Chapter Two

The text message of doom vibrated on Reza’s phone as he pulled into his company ops parking lot. Reza was wanted in the sergeant major’s office.

He did his best to avoid the brigade headquarters. There were too many names memorialized on the walls. Too many ghosts that walked the halls, overshadowing everything they did. Demanding that Reza do better. Train harder. Do more to bring their boys home.

He swallowed, gripping the steering wheel as his phone vibrated in his lap again.

He supposed he couldn’t avoid the sergeant major forever.

Maybe today the ghosts would leave him be.

He walked down the long hallway of the Reaper Brigade headquarters, fear choking him as the memories of lost friends hung like empty, cold spaces in the sterile, buffed hallway. He wanted to keep walking but his boots slowed, stopping in front of the memorial for their fallen brothers and sisters. Smiling faces. Easy grins.

They’d had no clue that the photos on the wall would be how they were memorialized for all eternity. His gaze landed on his old first sarn’t and his throat tightened. Story’s loss was still fresh enough to hurt.

Reza scrubbed his hand over his mouth, swallowing, trying to push the lump down.

“Ornery bastard,” he muttered, staring at Story’s pic. Story hadn’t smiled in his picture. He’d never smiled, that Reza could recall. But that had done nothing to dampen Reza’s loyalty to his friend. He clenched his fists by his sides.

Funny how he’d gotten so used to seeing “private” or “sergeant” as the rank of the dead. First Sergeant…

He’d served with Story as a drill sergeant back at Sand Hill eons ago, when they’d both been more motivated, less cynical. Before the war had chipped away at their humanity.

His eyes burned and he blinked rapidly. Shit, he couldn’t go into the sergeant major’s office all misty-eyed. He’d never hear the end of it.

Reza didn’t have time for long chats. He had men to train. They were about nine months out from another deployment—Reaper’s 4th tour into Iraq—and that meant that there simply weren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done. He hoped Foster had moved on with the weapons training without him. It was better to suffer during training than bleed in war.

The sergeant major knew that. So why was he wasting Reza’s time with an office call? Probably some spouse complaining about Tricare again or something else that the military couldn’t fix for them.

Reza was of the mind-set that if the Army had wanted you to have a family, it would have issued you one. He stayed single for exactly that reason. There was no end to the number of soldiers he had to pick up at the R&R Center because they’d married the first girl they’d lost their virginity to and that girl had turned out to have the heart of a pit viper.

Reza walked into the command group. A skinny private who looked like he needed to report to the dermatologist motioned for him to head straight in. Sucking in a deep breath and shoving away the sadness that always shadowed him when he was in the headquarters, he rapped on the doorframe.

Sarn’t Major Giles glared up from his computer. “Get your ass in here, Ike.”

Sarn’t Major Giles was not a friendly man. There was no teddy bear hiding beneath his tough, sandpapery exterior. As far as Reza knew, the man didn’t have a heart and his veins were filled with pure meanness. He’d told Reza once that all that kept him going was training his troopers. That would explain why he was on marriage number four but hey, Reza wasn’t there to judge.

But no matter how much Reza liked to avoid him, there was no one more effective at taking a scared nineteen-year-old private and giving him the confidence to be the first man in the stack to kick in a door.

“Iaconelli,” Sarn’t Major said, kicking his feet up on his desk. “What happened at the R&R Center today?”

Reza frowned. “Nothing significant to report.” It was his way of trying to brush off answering the old man. He really didn’t feel like rehashing the entire conversation with the doc and then her boss. Sarn’t Major was funny about things like that. Tended to get cranky when sergeants stepped out of line—something Reza was prone to do more often than not.

Giles chomped on the cigar in his mouth, his eyes pitiless and cold. “I’ll give you one more chance,” he said quietly. “Explain to me why I’ve got a full-bird colonel calling over here, pissing on the boss’s leg about you.”

Ah, hell. Reza clenched his fists at the small of his back. “I got into it with one of the docs over there. She wouldn’t confirm whether one of my dudes was there or not.”

“So you cussed out her boss?” Deadly, quiet words.

A chill slithered up Reza’s spine and settled around his shoulders.

“I may have uttered a creative turn of phrase, Sarn’t Major.” He’d made it his life’s work to try and get the sarn’t major to crack a grin. He’d never once succeeded. Not once.

Sarn’t Major didn’t appreciate the fine art of sarcasm.

