Book of the Month: TAKE ME HOME: Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Olivia set the last folder on a smaller pile and paused, looking down at the stack of files in front of her. Then she gave up and lowered her face into her hands, replaying the conversation with the battalion commander and Captain Teague in her head.
Over and over again. She couldn’t explain why she’d covered for Teague with the battalion commander. But the more she replayed the scene in her head, the more she kept circling back to the man she’d seen at the hospital that morning.
So he’d gotten the benefit of the doubt. Not that she’d ever tell him that. She doubted he’d appreciate that the trouble she saw brewing in his dark eyes did something to her insides that she wanted to ignore. It made her feel something, and feelings got her in trouble.
They clouded her judgment.
There was a quiet knock on her door. “You look like hell, ma’am.”
She looked up to see Sarn’t Major Cox standing in the doorway. “Interpersonal hostility is always a fun way to start off the morning,” she said dryly.
Cox grunted. Sometimes she wondered if he spoke in more than single sentences. Still, she noticed the way the young troopers looked up to him. They worshipped him. And the battalion commander trusted him. He was not a man to make an enemy of.
“It’ll get easier once everyone gets on board and all these guys figure out they can’t save everyone.”
She looked down at the files on her desk. She knew that. She knew that all too well.
“How long will it take them?”
Cox shrugged, chomping on the end of his unlit cigar. “I think the A Co commander will get it quickly. He doesn’t strike me as a guy who believes in second chances. A couple of the others, though? They look hardheaded.”
“Which ones?” she asked, interested in his read on the new command teams.
“Pretty much all of the rest of them,” he said roughly.
She groaned. “That’s going to be so much fun,” she muttered.
He closed the door behind him, stepping fully into her office. He bumped into the scales on her desk. The cracked plate rattled in its swing. “What happened with Escoberra this morning?” he asked, his voice low.
“He was at the hospital with his daughter,” she said, wondering why he was here asking about this since he’d been present when she’d told the battalion commander about it. “Child Protective Services is investigating.”
“What’s your gut tell you?” he asked.
Her gut? “My gut says there’s more to this story than we’re seeing, Sarn’t Major,” Olivia said quietly. “And I don’t think that Teague is going to be objective about this.”
“Probably not. He and Escoberra go way back.” Cox wrapped his index finger around the cigar. “Keep me posted if you hear anything else.”
He was gone before she could get another word in edgewise. Amazing how a man so big could move so quickly. But that wasn’t what stuck with her. There were politics at work down here and she had no idea about the lay of the land, especially considering the cases against the previous key leaders in the battalion.
Once upon a time, she wouldn’t have cared about the politics. Once upon a time, she would have charged headlong into the fray and damn the politics. Once upon a time, she would have told her battalion commander exactly what she thought and she damn sure wouldn’t have cared what one of the company commanders thought. But she was a little bit older and a lot wiser now and a hell of a lot more cynical. She had learned some hard lessons about rank and its privileges.
Now she knew she needed to figure out the power players in her new unit. Now she knew she needed to choose her battles more wisely.
It was going to be a long day. She glanced at her water bottle and wished she’d managed to find more of the dehydrated lemon packets for it. She didn’t think she would ever get used to the taste of the water here. She’d meant to get a filter but it was on her unending list of things to do.
She took a sip and grimaced as the taste coated the inside of her mouth. She was going to have to rethink moving that filter up to the top of her priorities list.
“It only lasts until the rain comes.”
She lowered the bottle. Teague. She should have been expecting him to show up. But no matter how much she saw him, she couldn’t get used to seeing the shadows in his laughing eyes.
She took a deep breath, hoping to not have another replay of their showdown at PT this morning. “I’ll keep that in mind, thanks.” She motioned for him to have a seat in the chair in front of her desk and moved the packets until she found the ones that belonged to him.
He scrubbed his hand over his mouth, looking at the mountain of manila folders in front of her. “So this is what company command is? Chasing around legal packets and problem soldiers?”
The silence stretched between them. There was a vulnerability in his eyes. A loneliness, she realized. She wasn’t supposed to care. And yet, she found herself wondering about this captain- the one who’d been furious when he’d been told he was taking command. She had the sudden urge to run her fingers over the lines at the edge of his mouth, to soothe away the hardness there.
