It’s Always Been You
Jessica Scott
To Michele
Thanks for going the distance with me
Acknowledgments
No matter how far we go in this world, we don’t go it alone. I have to thank my husband and kids who put up with cereal for dinner and far too many cranky mommy mornings when I stayed up too late working. My fabulous agent, Donna Bagdasarian, who takes freak-out phone calls in the middle of the night and repeatedly talks me off the ledge. Dana Weinberg, you are a true mentor and friend. Thanks for letting me lean on you. Nick, thanks for letting me use your trucker hat story. It is now forever immortalized in a romance novel. Patty Collins, you told me once that feelings were real, they weren’t necessarily true. Glad I listened to that and a lot more of your sage advice. Thanks for giving me the honor of command. And perhaps most importantly my talented editor, Michele Bidelspach. Thanks for not giving up on me with this one and for taking the time to help me get it right. We cut it close to the wire on this one but I’m truly grateful to have you in my corner.
Prologue
Northern Baghdad
FOB War Eagle 2005
“Is this hell? Because it feels like hell.” Second Lieutenant Ben Teague swiped his sleeve across his forehead and accomplished absolutely nothing. Sweat still dripped steadily down his forehead as he walked the perimeter of their tiny combat outpost with his platoon sergeant.
“Don’t start complaining about the air conditioner again.” Next to him, SFC Escoberra scowled at him.
Ben smirked and patted Sarn’t Escoberra on his shoulder. It was so easy to get his platoon sergeant irritated. “I was not going to mention the a/c. What makes you think I’d do such a thing?”
“Fuck off, LT.” Escoberra looked down the alley toward the city that hated them. It was a shit position, as shit positions went. Nothing quite like being alone and unafraid on the battlefield.
“Easy there, big fella. Didn’t mean to get your PTSD all riled up.”
Escoberra snarled and Ben grinned. “You’re in a lovely mood. Don’t tell me you’re cranky about this lovely little mission, too?”
“Don’t start, LT.”
“What? We can barely defend our position, we don’t have enough ammo, and we’re not serving any purpose other than to hold some piece of real estate down. The commander can’t even give me a good reason for us to be out here.”
Beside him, Escoberra sighed heavily and lifted his weapon, checking the field of fire. “LT, you need to quit pissing and moaning about this. The men are going to hear you.”
Ben sobered and snapped his mouth closed. His platoon sergeant was right. It wasn’t good to let the boys hear the leadership arguing about the mission. “Let’s change the subject to something less depressing. How’s the family?”
Escoberra’s eyes crinkled at the edges. “My wife seems to think our almost twelve-year-old daughter needs a personal trainer.”
Ben coughed, trying to hide a laugh. “Yeah, ’cause that’s all you need is to think about your daughter getting smoking hot while you’re deployed.”
“Not funny. I’m not ready for her to grow up yet and she’s not even mine,” Escoberra said quietly. “I love that little kid. I swear to God if some raging hard-on hurts her…”
“No boy is going to dare come around with you there.”
“That’s the problem. I’m not there,” Escoberra said. “I’m stuck here.”
Ben adjusted the strap on his weapon then toed the concertina wire strung across a low concrete barrier. “Does her dad ever come into the picture?”
“Nah. He’s out of the picture. I’m not complaining, though. She might not be mine by blood but she’s family by every other way that matters.” Escoberra glanced down the road. “And speaking of the commander, guess who’s coming to the family dinner for a site visit later tonight?”
Ben rubbed his eyes beneath his sunglasses and let out a hard sigh of frustration. “I don’t want to deal with the fucking commander. I’d rather deal with my mother.”
Escoberra snorted. “What’s wrong with your mother now?”
“The Almighty Colonel Diane Teague called the battalion commander and tried to get me moved to go take an executive officer job. Fuck that, man. I don’t want to count pens and toilet paper.” Ben wiped his gloved hand over his forehead, looking out over the edge of the barrier on the roof. Their single building stronghold wasn’t exactly an impenetrable fortress but at least it provided a nice view of the city. When things were getting blown all to hell around them.
