Forged in Fire Read online

  * * *

  Holly watched him go. Her skin burned where his fingers had brushed against hers. Burned with a need that she’d ignored for far too long.

  She didn’t shut it down. It had been too long since she’d let herself feel anything even close to this alive. The fire burned through her veins, flooding her with a sensation twisted with forbidden urges. It was a mistake letting herself feel, especially letting herself feel something for the wild and overconfident Diablo company commander.

  She was enlisted. He was very much an officer. He was off limits.

  Maybe if she were a junior soldier and he were a lieutenant, the chain of command might look the other way. Fraternization happened all the time and nothing ever came of it unless it was tied to other misconduct or investigations.

  But she didn’t know LTC Gilliad well enough to know if he’d ignore it or not. And it didn’t matter if Bello and Holly were two consenting adults or not. If the battalion commander wanted to nail their asses if they crossed the line then he could and he’d be completely justified.

  And she knew all too well why getting involved at work was a bad idea. Holly couldn’t risk letting her feelings out of the box where she’d buried them. Sal Bello was bad news on several levels.

  But she rubbed her fingers where he had brushed against her skin and let herself crave the human connection that she’d pretended she didn’t need.

  This was lust, pure and simple.

  And while it would never fill the void in her heart, sometimes, that brief human connection was enough.

  She turned her thoughts off and refocused on work. She had shit to do. She didn’t have time to sit around and mourn for a life that could have been.

  * * *

  It was late when Sarn’t Freeman knocked on the door of her office. “You wanted to see me, First Sergeant?”

  Holly debated having her sign a rights waiver. If she was talking off the record, Freeman might be more honest with her.

  But if Freeman told her anything serious, Holly wouldn’t be able to use it to take any action.

  She opted to see if Freeman would trust her. It was the more pressing need at the moment.

  “Want to tell me what happened earlier? Looked like you and Sarn’t Pizarro were awfully familiar with each other,” Holly said. She leaned back in her chair.

  Sarn’t Freeman folded her hands at the small of her back and went to the position of parade rest. “We’re from the same hometown, First Sergeant. He was just worried about me.”

  And just like that, Holly spotted the lie for what it was. The tone was back, the defiant edge to Sarn’t Freeman’s voice. It was almost a challenge. Like Freeman was seeing how much she could get away with.

  It plucked Holly’s last nerve.

  “Next time I see you talking to him, you better be at parade rest. I don’t give a shit if he’s your cousin; he’s a sergeant first class and you will maintain your military bearing,” Holly said, deliberately keeping her voice mild.

  She struggled to hide her disappointment but any thoughts Holly had of saving Freeman died a little in that moment. She’d been around far too long to be under any delusions that she could save everyone, even from themselves.

  “Roger, First Sergeant.”

  “You’re going to do your corrective training every day for the rest of this week.”

  “Roger, First Sergeant.”

  There was no submission in Freeman’s deceptively quiet words.

  She was a young woman who bore watching. Sarn’t Major Cox had said there was trouble in this unit. She didn’t know what kind of trouble Freeman was but she’d reveal herself in time.

  They always did.

  “You’re dismissed, Sarn’t.”

  The minute Freeman was gone, Holly typed a quick memorandum for record, documenting what had happened earlier with Pizarro and the corrective training she’d assigned to Freeman.

  It wasn’t a sworn statement but when things took a turn for the worse with Freeman, and Holly was certain it would get worse, she’d have the needed documentation to put her out of the Army or court-martial her.

  It all depended on what kind of trouble Freeman decided she was.

  Because Holly had a job to do. And she would never, ever be the kind of leader that refused to act.

  5

  Holly stepped out of her ancient SUV at five-oh-one in the morning and felt the chaos swarming around her. It was battalion run day and she had a sneaking suspicion that this one was going to be an especially big pain in the ass.

  Something about getting six phone calls at three in the morning because all six of her platoon sergeants couldn’t seem to confirm that they’d reached 100 percent of their troopers for an alert.

  An alert called at the end of the duty day yesterday that should have taken an hour to complete had turned into an all-night event.

  And that would teach her for calling a test alert at six p.m. on a Thursday.

  But it also told her a lot about how they handled some of the basic things a unit was expected to be able to perform, and she now had a starting point to begin making changes.

  Captain Reheres walked up and Holly saluted her commander sharply. “You don’t look happy, ma’am.”

  “Apparently, Sarn’t Freeman decided to miss formation today.”

  Holly closed her eyes and prayed for patience. “Have we checked her apartment?”

  “She lives in the barracks and yes, she’s not in her room.” Captain Reheres hooked her thumbs into her road guard belt. “She was arguing with another soldier from Diablo Company last night.” Reheres seemed to physically shrink into herself when she mentioned Diablo Company. Holly frowned, wondering what Reheres’ deal was. She’d have to ask but she wasn’t exactly sure this was the right moment to pick that scab.

  Holly looked at her commander. “I have the sneaking suspicion that you want me to deal with Bello,” Holly said quietly.