“It’s only that way if you let it be that way,” she said softly. “Once you clean up your unit, you’ll be able to focus on the important things.”
He looked up at her, his eyes dark. “And what’s that?”
She frowned. “I’m not sure I understand what your question is, Captain Teague.”
“What are the important things? Cleaning up my unit or having loyalty to men I’ve bled with? What really matters?”
She didn’t hesitate. “What matters is training your men to go back downrange. I would think you wouldn’t need someone without a combat patch to tell you that.”
“Are you always this prickly or is it just me?” he asked abruptly.
“It’s just you,” she said without missing a beat. “You bring out my charming side.”
“Why?”
She set the water bottle down hard. “Because you don’t seem to care that this job isn’t about taking care of your buddies.”
Captain Teague leaned over the table. “You don’t even know me.”
“I know you were going to keep the boss from finding out about Escoberra.”
He leaned back sharply, shifted, his jaw grinding hard. “You don’t know what I was going to do.”
“Doesn’t matter what I think I know-I know what you didn’t do. But you are the chain of command now, Captain Teague, and you can’t protect someone who’s beating his children.” She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms over her chest.
“What the hell is your problem?” She should have made him use her rank but he’d crawled under her skin and gotten her temper going. Again. She ground her teeth a moment, searching for her words. She decided on honesty, no matter how jagged the blade.
“My problem is commanders like you who won’t do their jobs. Who take advantage of their positions to protect their buddies, to keep them safe. My problem, Captain Teague, is officers like you, who don’t utilize the power of their rank and position to make things better for the soldiers who work for them.”
“Looks like you’ve got all the answers.” His smile was humorless and flat.
“Well, now that we got that out of the way, shall we get to work?” she asked.
She wasn’t prepared for his total lack of response. He sat there, rolling a pen on the table in front of him, the silence stretching into the realm of uncomfortable. She blinked rapidly a couple of times then picked up her pen. He’d done the same thing in the hospital-walking away instead of standing his ground and arguing. Suspicion tickled down her spine. “Yes, let’s.”
***
Ben couldn’t remember a time when he’d been more off kilter than he was at that moment. He was used to sniping at the uptight dickheads he worked around whenever he got the chance, but Olivia Hale took uptight to a whole new level.
He hadn’t realized she was going to be overseeing his work. He’d seen the previous commanders have a hard enough time dealing with the battalion executive officer and the operations officers. Now he had to watch his back with the lawyer, too?
She had no real authority but she had access to the boss and that gave her power. Power he was confident she would use. She seemed so serious, so driven. He watched her fiddling with the lid of her water bottle. He still didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to bridge the chasm he was at least partially responsible for and ask for help. Because God knew he was going to need it.
Olivia Hale was a woman who wore the word cause tattooed on her forehead.
He didn’t do causes. But he didn’t do command, either, and look how that had turned out. Goddamn it, why couldn’t Gilliad find someone else for this job?
He was going to be working with Olivia Hale, and he’d have to be dead not to be intrigued by a woman like her. A woman who was reserved. Withdrawn. Not cold.
And that made him curious. Deeply so. She wore the rules and regulations like a shield and yet, she’d covered for him with the battalion commander.
And seeing how Ben felt about the rules and regulations, that didn’t exactly set them up to be buddies.
But right then? He had the strange and sudden urge to know if she ever laughed. Something dark simmered in his belly. Something deeply inappropriate at work. But that didn’t stop him from noticing her dark hair tied up neatly at the base of her neck. He blamed his interest on lack of sleep. There was no way he could be attracted to someone as…driven as Olivia was.
He had no idea what to say. What to ask for from the lawyer who would now be responsible for keeping his ass walking the straight and narrow. He didn’t want the job. He didn’t want anything to do with sending soldiers on missions approved by commanders too removed from the fight to care about the kids on the front line. He’d kick a door in any day of the week with his old team. But that was a world of difference away from being a commander ordering said door to be kicked in.