A slow flush crawled up Sarn’t Major Giles’s weathered neck. Today was not that day,

either.

“Shut the goddamned door,” Giles growled. Reza toed it shut and it slammed with the finality of a crypt vault. “The hospital commander called directly to Colonel Horace. He skipped all the levels of the chain of command and went right to my boss.”

“Glad to see the phone books are up to date,” Reza said. His skin prickled with awareness that the man in front of him was about to unleash a massive ass chewing.

A man that Reza owed his loyalty to. And the remains of his career. Reza was under no illusions—he should have been forced to pack his bags after the Colorado fiasco a few months ago.

He still had a job. But given the look on Giles’s face, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could count on that.

God, but life was so much simpler when he was drinking. The temptation to reach for the bottle hissed in his ear. Seductive. Warm. Comforting.

He swallowed and straightened. He could take an ass chewing.

He’d done it before. He could do it again.

All the old man could do was yell at him, right?

Apparently, it was Reza’s day to be wrong. Again.

Giles moved with a speed that should have been impossible for an old infantry sergeant major, but his elbow was against Reza’s throat before Reza had even registered he’d moved.

Pictures rattled as Reza’s body slammed into the concrete wall. A memory, harsh and raw, scraped against the threat blocking his lungs. Another elbow. Another time.

Fear, both old and new, mixed in his veins, and he was once again sixteen years old. Fighting a man who was twice his age and size.

Losing everything, because his mind couldn’t grasp that the man with his elbow to his throat wasn’t the man he knew all those years ago.

The memories twisted and writhed. Reza focused on Giles’s face. Facing the anger right in front of him. Ignoring the ghosts.

He forced himself to react, shutting down the muscle memory that had his own hands curling into the sergeant major’s shirt collar. Releasing his grip, he relaxed, pushing down the ingrained urge to fight.

Giles’s breath was hot on his face.

Silence hung in the air.

Another moment and the sergeant major released him. “I don’t appreciate your smart-ass comments,” Giles said with a snarl, shoving him away. “I can’t protect you from this.”

Reza breathed deeply through his nose to calm the adrenaline running through his veins, more than sick of dealing with the sergeant major’s PTSD and whatever other psychosis he carried around with him. “I didn’t ask you to.”

Giles rounded on him, shoving his cigar into Reza’s face. “You’re one ungrateful son of a bitch, you know that, Ike? Colonel Richter had to pull some major strings to keep your ass out of a sling after the Colorado fiasco and now you’re home, swearing at senior officers? How fucking stupid are you?”

Reza wisely chose not to answer.

“Are you drinking again?”

His temper flared, bright and hot inside him. He didn’t get a chance to defend himself.

“The only right answer is ‘No, Sarn’t Major.’”

“No, Sarn’t Major,” Reza mimicked. A truth, for once. No matter how hard it was, he hadn’t had a drink since the accident in Colorado had nearly cost his best friend her career.

He didn’t care about how his drinking fucked up his own life. But when it came to his friends? Yeah, that was too far. Funny though, how no one—not Claire, the little sister he’d never had, and not Sarn’t Major Giles—believed him when he said he wasn’t drinking.

He’d failed at not drinking often enough. He couldn’t really blame them for not believing him. But it had to stick this time. It had to.

The problem was, if he started drinking again, he could be out of the Army by the end of the month—thrown out on his ass as a rehab failure. And the Army was the only good thing he had in his life.

“Ike, you need to dial it back. You can’t go around pissing on the hospital commander’s leg and expecting to get away with it. That chest full of medals won’t do you a damn bit of good at a court-martial.”

“I haven’t done anything worthy of a court-martial.” At least, nothing he’d been caught for.

“Yet.” Giles stalked to his desk. “I got the colonel to agree to let me handle this.”

“And by ‘handle this’ you mean choking me out?”

The cigar was back, an inch from the tip of Reza’s nose. “Don’t push your luck.” Giles was a full head shorter than Reza but Reza knew better than to tangle with him. Reza might have been all-Army combatives champion a few years ago but that didn’t mean he could beat the sergeant major in pure meanness.

The sergeant major’s drivers wouldn’t even wake him up in the field. They flat-out refused because he woke up swinging every time.

“Don’t come back in here again,” Giles said, sitting down at his desk. He thrust a sheet of paper at him. “Wisniak is being admitted to the hospital. Here’s the list of shit he needs.”

