cousin Russ. If that was who it was. All Temple­ton saw was one more backwoods fool with a beard longer than his common sense.

  “If I start shooting, friend,” Templeton called, letting his voice ring out into the quiet of the frigid morning, “I’m not going to hit three feet in front of you.”

  “I missed you on purpose,” came the reply from the roof. “I won’t miss again.”

  “Then it looks like we have a stalemate,” Templeton drawled, loud enough to reach to the windows all over the front part of the house, where he could see the suggestion of shadows and knew that whoever else lived here was watching.

  “Russ?” Kate called, sounding remarkably friendly as she stepped out from behind the car, her hands up in the air. “Is that you?”