Zittoro’s packet was not a little thing.
Ben had no idea if Zittoro would ever use the college money. There was no crystal ball that said the kid would clean himself up and use it to make his life better. But he’d served, damn it. He’d served his country at war when so many others had abdicated that responsibility.
He’d volunteered to go out on the roads when they were the most deadly place in Iraq. He’d volunteered to man the guns in the turret.
If Zittoro was a hero, he was the epitome of a tragic hero. The war was going to kill him yet.
But if Ben could do one thing—even one small thing, like keep him in the army long enough to earn his college benefits—then damn it, Ben would do that.
And if that meant that Ben had to sit on his packet for a half a year, he didn’t rightly care. Because there was a chance, even if it was a small chance, that Zittoro might clean himself up. He might stop using and find a good training program. Or maybe he’d use his college money to send one of the kids that he didn’t have yet to college.
Ben had no idea.
All he knew was that he couldn’t throw a combat veteran who’d done something as harmless as abusing drugs out on his ass. It was a victimless crime. The only person Zittoro hurt was himself.
He’d asked Ben to stay long enough for the college money.
And Olivia Hale was about to fuck that up because she was on her high horse about throwing “bad” soldiers out of the army.
Ben stalked into his company ops and into his office without saying a word to anyone. He threw his hat onto his desk and seriously considered the need for a flask in his desk drawer.
He’d be damned if the lawyer was going to tell him how to run his company.
“You look annoyed.” First Sergeant Sorren stood in the doorway, filling it.
“What gave it away?”
“The sulking? Maybe the thrown hat?” Sorren shrugged. “Not sure. Either way, what put the sand in your panties?”
Ben didn’t smile. “Lawyer caught me about Zittoro’s packet.”
Sorren took a sip of his coffee, saying nothing.
“We argued. She’s going to dime me out to the battalion commander. Tell him I’m sitting on packets.”
Sorren lowered his mug. “Technically, you are sitting on a packet.”
“Yeah, but it’s for a good reason. It’s not like I’m defending a hardened criminal.” Ben leaned back in his chair, kicking his feet up onto the desk and folding his hands behind his head.
Sorren glanced at Ben’s feet. “Some people think doing drugs is a crime.”
Ben looked up at his first sergeant and deliberately crossed one foot over the other. It was his desk, damn it; if he wanted to put his feet on it, he’d do it. He was feeling peevish. He needed a good fight to release all the pent up anger and frustration tearing up his insides.
He needed to clear his head.
He waited for Sorren to say something but his first sergeant didn’t rise to the bait. Ben was a little disappointed. “What do you think?”
Sorren was silent for a long time. “I think drugs are pretty horrible. I’ve seen what they can do to people. To families. So I’m not exactly unbiased when it comes to these things.”
“You think I made the wrong choice with Zittoro’s packet,” Ben said flatly.
“I think you made the hard choice, sir.” Sorren lifted his mug in mock salute. “Too many commanders I’ve served with wouldn’t go out on a limb to do something good like this.”
Ben stared at his boots. “Doesn’t feel like it’s going to make a difference,” he said.
“Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. But you took a chance to do a good thing. And I can advise you all day long but at the end of the day, this is your company. You’re going to run it how you see fit.” Sorren took a sip of his coffee. “That’s what the army pays you the big bucks to do.”
“And people wonder why I didn’t want this job,” Ben muttered. He unlocked his fingers from behind his head and drummed them on one thigh. He was bone tired and he hadn’t even made it through his first week in the job yet. Funny, he’d thought command would make him tired enough to actually sleep. Too bad it had only made his insomnia worse.
“The XO is here to brief you on the inventory schedule,” Sorren said.
Entire days spent counting wrenches and radios and parts and pieces of tanks and Bradleys. He couldn’t wait. “Lovely.”
It was going to be a long day.
* * *
Olivia was irritated. Five hours had passed and her blood pressure had ticked higher with each passing minute at Ben’s failure to accept his responsibility and do his job.
Her emotions migrated from irritated to highly pissed to irrational inside of that passing time.
It was usually much harder to piss her off. Damn it, she was even swearing. Which meant she was really pissed.
She closed her eyes, seeing again the fear in Ben’s eyes when he’d realized she’d caught him about Zittoro’s packet.
Memories rose to the surface, like snakes rising from an abyss.
The stench of piss and shit and rotten food scorched the inside of her nose. It was as if she was standing in that room again, surrounded by death.
There was never a good age to find your father dead from an overdose.
It didn’t matter that he’d beaten her three days before. It didn’t matter that her body would bear his scars forever.
Her heart had broken that day.
She hated the drugs. Hated the addiction that had taken him from her, that had destroyed the man she’d worshiped once upon a time. Hated the men who’d looked at her with disdain and told her she was making things up. She lowered her head to her desk.
Goddamn Ben Teague for bringing back those twisting, writhing memories.
“To hell with this,” she mumbled. She shuffled the files into her briefcase and headed out. Across post to her friend Emily’s office, where there was a sympathetic ear and a stash of emergency chocolate.
Emily looked up when Olivia knocked on the door. Her friend’s expression softened immediately.