Reza accepted the paper, barely managing to avoid swearing under his breath.

Dismissed, Reza stepped into the hallway and headed for the door. It was only when he was in the quiet cab of his truck that he rested his head on the steering wheel and released a shuddering breath.

The flask he kept in the glove box whispered his name. Calling him. Just one sip.

He breathed deeply. He’d never thrown the flask out. He’d wanted to believe that he was strong enough to do this on his own. That he could be around the alcohol without drinking.

It was a daily test.

He knew what it would taste like: bitter and sharp, and it would burn the whole way down.

And the numbness would follow. A comfortable numbness would spread through his veins. The pressure on his chest would be gone.

He’d be able to focus. To relax.

Instead, he sat there, breathing in. Out. Slowly.

Struggling to hold on to the sobriety that was his only chance of remaining a soldier.

It was a long time before he drove back to the company ops.

The flask remained unopened.

***

Emily knocked on the door, waiting for the soldier inside to answer. A muffled sound was the only response, so she pushed it open gently. Slowly.

Sergeant Wisniak wasn’t a skinny kid but he wasn’t fat, either. He was just kind of puffy. Soft, maybe, might be the best description for him. She’d been seeing him for about a month now and the thing that struck her most about the soldier sitting quietly in the sterile room was the utter emptiness in his eyes.

A week ago, he’d been excited. Motivated that the fog in his head was starting to lift.

Eager to be the leader of men that he’d always wanted to be.

Today, that eagerness was gone. Left in its place was an empty shell.

“Sergeant Wisniak?”

He blinked up at her.

“We’re going to admit you,” she said quietly.

Blink. Blink.

“Do you think you can tell me what happened?”

He looked away.

Her heartbeat was the only sound. She stood there a moment longer, hoping he would answer. Hoping he would confide in her.

Hoping he would give her some way to help him.

But he said nothing and the silence grew too heavy.

She left, wondering how she was going to find the strength to make it through the rest of the day.

***

Reza walked into the first sergeant’s office and closed the door. It still didn’t feel like his space. He wondered if it ever would. Maybe if he wore the rank it would feel real. Right now, it felt temporary. Transient.

But that didn’t take away a single iota of the responsibility he had. He might not be getting paid for the job but he damn sure would give it everything he had.

He stared at his computer screen, his lungs tight with frustration.

He sent Foster a text message, telling him to round up Wisniak’s stuff and get it up to the hospital.

He was just glad that Marshall was out of the office. Maybe Reza could get some work done without his commander dumping more shit on his desk.

He glanced up as Sloban walked into his office. The young specialist should have looked rested and recovered from his monthlong stint in rehab. Instead, he looked harried and stressed out.

Sloban had changed so much since the last deployment. The kid with a steady trigger finger and bright, laughing eyes was long gone, buried from too many head injuries and no time off from the war.

Sloban had done three tours. Three tours that had taken a vital piece of his soul and left this shattered man in his place.

Guilt slithered up and threatened to choke him.

Reza hadn’t been able to protect Sloban. Not from the chain of command. Not from the nightmares that hunted his sleep.

There was no evidence on Sloban’s body but the war was breaking him.

It was breaking all of them.

“Doesn’t look like your vacation did any good,” Reza said lightly. Hoping the kid would crack a joke. Hoping he’d see a flicker of the warrior he’d known.

Sloban twisted a cigarette in his hands. New nervous habit. “It sucks, Sarn’t Ike, let me tell you. Rehab totally fucking sucks.”

“I thought you weren’t due back for another week.”

Sloban’s smile was bitter. “I was but Captain Dick Face pulled me back because he said my medical board was almost complete and since I wasn’t going to stay a soldier any longer, I didn’t need any more treatment.”

A warning crawled up Reza’s spine. Why hadn’t Marshall told him he was pulling Sloban out of rehab? As the first sergeant, that was something he should have been told about. “Who went and picked you up?”

“Sarn’t Song and Sarn’t Pete.”

Reza nodded slowly. Song and Pete were two of Marshall’s boys that had come with him from First Brigade. He’d never liked either one of them. Thought of them as bullies. Marshall thought they were great soldiers, though, and they got away with damn near anything they pleased.

“You don’t look like you’re doing too good,” Reza said.