“She’s just trying to look out for your career.”
“My mom needs to worry about her part of the war and let me worry about mine.” Grit scraped over his skin. “Fuck, man, moms are supposed to bake cookies and kiss your boo-boo when it hurts. Mine eats napalm and pisses razor wire.”
“You never struck me as the kind of guy who had mommy issues,” Escoberra said.
“Screw you, man. I don’t. I was just saying I’d rather deal with her than the commander. The commander is a pain in my ass that can get me killed as opposed to just a pain in the ass. See the difference?” Ben spat into the dirt, not actually wanting to delve into talking about his mother. He shouldn’t have brought it up. “We need to get ready to head out on patrol. Maybe I can avoid the commander if I’m too busy getting shot at.”
“Play nice, LT. I’m tired of the first sergeant running a wire brush over my ass because of you constantly fighting with the commander. You’re a lieutenant, he’s your boss. You don’t get to tell him how you really feel about things,” Escoberra said. His words were mild but beneath the calm was a temper. Ben knew this firsthand, and as much as he liked screwing with Escoberra, he also knew his limits.
He wasn’t entirely sure that Escoberra wouldn’t take his head off if given the right provocation. “Think of it as an exfoliation treatment,” Ben said after a while.
After an impossible silence, Escoberra finally glanced at him, then looked back out toward the endless, dusty city. It was too quiet out there. “The sun is getting to you. You should drink water.”
Ben bit his bottom lip where it had split some time during their last firefight. It opened again with the movement and warm, coppery blood coated his tongue. He spat into the dirt. “It’s a hundred and twenty-six degrees. Of course the sun is getting to me.” He adjusted his body armor, itching to go out on patrol and do something. “Tell me again why we’re hanging out here?”
“Waiting for the bad guys to drive right by.” Escoberra pointed at a white pickup that zipped by the end of the road, then stopped. Two faces peered out at them.
Ben’s stomach flipped beneath his ribs. His heart started racing in his chest. “You’re really fucking scary sometimes with that warrior intuition shit you’ve got going on.”
Escoberra palmed the butt stock of his weapon. “Call it in. Get air support en route. This could get ugly.”
But Ben didn’t get the chance. A brilliant flash of heat seared across his skin a second before the boom knocked him on his ass.
And then all hell broke loose.
Chapter One
Fort Hood, 2009
Four years later
Captain Ben Teague prayed to the caffeine gods and waited for the espresso machine to dispense the morning sacrifice. He’d never really considered why an infantry battalion had an espresso machine in the middle of the battalion operations office but right then, he wanted to kiss the man who’d had the foresight to buy it and keep it well-stocked with beans.
Somehow, he didn’t think that Sergeant Major Cox would appreciate the gesture.
It was four-thirty in the morning on a Monday and someone had had the good idea to call an alert. Which
meant that instead of getting to sleep like a normal person, Ben and everyone else in this clusterfuck of a battalion had dragged their carcasses on post at the ass crack of dawn.
Ben was liable to stab someone if he didn’t get coffee stat.
Funny, he’d actually thought he was going to finally get some sleep when he’d actually nodded off. But as usual, it had all been a tease. The phone had yanked him out of that fog between sleep and waking. Damn it, he was getting caffeine before the morning briefing.
He kicked his New Kids on the Block trucker hat higher up on his head and counted to ten while the espresso machine ground the beans, then dispensed the precious liquid.
The warning light flashed red and the steady stream of espresso dripped to a halt. Ben wanted to cry.
“It needs water, sir.”
“Thank you, Captain Obvious.” Ben shot Sergeant Dean Foster a baleful look then jerked his thumb toward the espresso machine, saying nothing further. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with Foster’s smart-ass comments this morning. Not when Ben’s sense of irony was still hung over from the night before.
