Sniper's Pride

by Megan Crane

  It would be bright lights, shining so beautiful and wild that if they let it, it would light up even the relentless dark of an Alaskan winter.

  And best of all, they would do it together.

  “Mariah,” he said, as if this were their wedding, right here on a busy city street on a random workday. As if these were the vows that mattered, and everything else would be an afterthought. “I love you. I will always love you.”

  And that smile spread over her face, crooked and wicked and the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Or ever would.

  The happy tears were a bonus.

  “Oh, sugar,” she murmured, that accent just the way he liked it, thick as honey and twice as sweet. And better still, forever his. “I know you will.”

  And then she kissed him, like something right out of the fairy tales both of them would have sworn up and down they didn’t believe in.

  Until now.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from the next book in the Alaska Force series

  SERGEANT’S CHRISTMAS SIEGE

  Available in Fall 2019

  The man she was supposed to meet was late.

  Deliberately, she assumed.

  Investigator Kate Holiday of the Alaska State Troopers noted the time, then sat straighter in the chair she’d chosen specifically because it faced the door of the only café she’d found open here in tiny Grizzly Harbor, one of Southeast Alaska’s rugged fishing villages that was accessible only by personal boat, ferry—which, at this time of year, seldom ran—or air.

  Another minute passed. Five minutes. Ten.

  This was not a particularly auspicious beginning to her investigation into the strange goings-on in and around this remote town, tucked away on one of the thousand or so islands along the state’s southeastern coast. Kate took a dim view of strange goings-on in general, but particularly when they consistently involved a band of ex–military operatives running around and calling themselves Alaska Force.

  Of all things.

  Kate was not impressed with groups of armed, dangerous, unsupervised men in general. Much less with those who gave themselves cute names, seemed to expend entirely too much energy attempting to keep the bulk of their activities off the official radar, and yet kept turning up in the middle of all kinds of trouble. Which they then lied about.

  She had been unimpressed the moment she’d read the file that carefully detailed the list of potential transgressions her department at the Alaska Bureau of Investigations believed the members of Alaska Force had committed. But then, Kate had a thing about the men up here, on this island and all over the state, who seemed to think that the law did not apply to them. It was a time-honored part of the Alaskan frontier spirit, and Kate had hated it pretty much all her life.

  But this was not the time to think about her unpleasant childhood. What mattered was that Kate had grown up. She had escaped from the armed, dangerous, and unsupervised men who had run roughshod over her early years, helped put them away, and had thereafter dedicated herself to upholding the rule of law in the most defiantly, gleefully lawless place in the United States.

  This introductory interview with the supposed public relations point person of Alaska Force was only the opening shot. Kate was unamused that the group— who secreted themselves away on the near-inaccessible backside of the island, and when had anything good come from groups of dangerous men with hideouts?—considered it necessary to have a public relations point person in the first place.

  She had every intention of taking them down if they were responsible for the escalating series of disturbances that had culminated in the latest act of arson two days ago, which had amped up her department’s interest in what was happening out here in Grizzly Harbor. Because she had no tolerance whatsoever for people who imagined themselves above the law.

  Much less people who thought it was entertaining to blow up fishing boats in the sounds and inlets that made up so much of Southeast Alaska, where summer brought cruise ships filled with tourists. This time there had been no one on board, likely because it was the first week of a dark December.

  But it wouldn’t always be December.

  The door to the café opened then, letting in a blast of frigid air from outside, where the temperature hovered at a relatively balmy thirty-three degrees.

  Kate glanced up, expecting the usual local in typical winter clothes.

  But the man who sauntered in from the cold was more like a mountain.

  She sat at attention as if she couldn’t help herself, as if her body was responding unconsciously to the authority and command the man exuded the way the many deadly wild animals who roamed these islands threw off scent. And she loathed herself for the silly, embarrassingly feminine part of her that wanted to flutter about and straighten her blue uniform. She refrained.

  The man before her was dressed for the cold and the coming dark, which should have made him look bulky and misshapen. But it didn’t, because all of his gear was very clearly tactical. He was big. Very big. She put him at about six four, and that wasn’t taking into account the width of his shoulders or the way he held himself, as if he fully expected anyone looking at him to either cower in fear or applaud. Possibly both.

  Kate did neither.

  It was December on an Alaskan island, a bit of steep, rugged land made from the top of a submerged mountain and covered in dense evergreen trees, perched there in the treacherous northern Pacific with glaciers all around. One of the most beautiful if inhospitable parts of the world. There were only about one hundred and fifty year- round residents of this particular village, and Kate was the only person in the café besides the distinctly unfriendly owner, who had provided her a cup of coffee without comment, then disappeared into the kitchen.