“I’m not using,” Sloban said. “But it’s not as easy as it sounds.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. Reza wished he didn’t notice how they shook. “Marshall said the docs aren’t giving me a good rating for disability.” There was panic in Sloban’s voice. “I can’t work like this, Sarn’t Ike. If I could, you know I’d be fighting to stay in. The docs…if Marshall’s right…”

Reza ground his teeth. He knew exactly who to call to find out what was going on with Sloban’s packet. “Let me talk to Marshall and make some calls. I’ll find out what’s going on. Just stay clean, okay?” He breathed deeply. “And I haven’t seen your packet yet so don’t give up on me. Let me see if I can fix this.”

A flicker of something flashed across Sloban’s face. Reza wished it was the rock solid kid he’d known. “Sure, Sarn’t Ike. Whatever you say.” Sloban pushed out of his chair, pausing near the door. “I’m sorry to be such a pain in the ass. I know you’ve got other things you need to be doing.”

“You’re not being a pain in the ass, Slo. You’re a fucking warrior.” Reza drummed his fingers on the desk, itching to pick up the phone. He hadn’t been able to see Sloban’s slow spiral into addiction but damn it, if he could help the kid now, he was going to. He’d move the fucking planets to make sure he got the right ratings. He’d given the Army everything he had. The least the Army could do was take care of him now that they’d broken him. “I’ll fix this.”

A promise he didn’t know if he could keep.

He made it anyway.

Relief washed over Sloban’s face and stabbed Reza with the expectation he saw there. “Thanks, Sarn’t Ike. It means a lot to me that you don’t treat me like shit because I fucked up.”

“You didn’t screw up, Slo.” I did, for not catching your problem sooner. But he didn’t say that out loud. Maybe if Reza hadn’t been drowning his own demons in the bottle, he’d have seen what was happening with Sloban.

But he hadn’t.

Sloban left, leaving Reza wallowing in the morass of his own hypocrisy. Sloban had deployed and gone through some bad shit. He hadn’t dealt with it well. Not at all. He’d turned to meth and Reza hadn’t been able to help him. Because he hadn’t seen.

But that didn’t mean Reza would turn his back on him now. Sloban had been one of his and Reza protected his own.

He picked up the office phone, calling the R&R Center to see if he could hunt down the doc who had Sloban’s packet.

It was a long shot. The medical separation process was an archaic, tangled mess that no one, not even the docs, fully understood. It took months to put a soldier out of the Army for medical reasons.

Some guys, like Sloban, deserved to be taken care of the rest of their lives. They were heroes. They’d deployed, gone where the Army had asked them, done what it had asked them.

He glanced down at his cell phone. Foster was heading to the hospital with Wisniak’s stuff.

Captain Lindberg’s words haunted him. How was he supposed to have loyalty to a soldier who’d never deployed, never gone to war? How was he supposed to help someone who took resources away from the men and women who needed it? He had no loyalty to someone like Wisniak, who’d never sacrificed anything and couldn’t cope with life, let alone the Army.

There was no answer at the clinic. He shouldn’t have been surprised. The only doc he could get after duty hours was in the emergency room.

He’d follow up on Sloban’s packet first thing in the morning.

He wrote up the serious incident report about Wisniak being admitted to the hospital and sent it to the commander, then tackled the hundred and twelve e-mails in his inbox.

The silence in the office was beautiful. He fell into the work until there were only a handful of e-mails that needed further action.

The day that had started with a bang ended with a whimper and Reza couldn’t have been more relieved.

Shutting down his computer, he headed for the gym, needing the time with the weights to wear him down enough so that he could sleep without a drink.

Because tomorrow was a new day.

One more day sober.

***

By the end of the day, Emily didn’t think she was going to have the stamina to do anything but curl up into a little ball of misery and die, but the weight pressing on her chest demanded she do something to ameliorate it. She’d long ago discovered the link between endorphins and her anxiety levels, and knew that if she didn’t go for at least a little run she was going to have to drink to get through the rest of the week.

And Emily did not drink. At least, not much.

She certainly wasn’t going to fall into the same routine as her father. A martini at lunch, another after work, all with top shelf liquor, of course.

No, she didn’t need that. There were other, better ways to cope.

She pulled into the parking lot at the gym, ignoring the chime of her cell phone. She couldn’t deal with anything else from work today.

Wisniak had been admitted to the fifth floor psych ward earlier that morning. He hadn’t said anything during the entire process.

Once, he’d told her that all he’d ever wanted to be was a soldier. A leader of men.