“Did someone wake up on the wrong side of the bed?” Foster asked, taking the lid off the reservoir. “Do you need a hug?”
“No jokes before caffeine. Off with you, minion.” Ben narrowed his eyes then waved his hands. “Now to figure out why the hell we’re here at this ungodly hour,” Ben muttered.
Not that it mattered. Ben had long ago given up trying to change things. And to think, once upon a time, he’d thought he could make a difference.
What a miserable joke.
“Teague, I don’t give a flying fuck how much you were abused as a child, if you don’t get that goddamned hat off in my building…”
“Good morning to you, too, sunshine,” Ben said to the battalion sergeant major. Any day he could get the sergeant major’s goat was a good day. It was one of life’s few pleasures.
“Teague, one of these days…”
Someday, that would backfire on him. Until then, though… “We’ll go take a long hot shower together and you can tell me your childhood traumas?”
Sarn’t Major swung at him but Teague ducked. His hat wasn’t so lucky. Cox grabbed it and tore the thin white mesh in half. Sarn’t Major Cox was five and a half feet tall and about as wide, and none of it was fat.
“Oh come on!” Ben threw his arms up in mock disgust. “It took me at least four hours of surfing the Internet to find that hat.”
Cox held up a single finger then balled his hand into a fist around Ben’s hat. Cox balled up the hat and threw it at Ben’s chest. “We’ve got brothers and sisters who died in this uniform. How about you start treating it with some fucking honor?” he growled as he stormed by. “Get your sorry ass in the conference room. You’ve got a meeting with the boss in twenty minutes.”
Ben ground his teeth looking down at the rank on his grey uniform. Honor?
Ben knew all about it. It didn’t get you anywhere.
Foster walked back in, carefully carrying the water. “Mission accomplished?”
“Yep. Right on target. And I even did it before coffee.” Ben sighed. “What’s going on?”
Foster shrugged. “No clue but there’s a line of dudes outside the battalion commander’s office right now.”
Ben frowned. “Huh?”
“ ’Bout fifteen dudes lined up in the hallway.” Foster said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.
“No shit?”
Ben walked out of the office and turned down the hall toward the conference room. Foster wasn’t kidding. There were sergeants and officers from every company in the battalion. Ben couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a line like this outside the boss’s office.
Ben stopped short, his breath caught in his throat. Escoberra stood near the front. His arms were folded at parade rest, his palms resting at the small of his back. He stood solid and unmoving. Ben stood there, frozen. Escoberra shifted. For a moment their eyes locked and for a the briefest flicker, Ben saw the warrior he’d admired and looked up to when he’d been a scrappy, smart-assed lieutenant. Before he’d failed to defend a man he’d have followed to hell and back again.
Escoberra was still a warrior. It was Ben who had changed. Ben who had let the time and the bad memories drive him away from a man who’d been as close to a father figure as Ben could have asked for.
There were shadows in his former platoon sergeant’s eyes now. Deep and dark.
Ben took a deep breath. A single step toward a man he admired and looked up to. Heat crawled up the back of Ben’s neck. He wanted to speak, to say something to the man who’d saved his ass more times than he could remember.
“Escoberra!” The sergeant major’s voice rang out. Escoberra ground his teeth and looked away, before he snapped to the position of attention and disappeared into the sergeant major’s office.
It took everything Ben had to stand there while Escoberra walked away. He wanted to ask how the family was. How he was doing since the last deployment.
But Ben let him go. Because to say anything would be to acknowledge that the man in that hallway had changed. Ben didn’t know if it was the war, if it was some fucked-up trauma, but the war had changed him, changed them all.
And Ben no longer knew the man in that hallway. Shame burned on his neck, the weight of his failure heavy around his shoulders.
* * *
Ben broke into a wide grin as he walked into the conference room and saw an old familiar face. “Holy shitballs!”