  Meaning she was, for all intents and purposes, alone with a man who made her feel as instantly on edge as she would if she’d come face to face with a grizzly.

  Kate didn’t speak as she eyed the new arrival. She’d joined the Troopers after college, and had been on the job ever since, helping her fellow Alaskans in all parts of this great state. And sometimes providing that help had involved finding herself in all kinds of questionable situations. The man standing before her radiated power, but Kate knew a thing or two about it herself.

  She watched, expressionless, as he stuffed his hat and gloves in the arm of his jacket like a normal person when he wasn’t, then hung it up on one of the hooks near the door, all with what seemed to Kate to be entirely too much languid indifference for a man who was clearly well aware he was nothing less than a loaded weapon.

  He looked around the café, as if he expected to see a crowd on this dreary, cold Friday afternoon in the darkest stretch of the year. Then he finally looked straight at Kate.

  For a moment, she felt wildly, bizarrely dizzy. As if the chair she was in had started to spin. She went to sit down, then realized three things, one on top of the next. One, she was already sitting down. Two, the man might have made a big show of looking around, but he’d taken in every single detail about her before he’d fully crossed the threshold. She knew it. She could tell.

  And three, the man in front of her wasn’t only big and powerful—and incredibly dangerous if the file on him was even partially correct—he was also beautiful.

  Shockingly, astonishingly, absurdly beautiful, in a way that struck her as too masculine, too physical, and too carnal, all at once.

  He had thick black hair that didn’t look the least bit military, and he made no attempt to smooth it now that he’d pulled his hat off. His eyebrows were arched and distinctly wicked. His eyes were as dark as strong coffee, his mouth was implausibly distracting, and his cheekbones were like weapons. He looked the way Kate imagined a Hawaiian god might.

  Which was a fanciful notion that she couldn’t believe she’d just entertained about a person of interest in a recurring series of questionable events.

>   His gaze was locked to hers, and she wondered if people mistook all that inarguable male beauty for softness, when she could see the gravity in those dark eyes. And a certain sternness in his expression.

  But in the next second he smiled, big and wide, and Kate was almost . . . dazzled.

  “You must be Alaska State Trooper Kate Holiday,” he said in a booming voice. “Come all the way out to Grizzly Harbor to sniff around Alaska Force. I’m Templeton Cross, at your service.”

  And when he moved, it was liquid and easy, two strides to get across the floor and extend his hand to Kate as if he were welcoming her to his home like some cheerful, oversized patriarch. As if he weren’t on the wrong side of an interview with law enforcement.

  As if he wasn’t very likely responsible for—or complicit in—a string of disturbances, hospitalizations, explosions, and other dubious events as far away as Juneau, but mostly concentrated here in Grizzly Harbor, going back years. With a noted and concerning uptick over the past year.

  But being a Trooper wasn’t like other kinds of policing, or so Kate gathered from watching police shows based in the Lower 48. Alaska State Troopers had to get used to roles that defied proper job descriptions, because anything could and would happen in the course of a shift when that shift took place somewhere out in the Last Frontier. Kate knew how to play her part. She stood, smiled nonthreateningly, and took his hand.

  And told herself that she was cataloguing how hard and big it was, that was all. How it wrapped around hers. How Templeton Cross, whose military record stated he had been an Army Ranger until he’d moved off into something too classified to name, made no attempt to overpower her. He didn’t shake too hard. He didn’t try to crush the bones in her hand, to let her know who was boss. There was no he-man, Neanderthal moment, the way there too often was in situations like these.

  He shook her hand like a good man might, and she filed that away because she suspected he wasn’t a good man at all. And a man who could fake it was exponentially more dangerous than one who oozed his evil everywhere like a fuel leak.

  She angled her head toward the table she’d claimed, removing her hand from his and waving it in invitation. Because she could act like this was her home, too. No matter that the hand he’d shaken . . . tingled. “Please. Sit down.”

  “Right to business,” Templeton said, with a big laugh that jolted through Kate. She told herself it was an unpleasant sensation, especially the way it wound around and around inside her like it was heating her up from within.

  She smiled at him as he threw himself down into the seat across from her, taking up more than his fair share of space. As if his big arms, clad in a tight henley that showed her exactly how seriously he took his physique and suggested he dedicated a huge amount of energy to maintaining it, couldn’t help but sprawl out on either side of him of their own accord.

  “Do you think this will make you seem more approachable?” she asked.

  He belted out another laugh. “Do I seem approachable? I must be slipping.”

