It's Always Been You

by Jessica Scott

  And it was going to be something that kept her at work for a very long time. She knew it. Because it always was.

  It was never an easy call. Never something that could be answered in a five-minute conversation.

  The phone continued to ring.

  Olivia swallowed and picked it up. “Major Hale.”

  “Hey, it’s Ben.”

  Something warm wrapped around her at the sound of his voice. “Hi.” Even knowing this was most likely not a social call, just the sound of his voice eased some of the tension in her shoulders.

  “So I’ve got a problem.”

  She smiled softly. “Why else would you be calling me on a Monday afternoon?”

  Silence hung on the line a moment too long and Olivia wondered if she’d crossed into the wrong line. Or if she was on speakerphone. Now that would be terribly awkward.

  He cleared his throat roughly. “Ah, yeah, so can we talk about that later?”

  She laughed at the awkward heat in his voice. “There’s someone in the office with you, isn’t there?”

  “Yep.” He sounded strangled.

  She relented but a slow smile spread across her mouth. There was a strange sort of power in knowing she could make him squirm. “What’s up?”

  “The woman who called the cops on Foster keeps calling him and won’t stop. Foster says he doesn’t want to see her but she’s told my first sergeant that she feels threatened.”

  Olivia sat down and started jotting down notes. “He can’t see her. I need you to give him a no-contact order for the next fourteen days. After that, we’ll need to reassess.”

  “What about the fact that she’s calling him?”

  “He needs to not answer and tell you or the first sergeant every time she calls him. No text messages, no answers from friends. He’s completely forbidden from contacting her.”

  She heard his hand cover the mic and his muffled voice.

  “Okay. That’s all?”

  “Does he live in the barracks or off post?”

  “Barracks.”

  “Okay, he also needs to be restricted to post as well.” She made another note. “All of this is to show the chain of command is doing due diligence to keep the victim safe.”

  Ben sighed roughly. “Okay, got it. Restricted to post, no-contact order. Am I missing anything?”

  “No. Make sure you do it in writing on the appropriate form, okay?”

  “Sure.” He paused. “Thanks.”

  He sounded exhausted. Beaten down. “Are you okay?” she asked softly.

  “Have to be, don’t I?”

  The phone went silent in her ear. She sat there for a moment, tapping the phone against her cheek absently, wishing there was some way to just stop the world for a little while. Just to take a breath and let everything fall away. Not forever. But long enough to really catch a breath.

  Command was a marathon, not a sprint.

  And Ben had a long time to go before he approached the finish line.

  * * *

  “Bring him in, Top,” Ben said, tossing his phone onto his desk.

  “What are we doing?” Sorren asked. The big first sergeant didn’t move.

  Ben straightened the chaos on his desk, needing to keep his hands occupied. “No-contact order and restricting him to post.” Ben logged on to his computer and searched for the forms he needed.

  “Let’s see how he handles this,” Sorren said. “But I have a feeling you’re going to want to shackle him to the CQ desk after we’re done with him.”

  Ben frowned as his fingers flew over the keyboard. “I take it Bell County doesn’t agree with him?”

  Sorren’s smile was grim. “Not exactly. He’s a little cranky.”

  “Lovely.” Ben printed the forms. “Well, hopefully, he remembers that he’s still a soldier and keeps his head out of his ass.”

  “Yeah, sure, and monkeys might fly out of mine,” Sorren said flatly.

  Ben laughed so hard his ribs hurt. “All right, stop that. You make me laugh and this whole thing is going to go to shit in a heartbeat.”

  Sorren offered a two-fingered salute. “Roger that, sir.” He stuck his head out of the door. “Report to the commander.”

  Ben took a deep breath and focused on stuffing down the violent emotions twisting and churning inside him, trying to divorce himself from the situation. He wanted to pretend that this was someone else. Not Foster. Not the kid who had dragged him from a burning Humvee when he’d had his bell rung and couldn’t figure out how to open the goddamned door.