  That was only partially the truth. The rest of it was that Holly wasn’t sure what the hell had gotten into her last night when he’d handed her the range information, and she needed to keep her distance until she figured out what her hormones’ malfunction happened to be.

  She liked sex just as much as the next red-blooded American woman but damn, her entire body had stood up and taken notice last night over the slight touch of his skin against hers.

  She was no longer nineteen years old. She was going to show some decorum, damn it.

  Even if she did want to strip Sal Bello down and see if the shoulders beneath that uniform were as broad as they looked in uniform.

  Captain Reheres pressed her lips into a flat line and nodded. “I don’t like talking to him or his first sergeant,” she said.

  Holly narrowed her eyes at her company commander. “Are you serious, ma’am?”

  “As a heart attack. His first sergeant ripped my face off in front of the battalion commander my second day in the unit. He could be on fire and I wouldn’t throw piss on him.”

  Holly stood for a moment, letting her commander’s words sink in. She turned them over, examined them. Nope, it didn’t matter that Reheres was a puppy.

  There was no excuse for her avoiding a fellow officer because he yelled at her. She couldn’t have a commander being afraid of another first sergeant. And one that was top in her class at West Point?

  Oh, they were going to talk about this. Just not right now. “I’ll go deal with Bello and Delgado, ma’am.” She barely managed to hide the frustration in her voice. Hadn’t Reheres had any conflict management training at West Point?

  But it was just after five a.m. Holly wasn’t due to rip into anyone for another sixty minutes at least. Not before first formation, anyway. Traditions and all that.

  She was a little bit cranky as she headed across the PT field toward her company guidon but stopped as Diablo’s colors caught her eye. She made her way through the bodies, clad in grey PT uniforms and the obligatory bright yellow PT belts, milling about, waiting
for formation. It blew her mind that they needed to have formation before the formation because people couldn’t get their asses where they needed to be on time, but she’d learned a long time ago that was just how things were done in the Army.

  She found Bello ripping into his lieutenants. Quietly. She stood back and watched and discovered that Bello was a master in action.

  Those were the worst ass chewings. The ones that made you feel like you were two inches tall and a miserable failure.

  She watched the magic happen and wished she’d mastered that particular life skill once upon a time. But her bad habits were too ingrained at this point to try and make changes.

  “You’re supposed to be officers. Leaders. That means when a soldier calls you, you answer the damn phone.”

  One brave—or incredibly stupid—soul dared to interrupt. “Sir, it’s after duty hours. We’re not on call twenty-four-seven.”

  Holly raised both eyebrows at the lieutenant’s audacity but held her silence.

  Bello didn’t disappoint. “You want to work a nine-to-five job, Burger King is always hiring,” he said softly. “You are leaders of men. If I can’t count on you to take care of our boys back here, how can I count on you downrange?”

  The only sign that he was actually significantly more pissed than he was letting on was the vein pulsing in his neck. She wondered why the lieutenants didn’t look more worried and then she realized they simply had no idea what they were looking at.

  “This is the one and only time I will have this conversation with you. The next time a soldier tells me he can’t get a hold of someone in his platoon, you will be having a very bad day. Do you understand?”

  “Roger, sir,” they said in unison then they saluted and left. Bello took another moment before he turned and faced her. Something dark flickered over his expression before it shuttered closed.

  But not before she’d seen it. In that darkness had been something primitive, something she recognized. A thinly veiled want accompanied by the equally strong need to shut it down.

  She saluted and he returned it sharply and everything was one hundred percent professional. “They really have no idea how pissed you are at the moment, do they?”

  “Sometimes I sit back and wonder if I was ever that innocent and clueless as a lieutenant,” he said after a moment. He fell into step with her as they circled around to the back of the formation. “What can I help you with, First Sergeant?”

  “You don’t happen to be missing a soldier today, do you?” she asked.

  “That’s where that ass chewing just came from. One of my super troopers just called in saying he was in Austin with one of your soldiers.”

  Holly frowned. “Did he happen to say why?”

  “No clue. I don’t actually give a shit, either, to be honest.”

  “I’ll admit to being curious, to be honest,” Holly said. She shifted, needing something to do with her hands. “Did he say if it was medical?”

  “He wouldn’t say.”

  “My delinquent happens to be my NCO who is already in trouble from yesterday, so she’s getting an Article Fifteen. What’s the deal with your guy?” she asked.

  “I don’t know yet. Baggins doesn’t normally go AWOL. He’s generally a good kid.”

  “You have a soldier named Baggins? Isn’t that a hobbit from Lord of the Rings?”

  There was a tiny crack at the edge of his mouth. “It’s from our first deployment. He was always asking for breakfast thirty minutes after we’d just eaten.” He shrugged. “His real name is Balboa. I just can never seem to call him that.”

  “You’re lucky he hasn’t filed a doggone IG complaint on you.” But he didn’t grin. “So what are you going to do with him?” She raised both eyebrows when he said nothing for too long. “You’re thinking of letting this ride, aren’t you, sir?”

  She breathed in deeply. And waited. Until the silence stretched between them like an impassible thing.