Now he was judge, jury, and executioner over men he’d served with. A power he didn’t want and a power he’d done his best to avoid.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
Olivia raised one eyebrow. “Yes, that about sums things up,” she said dryly. She slid a packet toward him. “Here’s the paperwork on Escoberra, opening the investigation at Child Protective Services.”
Ben leaned forward, wishing he had something to do with his hands. He closed his eyes, seeing Carmen kneeling in front of her husband. “There’s no way Escoberra did this. He’d never hurt his kid.”
“The initial report says otherwise,” Olivia said cautiously.
He looked up at her, barely reining in his temper. “The initial report is wrong. First reports often are. He’s a goddamned warrior and a damn fine senior NCO.”
The muscles in her neck tightened. Oh yes, Olivia Hale had a temper. “Rank shouldn’t matter,” Olivia said quietly.
“You’re a major.” Ben’s smile was merciless. “You should’ve been around long enough to know better.”
“Rank matters more than it should.”
Ben leaned forward, bracing his elbows on the table. “Maybe, maybe not. But rank matters less than the fact that Escoberra didn’t do this. He wouldn’t.” He met her gaze.
Olivia pinned him with a hard look. “You’re awful certain about a situation when you weren’t there.”
“I know my NCO.” At least, he had, once upon a time. But the war and different missions and a hundred unsaid things had drifted between them. And Ben had let the drift widen until he could no longer see across the chasm.
“How close to Escoberra would you say you are, Captain Teague? Close enough that it’s going to keep you from doing your duty?” Ben looked away, down at his hands. Not as close as he should be. The distance had grown over the last couple of years. They’d been at opposite ends of the city on this last deployment.
Ben looked at her then and carefully chose his words. “The only people who care about the separation between officer and enlisted are people who’ve never bled together.” He glanced at her empty right shoulder. “The rank on your chest doesn’t matter.”
Her throat moved as she swallowed. He could almost see her pulse hammering against her throat. “You’re talking about ignoring regulations that are the foundation of our service.” She pinned him with a hard look. “Are you telling me the rules don’t matter?”
Ben met her gaze clearly, refusing to back down. “They don’t.”
***
There was more to this story but Olivia had no idea what it was. Watching him right then, she caught a glimpse of the man she’d seen just a hint of at the hospital that morning. A man who’d been to war and back again and come home changed.
Because the man in front of her was tense, had been ever since the subject of Escoberra had come up. “How can you protect a man who put his daughter in the hospital?” she asked softly.
“He didn’t do it. You don’t know him.” Teague’s expression shuttered closed.
“You can’t be friends with your men,” she said quietly.
“I know that,” he snapped. He sighed and dragged his hand over his mouth. “So what do I do?”
She sighed heavily. “We talked about this at the hospital this morning. You flag him until the CPS investigation is complete. You give him a no-contact order and put him in the barracks and you get him to mental health to get checked out.”
He ground his teeth but wrote silently. His neck was tight. The veins on the back of his hands stood out in stark contrast against his skin.
He shifted then and looked up. Their gazes collided. Silence hung in the air, thick and filled with stubborn anger. Time slowed. His throat moved and he swallowed.
Olivia blinked and the spell was broken, if it had ever even been there to begin with. “I know this is going to be difficult,” she said quietly.
“Thanks,” he said. He reached for the packet and put it to one side. Something snapped between them and he was back to business, the tension gone. “Okay, what’s next?”
She took a deep breath. “The clear-cut misconduct. The drinking and driving, the article fifteens for minor offenses. You can get a big chunk of these knocked out within a week, a month tops, then focus on the more serious incidents.”
Ben frowned across the desk at her. “How many serious incidents am I dealing with?”
“You don’t know?”
He shook his head and angled his chair so he was leaning across the table, then angled the files so he could see them better. “I haven’t even been to my new office yet and supposedly, I’m without a first sergeant.”
She lifted her gaze to meet his. “Alone and unafraid, huh?”
He offered a cocky half grin and for a moment, the lines on his face relaxed and she caught a glimpse of the man beneath the tired warrior. “Something like that.”
Olivia looked away. The first packet was heavy in her hand. “The quick summary is that you have five drinking and driving, two assaults, three hot urinalysis tests and five soldiers caught with other intoxicating substances.”