  Foster walked in and stopped three paces off the desk. He saluted sharply. “Sir, Sergeant Foster reporting as ordered.”

  No, this kid was not the same guy Ben had gone to war with. The kid Ben knew had been rough and ready. Rugged and always ready to scrap. Hands that had once been steady now twitched by his side.

  Something was deeply, deeply wrong.

  “Sergeant Foster, I am restricting you to post—”

  “Oh, come on, Teague. That is such bullshit!”

  Sorren reacted before Ben’s brain had adjusted to the fact that his friend had just cussed him out. It was something Ben wouldn’t have blinked at had they been out partying.

  But Ben’s first sergeant objected. Strenuously.

  Sorren got an inch from Foster’s face. The big man towered over Foster until Foster bent backward and had to take a step to keep from falling onto his ass.

  “If you ever even think about talking to my commander that way again, I will make your life a living, breathing hell,” Sorren whispered.

  Shit, even Ben was intimidated.

  And a boy dared date this man’s daughter?

  Foster, however, was not cowed. “Fuck you, First Sarn’t. Put your hands on me and I’m calling the cops.”

  Sorren’s smile was malicious and cold and dared him to do just that. “Please do. Because that worked out so well for you the last time you were involved with them, didn’t it?”

  “That’s horse shit! Come on, Teague, you know me. It was just a stupid bar fight.”

  Ben swallowed the sudden dryness in his mouth. “I know but I don’t have a choice. She’s made the allegation that she doesn’t feel safe around you. I’ve got to keep you away from her.”

  “Goddamn Monica,” he mumbled. Foster had the decency to flush a deep, crimson red. “So I partied a little too hard, but she’s just pissed.”

  Sorren damn near came unglued but Ben shook his head quickly.

  Foster snorted. “You suck, you know that?”

  “I don’t have anything to say to that one,” Ben said. And he didn’t, because it was true. This was the ultimate violation of loyalty. He should have found a way to protect Foster. “As soon as the time period is up, you can go about your business. But in the mean time, you’re restricted to post and you’re under a no-contact order with Monica Glass. You can’t call her, text her, nothing. Absolutely no contact.”

  Foster’s shoulders slumped as Ben spoke.

  “Don’t make this any harder on yourself than it needs to be,” Ben said. “Do what you’re supposed to do and everything will shake out like it’s supposed to.”

  Ben took a deep breath. And asked the question that physically hurt as it crossed his lips. “Foster, are you using?”

  Foster looked up at him. The muscles in his neck quivered. Confusion blasted across his features as he searched for an answer to Ben’s question.

  His silence damned him before he ever spoke a word. “I plead the fifth,” Foster said.

  “I can command refer you,” Ben said.

  Foster looked between Ben and the first sergeant. “You haven’t read me my rights,” Foster said.

  Ben looked at his first sergeant then back at Foster. “Which means that nothing you say can be used against you right now.”

  It was a risk, a terrible one. But he trusted Foster, had trusted him downrange, trusted him back home.

  If Foster was honest with him, Ben would stand by him. He co
uld do that. He could use the power of his position to make a difference instead of throwing everyone out of the army.

  “I started using on the weekends,” Foster whispered. “I just… I just needed to not feel so tired all the time.”

  “What are you doing?” Sorren asked, his voice rough and quiet. Steady.

  “Adderall.”

  “Jesus,” Ben whispered. Meth—Adderall—was a fucking epidemic around Fort Hood these days.

  “I… I don’t want to use but I don’t know how to stop,” Foster said. “And since Sloban…”

  Ben saw the confusion flicker across Sorren’s face. “Sloban was addicted to meth. He killed himself a few weeks ago when the army denied his disability.”

  Reza had been there when it happened. No one had been unaffected by Sloban’s death.

  Foster, though, had taken it worse than most.