  “I don’t have all the facts yet,” Bello said softly.

  She glanced at her watch. “Give me the five-second version of what you do know so I have time to think about it on the run and help you troubleshoot this one.”

  Bello just looked at her. “Baggins has a thing for Freeman. Freeman seems to have a thing for sergeants first class. It’s about as screwed up as it gets but since everyone appears to be consenting adults, there’s really nothing I can do at this point.”

  Holly looked toward her formation. She needed to be over there in something like three minutes to call them to attention to salute the flag.

  “We need to teach you some creative writing, sir,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “Good order and discipline. It’s your catch-all for behavior that doesn’t quite break the rules but is causing enough bullshit in the unit to be detrimental.”

  He tipped his chin and frowned slightly. “That’s actually brilliant,” he said after a moment.

  “I’ve been doing this a long time, sir.” She shifted again. “You’ve got to make a choice here. The choice you make is going to set conditions for the rest of the time you’re in command.” She hooked her thumbs into the back of her PT shorts. Damn it, why couldn’t she figure out what to do with her hands? “If you let this ride without saying anything to any of the parties involved, you’re telling everyone in your formation that whatever they do, so long as they don’t get caught, it won’t matter.” She breathed out deeply.

  “Maybe it doesn’t.” He was looking for a fight in those three words. “Maybe worrying about all this bullshit is distracting from what we’re really supposed to be doing.”

  She snorted and realized in that instance why her commander didn’t want to deal with him. “And what’s that, sir?”

  “Killing bad guys.”

  She looked up at him then. Saw the darkness in his eyes and the rawness there. And for a moment, just a moment, she felt her resolve waver. Maybe Cox was just going to have to deal with this guy on his own. “Sir, if we were waging total war, I’d agree with you. But just like there’s more to command than leading soldiers in combat, there’s more to war than killing bad guys.”

  “Maybe that’s half the problem with the whole fucking war,” he said bitterly. “We’re half-assing it when we should be going for a decisive victory.”

  “You know, I don’t actually disagree with you,” she said. “But that’s not our decision and that’s certainly not how we’re fighting the current war.” She held up her hands.

  Sal ground his teeth and looked like he was about to argue with her. Again.

  “Look, sir, you can have a problem with me or not; I don’t really give a rat’s ass. But we’ve got to work together for the next year or so unless one of us gets fired, so I’d just as soon you get over whatever moral objection you’ve got to smartass females and I’ll try to get over your crusty ‘anything that isn’t shooting motherfuckers in the face is a waste of time’ attitude. Deal?”

  He didn’t respond. Finally, Holly sighed. “What the hell is it going to take to make you happy, sir?” she finally asked.

  “You taking your job more seriously. This isn’t a damn joke.”

  She took a single step forward. “Don’t,” she said sharply. “Don’t stand there and tell me I don’t take this job seriously. You don’t know a damn thing about me.”

  Arrogant captain thought he could run his unit without a first sergeant. That he was going to tell her what leadership looked like? That it had to be all serious and hardcore and rawr caveman tough.

  Screw that.

  Considering that Cox was probably going to whip her ass for this little stunt, she figured she should probably stop digging the hole she’d just jumped headfirst into.

  First sergeants as a rule did not tend to cuss out their commanders, not even their acting commanders. Not if they wanted to have a job or anything minor like that.

  And she most definitely wanted to keep her job.

  But not if it meant dealing
with Captain Cranky Pants.

  But said captain wasn’t, apparently, going to back down. And that annoyed her even more.

  “I know all I need to know.” His kept his voice mild, deceptively so.

  “Glad to see you’ve got your mind made up,” she said. Her smile could have cracked glass. “Do what you want, sir. It’s your company.” She saluted sharply and didn’t wait for him to return it before jogging off toward her own formation.

  And tried to ignore the sick knot in her belly that came with the realization that Cox was wrong. Bello wasn’t an officer who didn’t listen. He was worse. Bello was one of those officers who didn’t give a shit who his boys hurt so long as they were on his team.

  She’d judged him wrong. And that sucked because for a moment, a brief moment, she’d thought she’d been dealing with someone who understood the choices they had to make as leaders.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d misjudged someone. And it wouldn’t be the last. But that didn’t make any of it easier to swallow.

  * * *

  Sal didn’t often consider murdering his battalion commander, but after the eighth mile had passed and everyone else on post had long ago hit the showers, and they were still running, he was rethinking his stance on fratricide.

  Add in that he was still irritated with First Sergeant Washington for several reasons and he was just having a shit morning run. Which in turn fed into his crap mood.

  And why the hell was he irritated by what Washington had said? She wasn’t wrong—not about the war and how their hands were tied in the execution of it. But she’d looked at him in that moment and he’d felt judged. Inadequate. Like he’d failed some test that he hadn’t known he’d been taking.

  She’d caught him off guard with the question about Baggins. He honestly didn’t know what he was going to do with the kid. He didn’t generally go around court-martialling people for their first offense and he really didn’t know why Baggins had decided going to Austin had been more important than getting his happy ass to work.