  And for a moment they both smiled at each other, like it was a competition to see who could be more pleasant.

  “You must know that I’m here after the rash of incidents that seemed to stem entirely from your little group,” Kate said, folding her hands on the table and watching his face. His expression didn’t change at all. “You’ve chosen to show up for this conversation late, then engage in what I imagine you think is charming small talk. Your military record goes to great lengths not to say what sort of classified things you engaged in after you were a Ranger, but I’m going to guess it was Delta Force.”

  “I don’t like that name,” Templeton said, almost helpfully. “It’s so dramatic, don’t you think?”

  “Now you’re being funny,” Kate observed. “Which suggests you find yourself entertaining. What interests me, Mr. Cross, is that you think comedy is the appropriate way to handle the situation you find yourself in.”

  She knew a lot of things about Templeton Cross. Among them, that he’d achieved the rank of Master Sergeant—but unlike many people with military backgrounds she’d encountered, he didn’t correct her when he failed to address him by his rank.

  “And what situation is that?” he asked instead. “I’m having a cup of coffee with a law enforcement officer. As a former soldier myself, I have nothing but respect for a badge. I didn’t realize there was an expectation that this conversation stay grumpy. But we can do that, too.”

  “Fascinating,” Kate murmured, as if he were answering her questions with these evasions. “Why don’t we start with you explaining to me what Alaska Force is.”

  Templeton leaned back, his big body looking as if it might splinter the chair beneath him if he moved wrong. Then again, this was Alaska, where everything was necessarily hardy. Even chairs in an otherwise empty café in a town so sleepy this time of year that Kate hadn’t seen a single person on her walk from the sea plane she’d flown here from Juneau. She’d felt eyes on her when she’d walked through the residential part of town, and had heard music from inside the local dive bar, but she hadn’t actually seen a soul.

  “Alaska Force isn’t anything but a group of combat vets who run a little business together,” Templeton said genially. “It’s all apple pie and Uncle Sam around here, I promise.”

  “Mercenaries, in other words.”

  “Not quite mercenaries,” Templeton said, and she thought she saw something in his gaze then, some flash of heat, but it was gone almost as soon as she identified it. “I can’t say I like that word.”

  “Is there a better word to describe what you do?”

  “We like to consider ourselves problem solvers,” Templeton said, sounding friendly and at his ease. He looked it, too. Yet Kate didn’t believe he was either of those things. “You start throwing around words like ‘mercenary,’ and people think we’re straight-up soldiers of fortune. Soulless men who whore themselves out to the highest bidder. That’s not us.”

  “And yet Alaska Force has, to my count, been involved in no less than six disturbing incidents in the past six months,” Kate replied in the same friendly tone he’d used. She even sat back a little, mirroring his ease and supposed laziness right back at him. “There was a member of your own team who presented at the hospital in Juneau with injuries consistent with being beaten over the head and forcibly restrained. He claimed he tripped and fell.”

  “Green Berets are notoriously clumsy,” Templeton replied blandly.

  “Right around that time, an individual known to be a self-styled doomsday preacher, who Alaska Force interfered with years back—”

  “If you mean we made sure he couldn’t hurt the women and children he was terrorizing.”

  “—stole a boat and then rendezvoused with your team this past spring. And with you, if I’m not mistaken.” Kate knew she was not mistaken about anything involving this case.

  “His story changes every hour on the hour.” Templeton’s smile struck her as more edgy than before, his eyes more narrow. “We happened to be in place to contain a potentially far more threatening incident. You’re welcome.”

  “Since then there have been four more incidents involving property damage in and around this island and the surrounding area. Culminating in what happened two nights ago when a boat that shouldn’t have been in the harbor in the first place blew up within sight of the ferry terminal. The anonymous tip that we received suggested Alaska Force was responsible.”

  Templeton looked unconcerned. “We’re not.”

  “That’s it? That’s the whole defense you intend to mount?”

  “I’m not going to waste my time defending something we didn’t do,” Templeton said in that amiable, friendly, excessively mild way that was beginning to grate on Kate’s nerves. “A reasonable person might ask herself why Alaska Force would blow things up right here in our own backyard. If we were the kind of mercenari
es you seem to think we are, that would only draw unwanted attention. Like this meeting.”

  It was the first hint of anything other than excessive friendliness in his voice. Kate was delighted she was finally getting somewhere.

  “You claim you’re not that kind of mercenary,” she said. “So what kind of mercenary are you? The kind who thinks it’s fun to blow things up, maybe? Just because you can?”

  About the Author

  Megan Crane is a USA Today bestselling and RITA-nominated author. She currently lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband.

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