“You look like you’re having a rough day,” Emily said by way of greeting.
“I could say the same to you. What happened to your hair?”
Emily’s hair was never messy. Emily’s cheeks flushed. “Reza stopped by,” she said, her words soft.
Olivia laughed and some of the anger and the hurt and the sadness that had been squeezing off the air in her lungs evaporated as she twisted the top on her water bottle. “Which doesn’t explain why your hair is a mess at three in the afternoo—oh, you dirty girl.”
Emily’s flush deepened. “He missed me.”
“Apparently.” The laugh felt good. Really good. Her eyes burned with tears. Too much in one day. She swiped her fingers beneath her eyes. “That’s hysterical. How did you manage to not get caught?”
Olivia removed the top of her water bottle and lifted it to her lips. Emily flicked the cap on and off her pen. “We were really quiet.”
Olivia choked on her drink and barely avoided snorting water out her nose. “I’m impressed. You’ve embraced your wild side. Did you do it in the office?”
Emily tried to lie but her eyes gave her away.
“I’m speechless,” Olivia said. “I’m so glad I came by. You’ve made my afternoon.”
“You’re welcome.” Emily cupped her chin in one palm. “Why are you having such a rough day?”
Olivia tipped her water bottle toward Emily. “That, m’dear, is a conversation to be had over wine. Or chocolate.”
Emily opened her top desk drawer and pulled out a box of Godiva truffles. “I keep these here just for you.”
“You’re a goddess. You know that, right?” Olivia took a dark ball from the container.
“Spill. What’s wrong? New job worse than you thought?”
“You have no idea. There’s so much. I could work all day every day and not get caught up because n
ew work comes in faster than I can process the old stuff.”
“But that’s not what’s bothering you,” Emily said.
Olivia nibbled on the truffle and considered her words carefully.
“Ben Teague is the problem,” she said quietly. She was less angry than she’d been when she came in but Emily’s question brought all the emotions churning back to the surface. Olivia took a deep breath. “He’s sitting on a separation packet. He’s refusing to throw a kid out of the army.”
“And this matters because?”
“Because the battalion commander wants the bad soldiers cleaned up.”
“I know Ben. He’s not really a dishonest guy.” Emily raised both eyebrows. “So what’s really going on?”
“I—” Olivia took a deep breath. “Remember when we first met?”
“Yeah. You were talking to some full bird colonel in the hallway.”
Olivia smiled bitterly. “That colonel was my first battalion commander many, many moons ago.” She looked down at her hands, the memories from earlier rising up and threatening to tumble free. “I’d advised him to court-martial a sergeant. The sergeant had been arrested five times for assaulting his wife.” She looked up at her friend, her voice cracking. Again. Goddamn it, she was so tired of crying over things she couldn’t change. The chocolate had lost its flavor. It melted on her fingertips. “My commander opted not to court-martial him. He opted not to do anything. He didn’t want to ruin the sergeant’s career. A week later, the sergeant and his wife were dead.”
She hadn’t realized Emily had moved until her friend’s arms came around her shoulders. She thought about resisting, about pulling away, but instead she leaned. Just for a moment.
“I’m sorry,” Emily whispered.
“Me, too.” She sucked in a deep breath and reached for a tissue for the chocolate. She no longer wanted it. She didn’t want to talk about her father or the men who hadn’t believed her then but every single time one of these files turned up missing, it was like she was that sixteen-year-old girl, being ignored all over again. “So yeah, I get a little prickly when these guys hide packets and try to protect some of these men.”
“Why do you think Ben’s hiding this?”
Olivia looked down at the smeared mess in her hands. She sucked her thumb clean. The chocolate was bitter on her tongue. “I don’t know why he’s hiding the packet,” she admitted softly.
She hadn’t thought to ask.
“I’m going to say this because you’re my friend and I love you.”
Olivia squished the chocolate in the tissue. “But this is going to chafe, isn’t it?”
Emily lifted one shoulder apologetically, her grin sheepish. “I think you’re letting your past cloud this. These soldiers aren’t your responsibility to save or punish. You’re there to make the system work, just like I am.”
“Part of me knows that.” Olivia’s lungs tightened again with Emily’s words. It was suddenly so hard to breathe. “But what if there isn’t some altruistic motive? If he sits on this one, how many others will he sit on?”
“A very wise friend of mine told me once that feelings are real, they’re just not always true. So while your fear is real, it may not be justified. Why is he sitting on the packet?”
“Does it matter?”
“Maybe? Maybe he’s got a really good reason for sitting on it.” Emily stood to put the chocolate away. “Ben is good friends with Reza. And I’m confident that Reza would not have that man as a friend if he wasn’t trustworthy.”
She hated that her temper had clouded her vision so completely. She turned Emily’s comment over in her head but couldn’t come up with a reason for Ben to sit on the packet. “Being trustworthy in a firefight isn’t the same thing as doing the right thing back home,” Olivia said dryly.
Emily slid the box of chocolates back in her desk. “I get that. On a rational level, I get that, but we’re not talking about someone he went to church with every week.” She paused. “Combat forges some powerful bonds.”