He’d built this ideal up in his head of what he was supposed to be. He’d never been good at anything. He’d thought he could be a good soldier.

But he wasn’t living up to his own idealized image. He was so traumatized by his past and by his own perceived failure as a soldier that every day was a struggle.

What he did to himself was far worse than anything anyone in the unit could do to him. His sense of failure was staggering in its depth.

She simply counted her blessings that he’d come to her when the thoughts had gotten too dark this time.

It could have been so much worse.

Walking into the locker room, she changed quickly into an Under Armour t-shirt and running shorts. After tightening her laces, she straddled the treadmill as she entered her weight and time. She wanted—no, she needed—to go hard and fast. Her family members worked out with trainers to maintain their appearance, and when that failed they went under the knife.

Emily worked out simply because she’d learned to love it.

Popping her ear buds in, she cranked up the hard core techno she’d learned to love before her sister had looked down her nose at it. Finding her rhythm, she focused on her breathing and just ran.

In. Out. Her breath was rhythmic and steady. Her arms swung and with the constant motion, the tension in her chest melted away. She glanced in the mirror to the gym behind her. There were several guys lifting weights. One man’s expression was so intense and scrunched up it was almost comical. He was the kind of guy who would make very loud noises just to prove his own badassery on the weights.

He probably made that same face in bed when he was coming. She giggled despite herself and saw a couple of heads turn in her direction. She looked down, embarrassed that she’d drawn attention. She wasn’t there to get stared at.

She clicked to the next song and then added incline. Her lungs protested the extra effort but she needed it. Needed the pain. Needed the pride that came in beating her previous standards. It was never good enough to simply show up. She had to do her best.

Soldiers were counting on her. Soldiers like Wisniak, who needed an advocate to stand strong for them.

She’d seen firsthand what happened to soldiers who lacked an advocate. It was why she’d joined the Army in the first place. She’d lived a life of spoiled privilege.

Memories rose unbidden, taunting her with their relentless familiarity. Try though she might, she couldn’t un-hear her father’s biting words when she’d told him she had joined the Army.

“Are you trying to embarrass me?” he’d asked.

“No, Father. I’m making this decision for me.”

“For you? What about Bentley? What about Chloe?”

Bentley might have been her fiancé three hours before, but she was no longer bound by that loveless pledge. And Chloe?

Emily had walked the halls of the veteran’s hospital and every word out of her best friend’s mouth had shriveled a piece of Emily’s soul. There was false compassion there. A need to be seen as caring or empathetic. But every word her best friend had uttered had dripped with a disdain, a simpering pity, a desire to be somewhere else.

For Emily, every patient they’d visited had been a different kind of well. A need to find some way to help. Listening to spoiled sons and daughters of privilege whine about their lives had suddenly seemed so…trivial.

“I’m sure Bentley and Chloe will be just fine without me.” She didn’t mention that she’d caught her best friend with her mouth on her fiancé’s erection in the pool house earlier that afternoon.

When she’d been looking for a new start, she’d chosen a place where she could make a difference and put all that East Coast Ivy League education to good use.

She glanced over as the door to the workout floor swung open.

Sergeant First Class Iaconelli filled it, his gaze sweeping the room.

It had only been a few hours since the confrontation in the office but she’d forgotten how big he was.

He no longer wore his uniform. Instead, his body was on full display in a long-sleeved t- shirt that hugged his arms and accented his broad chest. The outline of his dog tags pressed against the black fabric. It was strange that he wore the long-sleeved shirt in the warmth of the gym and in the heat outside.

She was amazed by the sheer power of the man. He did not simply fill the doorway. He owned the space.

She looked away, focusing on the rhythm of her legs, hoping he wouldn’t notice her. His being here completely defeated the reason for her workout. She’d needed a run to escape the echo of his words—that she did not belong. She refused to let him get to her.

But instead, she’d run right to him. How had she never seen him there before? Gym rats were creatures of habit. Same machine. Same time. Same routine. She stared straight ahead but the specter of Iaconelli moved into her field of vision. He stood behind her, his reflection blocking out a large part of the workout floor.

She could pretend he wasn’t there and continue her run or she could face him and pray there would not be another confrontation. She might be a novice at Conflict Management 101 but she refused to be bullied by this man or anyone else. She glanced down at her time. She’d only gone about two miles in fifteen minutes. She’d wanted to go another half hour, at least.