  “Do you believe me?” Foster whispered.

  Ben searched for an answer. Because he honestly didn’t know. He wanted to believe him. He’d known Foster for too long. He knew what kind of soldier he was.

  Sorren spoke up, cutting into whatever piss poor answer Ben could scrounge up. “It doesn’t matter if he believes you or not, Foster,” Sorren said. “He’s got to uphold good order and discipline.”

  Foster looked back at Ben. “If I self-refer, can I go to rehab like Sarn’t Ike?” There was hope, bleak and faint in his eyes.

  Ben didn’t look at his first sergeant. He knew what the right answer was. He knew what the smart, army answer was—throw the kid out and let him worry about it on his own.

  But Ben had never been that kind of commander.

  “Let me make some phone calls,” he said quietly.

  Relief washed over Foster and the shaking in his limbs was visible now. He approached the desk and took the pen Ben offered. His hands trembled as he signed the first of two documents—the no-contact order and the counseling statement.

  Then he saluted weakly and left.

  “We need NCOs checking on him all weekend, Top,” Ben said softly.

  “Already did the roster,” Sorren said. He started to follow Foster out, then paused by the doorway. “That was a hell of a risk, sir.”

  “I know what you’re going to say, Top,” Ben said.

  “No, I don’t think you do,” Sorren said. He closed the door behind him.

  In the silence of his office, Ben felt the weight of command settle around his shoulders again, a little heavier and a lot, lot colder.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “You awake, sir?”

  Ben blinked at the phone that was somehow still in his hand and squinted. He was slouched down on his couch, a half-empty beer tipping dangerously between his legs. He hadn’t even changed out of his uniform before he’d fallen asleep.

  But he’d been asleep. Actually asleep instead of floating in the dead space between sleeping and waking that usually left him more tired than anything. “What time is it?”

  Sorren mumbled something that sounded like “goddamned sissy” but Ben couldn’t be sure. “It’s barely ten p.m. You need to get up and meet me at Ropers.”

  Ben frowned and sat up, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Why?”

  “Because Wookie just sent me a text and if we don’t get our happy asses down there ASAP, we’re going to have half a platoon in jail by morning.”

  Ben blinked as his first sergeant’s words sank in. Then a slow smile spread across his lips. “So we’re going to break up a bar fight?”

  “That’s the short answer. How long before you can meet me?”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen.”

  “Hurry up. I need you there to give out direct orders and shit.”

  “What, I don’t get to get my hands dirty in the fight?” That wasn’t any fun, and fun was in short supply in Ben’s life these days.

  “If I do my job, there won’t be a goddamned fight,” Sorren snapped.

  Ben stretched and grinned at getting under Sorren’s skin. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch, Top. I’m on my way.” He tossed the rest of the beer in the trash, glad he’d only had the little bit.

  The night was definitely going to get interesting. He pulled on a pair of jeans and an old t-shirt and headed out, wondering just what he was going to have to explain to his battalion commander in the morning.

  * * *

  Olivia set the wine glass down on her coffee table and happened to catch a glimpse at her watch. Approaching midnight.

  “Lovely,” she said to the stacks of files next to the wine. The wine had failed to do its job of unwinding her, which meant that she was wide awake and looking with irritation at the state of the packets in front of her.

  The fact that these were the packets deemed “closest to completion” by the new company commanders was annoying at best. Missing required documents. Counseling statements that looked like they’d been written by fourth graders.

  Olivia wasn’t sure what was worse: soldiers who were doing really stupid things or the fact that they thought they were smarter than their sergeants and getting away with the stupid things.

  They hadn’t counted on Olivia, however. She was halfway through the stack from Sean Nichol’s company she’d brought home with her. Inside each file was a detailed note about what Nichols and his first sergeant needed to do to correct each packet.

  She paused, taking a deep breath, and flipped open Escoberra’s folder once more.