“Define ’91other intoxicating substances’? What the hell does that mean?”
“Huffing, spice, bath salts.”
“Bath salts? What the hell are bath salts?”
Olivia pulled out her phone and pulled up a website explaining the drug. “They’re really new but we’re starting to see more of them. They’re meant to be a synthetic drug that mimics cocaine and ecstasy but they’re really bad stuff. Some of it is variants of plant food.”
Ben reached for her phone and angled it so he could see. His hand was big and rough against hers. Hot where their skin met. If he noticed, he didn’t give any indication. “Plant food?”
Olivia tried to ignore how his hand felt against hers. Because, oh yes, she’d noticed. Heat spread across her skin, sliding up her forearm and tingling down her spine.
“Soldiers will smoke anything these days,” she said quietly.
“Why?”
“That’s a whole ‘nother discussion,” she said, easing her hand out of his. “The short version is that intoxicating substances are prohibited by regulation and I advise you to do two things with these kids: send a strong message that this behavior won’t be tolerated but also enroll them into drug abuse counseling to send a message that you’ll help those who want it.”
Ben studied the paperwork in front of him. Tormented emotions flickered over his face and it was everything she could do not to ask him what was on his mind. She didn’t have time or reason to go crawling around Ben Teague’s head but that didn’t stop the want pulsing warmly
over her skin.
“I know this kid,” Ben said quietly. “I served with him downrange last deployment but ever since he’s come home, he’s been nothing but trouble to the old commander. Zittoro has three previous drug charges,” he said.
“Private Zittoro is a different case. I recommend you separate him from the military under a chapter nine, rehab failure.”
She heard his quick intake of breath. Saw the conflict flicker over his sharp features.
He cleared his throat roughly in the awkward silence. “Zittoro…he’s got nowhere to go. He’s got a deadbeat dad and his mom is…well, she’s not winning any parent of the year awards.” His fist clenched on the table in front of her. “If I throw him out of the Army, what happens to him? He’s an addict.”
She flinched at the pain in his words. Ben had only been a commander for a couple of hours but the strain was already obvious in his voice.
“You can’t save everyone,” she whispered. She waited until his eyes met hers. “You know that, right?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
There was no comfort she could offer. This was the burden of command: to balance the needs of the Army over the needs of the individual. A tightrope he had to walk alone.
All she could do was give him the facts and her opinion. But in that moment, she had the sudden urge to save him from this. “If you keep him, do you have the manpower to keep going to his room and making sure he hasn’t overdosed every night? Do you trust him enough to give him a weapon and believe he’ll do his job?”
Ben’s throat moved as he swallowed. “Guess not,” he said quietly. He leaned back and it was as if a wall of glass crystallized between them. “What other fun things do you have in there for me?”
Olivia wasn’t convinced by the sudden shift in Ben’s mood but now wasn’t the time or the place for digging any deeper. She reviewed the rest of the drug packets, watching him tense more with each one. She stopped after the last driving under the influence.
“Why is this bothering you so much?”
He offered a half-assed cocky grimace that failed to mimic the smile he was going for. A pretty shitty attempt to cover the darkness twisting beneath the surface. He took a deep breath. “I’m a big boy. I’ll do what has to be done.”
“I didn’t imply that you wouldn’t. But that doesn’t mean it’s not bothering you.”
He drummed his fingers on the table. “Let’s finish this up. I’ve got to get down to my company and start digging out from the mountain of crap that my predecessor left me.”
He brushed her off. The action was as insignificant as a paper cut.
She leaned back and picked up the next packet and wished it didn’t sting like it did. Then she made the mistake of meeting his gaze. There was such a dark lack of hope in his eyes. A bleak resignation to the things he was forced to confront. She almost reached for his hand. It would have been a simple gesture of support. But he looked at her as though a single touch might have shattered him.
He was not her problem. She didn’t do damaged and introspective.
Because there were people counting on her not to get distracted.
But looking at him now, she wondered about the glimpse of the tired warrior she saw behind those tormented brown eyes.
ONE CLICK TAKE ME HOME NOW!
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