“Reza taught you that,” Olivia said softly.
“Yeah. Among other things. He’s taught me a lot.”
Olivia smiled, desperately needing something to lighten the oppressive pressure in her chest. “Including how to have a quickie at lunch without getting caught.”
Emily choked and covered her mouth with her hand as she laughed. “That was sneaky,” she said.
“My job here is done.”
Later, Olivia sat in her car a long time, letting the conversation tumble over in her head, staring at the Stetson in her passenger’s seat. Emily was right. Olivia swiped at her eyes. The tightness in her chest eased back, enough that she could breathe again.
On a gut level, she knew it. But Ben hadn’t come clean with her. He could have told her the truth.
Then again, she hadn’t given him any reason to.
But if he lied to protect this soldier, what would happen when they got to the serious misconduct cases? To Escoberra and the others? Would Ben still fail to act?
How far would he go to protect the men under his command?
Chapter Eight
Ben was used to not sleeping well. He supposed it had started in Iraq, after their base had gotten blown all to hell and nearly taken Ben with it. But it had worsened with a vengeance when he’d been in the hospital after having his stomach stitched up and with the burns on his shoulder itching and driving him crazy. He’d drift into that foggy space between consciousness and unconsciousness, unsure whether he’d ever really fallen asleep.
He supposed it had been around the same time that he’d started to let things drift apart between him and Escoberra. He was too ashamed that he hadn’t been able to keep the commander from lighting Escoberra’s ass up over the attack. He’d given up sleeping much after that and developed a strong affection for caffeine.
But he’d also learned to appreciate the little bits of sleep he did get. So when the phone started ringing at the ass crack of dawn, it really ruined any chance of him actually sleeping.
He squinted at the blurred number.
“Sir, it’s First Sarn’t. We’ve got guys in Bell County jail.”
Ben sat up, cradling his head in his hand, and waited for the words to connect to actual thoughts in his brain. “Who?”
“Sarn’t Foster and Wookie.”
“Ah fuck.” Ben frowned, surprised to hear First Sarn’t call one of their boys by his nickname so soon after arriving to the unit. Of course, Wookie was exceptionally hairy. The kind of hairy where you could see the thick carpet outlined through a combat t-shirt.
Ben had once bet him a three-day pass that he wouldn’t wax his chest.
He’d waxed it. He’d bled while he did it, but he’d waxed it. At the time, Ben had been a lowly platoon leader who had not yet had his faith in the men around him destroyed by malfeasance.
And now Wookie was in jail. With Foster. Awesome.
Ben was going to kick both their asses. Foster’s especially.
“What’d they do?” he asked First Sarn’t.
“Public intox with a possibility of a bar fight still being considered. I talked to the arresting officer. Sounds like our boys were in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Sorren sounded far too alert for this early in the morning.
Ben scrubbed his hand over his face. “Can we send someone to pick them up?”
“You sure about that?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because the battalion commander has a policy that if our boys go to jail, they’ll post their own bail.”
Ben stared into the darkness. “Were they actually arrested or are the police just holding them at the police station?”
“What else would they be doing at the police station?”
He scrubbed his hand over his face again. He was going to kill Foster. Damn it, Foster knew better than to do this shit. “The cops here sometimes just take our boys in without arresting them. Which means we need to send someone to go pi
ck those two knuckleheads up before they do get arrested and hit the blotter.”
“Got it. But you’re going to need to call it in.”
“Sure thing, Top.” Ben clicked off the phone and cradled his head in his hands. He wanted to crawl into bed and wake up in the middle of the afternoon like he’d done when he was a lieutenant.
First Sarn’t expected him to follow the rules and call the incident with the police in to the battalion commander. Except that they hadn’t really been arrested so there really wasn’t anything to tell. Ben wasn’t about to wake the old man up for something that could easily wait two more hours.
It wasn’t as if they’d killed someone. Then the police would have actually arrested them and then they’d have had to do a lot more than just call the first sergeant.
Anger pulsed in his veins. He wanted to whip Foster’s sorry ass for being dumb enough to get into trouble. Damn it, Ben didn’t need this shit right now. There was another reason he didn’t want to be a commander. He didn’t want to have to bail his boys out of jail. He wasn’t cut out for responsibility. He looked at the phone. He probably should call the boss. But a little piece of his soul died at the thought.
It felt too much like narc’ing on his boys.
His to-do list ran through his head as he sat there and he debated heading into the gym or not. He still had to inventory all his property. He had to counsel his lieutenants on what he expected of them. All the administrative tasks that responsible commanders were supposed to do.
He didn’t want to be a good commander. He wanted to be a good friend. It was infinitely more important to him at that moment to take care of Escoberra and Zittoro and even Foster’s stupid ass.
He scrubbed his hand over his face. It was easier to think of the tasks than the people. His mother would tell him he was being weak. That he was there to accomplish the mission, not coddle soldiers.
She certainly hadn’t coddled him after his dad had died. And her coldness had left an emptiness in Ben that he’d given up trying to fill with anything other than the war and his boys. Because those things never let you down.
Everyone else always did.
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