  Two new counseling forms had been added to the file since the last time she’d looked at it. Both from First Sergeant Sorren. She frowned and looked at the dates.

  Why did these stand out? There was nothing out of the ordinary with these two forms but something nagged at her. Something didn’t feel right. Not at all. She jotted a note to herself to follow up with these the next day at work and set the folder aside. Once the final paperwork came through from Child Protective Services, she’d advise Ben on what he should do.

  Sadly, she could guess. Without a formal charge against him, Ben was going to let the man walk. And the more she trusted Ben, the more she doubted her own convictions.

  She’d been so sure about Escoberra, but Ben’s loyalty was unwavering.

  She sighed, wondering at the kind of loyalty that could make him overlook what happened to Escoberra’s daughter. She couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that there was something else she was missing.

  She wished Ben didn’t have to deal with all of this. She should have had a paralegal to do the bulk of this work for her, but the paralegal had popped hot for methamphetamines a week prior to Olivia being sent down to the unit. And because no one at division had been able to find her an under-utilized clerk and everyone else was short staffed at the moment, it meant Olivia was doing her own admin work.

  She supposed she should sleep eventually. She lifted the glass of wine to her lips once more. Her cell phone lit up on the coffee table and she reached for it. It was never a good sign when the phone rang close to midnight. It didn’t matter if it was the middle of the week or a weekend: midnight calls were never about someone delivering flowers or chocolate. They were always steaming piles of bad news and requests for legal opinions.

  “Major Hale. How can I help you, sir or ma’am?”

  “Major Hale, this is Captain Teague.” He paused. “Why do you sound like you haven’t been sleeping?”

  She smiled at the sound of his voice. Her blood warmed at the memory of his mouth on her, the feel of his skin against hers. “Because I haven’t,” she said. She probably shouldn’t be thinking about him naked when he was probably calling her for work. “I assume you wouldn’t be calling in the middle of the night unless you had an issue?”

  He made a sound and she narrowed her eyes, trying to figure out what was going on. “I was having trouble sleeping.”

  She sipped her wine, letting the cool liquid slide slowly down her throat. “And you assumed I would be having the same trouble?”

  “I was kind of hoping th
at if you were asleep, your phone wouldn’t ring and wake you up.”

  “I’m a lawyer. I get called in the middle of the night all the time. I hear my phone when it rings.”

  “Oh.” He sounded vaguely disappointed.

  She laughed quietly. “It’s okay. What are you doing up?” She tucked her feet up beneath her.

  “Calling you.”

  “Because?” It was strange, this quiet flirting in the middle of the night. She didn’t know what was going on with him but it felt good. A peaceful balm to soothe the relentless fatigue that haunted her sleep and kept her working until she collapsed from exhaustion.

  “Are you done working for the night?”

  She looked at the pile of papers in front of her. She’d made a decent dent in them tonight. “I’ve done enough.”

  “Want to meet me for a drink?”

  “I’ve already had a drink,” she said. Her throat went dry, thinking of where this conversation was going.

  “You’re not driving?”

  “Not tonight, no.” She took a deep breath. “But I could use some company.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.” His voice turned husky.

  “Yeah?”

  “Does that make me the creepy guy you avoid in the ops office?”

  She closed her eyes and slid down into the couch. “Only if you’re actually parked outside my house right now. That would be creepy.”

  A long pause. “So is it okay if I just pulled in?”

  She laughed, running her fingers through her hair and glancing toward her front door. “Seriously?”

  “Maybe. You haven’t answered the question.”

  A slow heat unfurled in her belly. Was he really outside her house?

  “What happens if I say no?”

  He cleared his throat and she imagined him dragging his hand through his hair. “No, me being in your driveway doesn’t make me creepy or no, me being in your driveway does make me creepy?”

  She tapped her bottom lip for a moment. “No, you being in my driveway right now does not make you creepy.”

  More silence.

  “Good. Then you should really open your front door right now.”