Captain Sean Nichols looked up from his BlackBerry, his dark expression going from guarded to grinning the moment he recognized Ben. “Holy shit, you’re not in jail?”
“Very funny.” Ben gripped his old friend’s hand and pulled him into a one-armed man hug. “Some things never change. What are you doing here?”
“Looking for a job, apparently,” Sean said.
Ben frowned. “Huh?”
“Supposedly there’s some command positions opening up soon.” Nichols ran his hand over the back of his neck. “I’m supposed to interview today but there’s some massive shitstorm going on.”
“Yeah, I saw that. Where have you been?”
“Iraq, Afghanistan, and back again.” Sean nodded toward the other officers in the room. There was a big dude in one corner who looked like a professional wrestler, talking with one of the first sergeants. “These all your guys?”
“Nope. Never seen any of them before,” Ben said.
The battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Gilliad, walked in, followed by Sarn’t Major Cox and a small brunette major Ben had never seen before. She walked stiff and straight, and her hair was pulled back sharply from her face. Her right sleeve was missing a combat patch. Ben found himself wondering how she had been in the army long enough to be a major but had somehow managed to miss the war.
He didn’t look away as she scanned the room, her eyes cool and appraising.
Ben wasn’t fooled. He’d seen that look far too many times.
She was a woman on a mission. Just what they needed: a lawyer on crusade. Ben didn’t do crusades.
They all snapped to attention as the commander walked to the center of the room.
“Gentlemen, welcome to Death Dealer Battalion. Congratulations. Every one of you in this room will take command in less than a month,” Gilliad said.
Silence hung in the heavens for half a moment. No one moved. No one spoke.
Ben breathed in deep and slow, keeping the ragged edge of his emotions in check. “Uh, sir, I think there’s a mistake.”
Gilliad pinned him with a hard look. Next to him, the major looked down at her paperwork, shaking her head, disapproval written on her pretty face.
“Teague, I’ll see you in my office.” Gilliad turned back to the other captains. “Bello, you and First Sarn’t Delgado have Diablo Company. Martini, you and First Sarn’t Tellhouse have Assassin Company. Teague, your first sergeant will be here before the week is out. You’re takin
g Bandit Company. Navarro, you and First Sarn’t Sagarian are taking Headquarters Company. Nichols, you and First Sarn’t Morgan are taking Chaos Company.”
“Sir—”
“Let the commander finish, Captain Teague,” Sarn’t Major Cox warned quietly.
Ben ground his teeth and fought the anxiety twisting in his guts.
Gilliad cleared his throat. “Every company command team in this battalion has been relieved of their duties effective immediately. You all are the new team. Major Hale is going to help with transition on the legal side of the house. We have our hands full, gentlemen, and I expect you to clean house and get this unit back to fully mission ready.”
Ben blew out a low whistle. He’d never heard of something like this. Not in his entire life as a military brat or his own career. One commander, maybe two in rapid succession, but an entire battalion worth of company leadership fired on the spot?
And Gilliad expected Ben to be one of the new commanders?
Not in this lifetime.
Gilliad continued. “The forward support company leadership is changing out as well. That new command team will be on the ground shortly as soon as the support battalion figures out who that will be.” He glanced over at the small major. “Major Hale has my guidance. Your number one priority for the next forty-five days is getting rid of the shitbag soldiers running this unit into the ground. I want the druggies gone. I want the dealers and the gangbangers gone. I want the fucking criminals out of my army. Am I clear?”
A murmured hooah went through the gathered men.
Ben couldn’t speak.
His lungs had stopped working.
Command.
He didn’t want this. He couldn’t do it.
There had to be a mistake. The boss could find someone else.
He had to.
Because to command, you still had to believe what you did mattered. He released a shuddering breath.
And Ben hadn’t believed that in a long, long time.
* * *
Major Olivia Hale watched the captain at the edge of the room. His back was stiff and straight and he radiated unspent fury. She wondered at the tired lines beneath his eyes, the hard set of his jaw.
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