Iaconelli simply stood behind her. Waiting. Solid. Stoic.

She ignored him and kept running.

She even reached forward and pushed the speed faster. Her legs pumped, her lungs threatened to explode.

Still she ran, refusing to let the big man intimidate her.

She ignored him when he climbed onto the treadmill next to hers. Standing beside her, she felt the heat from him merely standing there. His was an oppressive presence.

He seemed determined to interrupt her run.

But she was determined to finish. No matter how much he silently demanded that she stop.

He was a beautiful man. She wished he wasn’t. Somehow it was easier to get into pissing contests with these testosterone-driven men when she wasn’t thinking about them naked.

And it was so, so easy to imagine this man naked. The long-sleeved t-shirt hugged his skin, leaving little to the imagination. Was his body as hard as it looked?

Sweat beaded on her forehead as she ran. She could practically feel the irritation coming from him.

Of course, Iaconelli would be the first man she’d actually thought about that way in a long, long time. A man who looked like he’d rather throttle her than talk to her.

That way? Oh Lord. What was she, twelve? She shuddered and shook off her thoughts. She was no longer the girl who couldn’t say the word “penis” without turning fifty shades of red. No, she’d gotten over any inhibitions the day she’d found her fiancé with his dick where it didn’t belong.

She was a soldier now and soldiers didn’t blush when they said the word “dick” or “penis” or any other creative turns of phrase.

If she thought Iaconelli was a beautiful man, she wasn’t going to apologize for that.

She glanced down at the timer. Deciding she’d proven her point, she slowed down to a jog.

When her breathing had slowed enough that she wasn’t gasping, she hit the emergency stop button and turned to face him.

***

Her body glistened with sweat. It formed a light sheen against the cream of her skin. Her eyes, pale blue earlier, sparkled now like a far off ocean he remembered from a distant dream. They were darker from her exertion.

He hadn’t expected that she’d be at the gym. He’d been planning to ask her about Sloban’s packet tomorrow. During duty hours. But seeing her at the gym gave him the opportunity to do something now and now was always better than tomorrow, when a hundred other things would demand his attention.

Reza looked up at the cute doc who looked so different out of uniform. She wiped the sweat from her forehead then draped the towel over her shoulder. “Can I help you, Sergeant?”

Reza blew out a hard breath. “Do you have a separation packet on a Specialist Neal Sloban?”

Her nostrils flared slightly. “I have forty-two packets on my desk on any given day. I’d have to check and get back to you,” she said.

He nodded gruffly. “And what’s going on with Wisniak?”

She tipped her chin at him. “Are we really going to have a conversation about a soldier’s private medical issues in the middle of the gym?”

Reza ground his teeth. “It’s a simple question.”

“It is,” she agreed. “But it’s not one we should have here.”

“Where would you like to have it?” He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to. The reaction on her face was enough to let him know he’d made his point.

He didn’t really care where they had the conversation but it needed to happen. He wasn’t going to let this doc brush him off. Too many of his peers would let the docs do just that. Soldiers suffered.

“Give me a sec.” He watched her as she wiped down the treadmill and tried not to stare flagrantly at her ass. It was a really great ass and the way she moved was pure grace. Satin layered over steel. He took a step backward and followed her out of the gym. He walked with her silently, enjoying the relative quiet of the end of day at Fort Hood. Oh, there was traffic and the constant hum of life around them but the crush of soldiers swearing at each other, the constant shouts, were gone. But compared to the constant growl of generators broken up by the helicopters whirring overhead and bursts of machine gun fire from the test fire pit, an afternoon at Fort Hood was relatively quiet.

He followed her around the Greywolf gym and down a gentle slope toward the parking lot. “I don’t usually see you in here,” he commented. A deliberate attempt to lighten up the hostility between them.

“I usually run out by the airfield. There’s a trail by Engineer Lake I like.”

“You’re not afraid to run by yourself?” he asked.

“I don’t believe the media reports that all of you guys in uniform are closet rapists. I’ll take my chances,” she said dryly.

Well, how about that. Kitty had claws. He was mildly impressed.

She folded her arms over her chest. “Look, Wisniak is having a really hard time. Without going into too many details, he had an incredibly hard life growing up. He joined the Army to be better than what he came from. And in his mind, he’s failed.”

He studied her as she spoke. There was no hint of the attitude that drove him batshit crazy about the head docs. No need to protect the poor soldier from the evil chain of command. No desire to save the world.

Just genuine concern for his trooper. Something Reza should have felt. He searched for a name for the misfit emotion swirling inside him. It was unfamiliar and fleeting. Flittering like a hummingbird against his heart before wrapping a cold wet blanket around him. Then he knew it. An old, long forgotten emotion.

Shame. It shamed him, deeply, that he could not feel empathy for Wisniak. “He doesn’t need to stay in the Army,” Reza said softly.

“It’s all he’s ever wanted,” Emily countered.

“He can want it all day long. Some people simply aren’t meant to be soldiers.” She flinched. He hadn’t meant to slap at her but he saw he’d struck home nonetheless. He cleared his throat roughly. “Why is it so hard for you to understand that some people really don’t belong in the Army?”

“And why is it so difficult for you to understand that some people just need a little more help fitting into the life we lead?” She lifted her chin. “The failure of not being a good soldier is killing him.”

The echo of her words pushed aside any hint of compassion, the shame replaced by the familiar burn of rage beneath his skin.

“It’s killing him?” Reza said softly. “Like, literally killing him? Stabbing him with a bayonet killing him? Close quarters killing him? Or is he getting shot at three hundred yards?”

Her mouth opened but no sound came out as horror filled her pale blue eyes. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she whispered.

“How did you mean it, doc?” Reza swallowed the bitterness in his throat, fighting the urge to shout at her that she had no fucking idea about killing.

“It’s just a figure of speech.”

Reza smiled coldly. “See, that’s where you’re wrong. Killing is very much not a figure of speech where I’m from. Killing is a hot, bloody, screaming reality. A reality I’m supposed to be training our boys for. It pisses me off that I’ve had boys on the range that I couldn’t go teach how to shoot because I’ve been running around after this kid.”

“Then why are you even talking to me?” she asked, lifting her chin.

“Because I have to. Because Wisniak is in my company and that means I’m responsible for him.”

“That’s a stunning lack of loyalty,” she said, her voice filling with challenge as she found her courage. “How can you lead someone you feel no loyalty toward?”

“Loyalty is earned.”

“See, here’s where you and I differ. You should have loyalty to all your soldiers.”

Reza shifted and folded his arms over his chest, mirroring her own stance. “There are some who aren’t meant to be soldiers.”

“This again?”

“Why is that so hard for you to hear?” he asked suddenly. “What is it about you docs that makes you feel like every broken, battered kid can be the next commanding general?”

“We have to try. Everyone deserves a chance.”

“But what’s the cost, doc? Every day I spend running around after this kid who wants to kill himself or that kid who can’t take it because his sergeant yelled at him is a day I don’t spend training soldiers for war. Which, by the way, in case you missed it, isn’t over yet.”

Her skin blanched, tightening over her cheeks. “I know that,” she whispered.

He remembered the right shoulder of her uniform. No combat patch. He could have driven his point home then. Could have pressed his advantage, reminding her that he’d seen a side of war that would leave her trembling from the raw terror of it.

But he didn’t. Something about the fear in her eyes reminded him of something he tried very hard to forget.

He lowered his arms as an old memory tickled the base of his neck. Fear, primitive and dark, looked back at him. Reminding him that he’d been young once. Never innocent. Never that.

But younger. Before the war had twisted everything up inside him. Before it killed anything good he’d managed to salvage from home.

He closed his mouth, swallowing roughly. “What are the visiting hours on the fifth floor?” he asked.

She shifted, brushing her hair out of her face. “He’s not ready for visitors.” A familiar gauntlet thrown between them.

“When will he be?”

“The attending physician will make that assessment.”

Reza bit back a snarl of frustration and turned to go before he laid into her for the second time that day.

“What would it take for you to realize we can’t all be strong all the time?”

Her words whispered across his skin, taunting him. If he closed his eyes, he would see their faces. The men who’d died on his watch. The men he’d destroyed because they’d dared to defend their homes. Men who looked like his mother’s family.

He turned slowly to face her. She didn’t back down, didn’t step away from the rage grinding between his teeth. “I know all about weakness, honey. And that is not a position I will defend.”

He stalked back into the gym, the need for a drink snapping at his heels. Taunting him.

Demanding he slake the thirst. Just a little bit. Just one drink.

What could it hurt?

He headed for the weights. He could do this. He could walk away from the anger and the rage and the hate.

It was a long time before he was calm enough to leave.

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