It's Always Been You (16 page)

The cookie in Ben’s mouth suddenly tasted like cardboard. He spit it into the trash. “Tell me their kid is okay. He was a little bit older, wasn’t he?”

“Tag’s kid was six when it happened. The uncle hadn’t done any permanent damage but he’d been working up to it.” Reza cleared his throat roughly, rubbing the back of his neck as if to scrub away the memories. “I guess my point is that maybe CPS isn’t blowing smoke up your ass.”

“Fuck man, but Escoberra?” Ben covered his mouth with his hands. “There’s got to be a piece of this that’s missing. CPS dropped the case. Nothing makes any damn sense.”

Reza shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t want to believe our boyo could do that but I don’t know.”

“I was there. At the hospital that night when Hailey was there. I saw Escoberra.” The pictures of Hailey’s back would haunt Ben forever. He’d seen some terrible things over the years but this? This was somehow worse. “I’ve never seen a man look more devastated,” Ben said softly. His heart threatened to break in his chest.

Reza shifted again, his eyes darkening. “No man should hurt a child like that,” he said softly.

“I know,” Ben admitted.

“War changes people.”

“But this? Whipping a kid that he loves like his own daughter?” Ben scrubbed his hands over his face.

“When you’re presented with the facts, you’ll have to deal with them. Whatever they are.” Reza looked up at him. “Because you’re not just another soldier now, Ben. You’re a commander and these decisions come with the job.”

Silence stretched between them. Uncomfortable and filled with terrible choices and ugly truths.

Finally Reza cleared his throat. “And you have to figure out what you can live with.”

Sorren walked into Ben’s office a bit later and closed the door behind him. “We’re going to have problems, sir.”

Ben closed his laptop and gave Sorren his undivided attention. “What kind of problems?”

“Monica Glass has been calling Foster since he got out of jail.”

Ben took a deep breath and folded his hands in front of him. “Isn’t this the woman who had him arrested in the first place?”

“Yep.” Sorren sat down on the couch, draping his arm across the back. His fingers drummed angrily on the back.

“Shit.” Ben pulled out the limited information he had on the night Foster had been arrested. The serious incident report had remarkably little detail. “She’s the damn reason he’s been in jail to begin with. Didn’t she call the police when her father and Foster started fighting?”

“Yep. And now Foster’s out of jail so she’s blowing up his phone and mine,” Sorren said. “She keeps calling and telling me she doesn’t feel safe with him out but he’s telling me she won’t stop calling him. I don’t know who to believe.”

Ben cupped his chin in his hand and wished he still had some of those cookies from earlier. He’d thrown them away when they’d lost their taste and one of the orderly room clerks had already grabbed his trash. He was going to have to put a stop to that. He could take out his own damn trash.

“Wasn’t her dad a first sergeant before he became a cop?” Ben asked. “She’s supposed to be one of the well-adjusted ones.”

“Not if Daddy was too busy fighting the war to be a daddy,” Sorren said. There was a little too much bitterness in Sorren’s words for Ben to ignore.

“Tell me about this daughter of yours.” Ben asked abruptly. There was no wedding ring on Sorren’s left hand. No faint mark where one had been recently, either.

“Been divorced since I was twenty-two,” Sorren said roughly. “I’ve got a fifteen-year-old daughter.” He reached into his wallet and flipped it open.

Ben leaned over and saw a beautiful girl with dark hair and her father’s eyes.

“Man, she’s beautiful.” He glanced up at Sorren. “You sure she’s yours? Cause you’re ugly as all get out.”

Sorren flipped Ben off as he leaned back. “Fuck you, sir.”

“Seriously, she’s beautiful.”

“Thanks. I’ve already talked to her mother about getting a shotgun.” It was almost funny watching the big man squirm talking about his daughter.

“Foster’s right. She’s already dating, isn’t she?” Ben said with a grin.

“Don’t say horrible things like that.” Sorren visibly flinched, and shoved his wallet back into his pocket.

Ben’s grin widened and he kicked his feet up onto the desk. “Dude, there is no way I would touch your daughter if I was a sixteen-year-old boy. You’re terrifying.”

“Especially not if I threatened that whatever you do to her, I do to you,” Sorren said. His expression relaxed into a sad smile as he stared at the picture. “But I’ve been gone most of her life and I don’t get that time back. I worry about what my not being around did to her.”

Ben had no idea what to say. He knew what it felt like to have a parent be more soldier than parent. His mother wore her uniform like a shield. She’d never had time for him after his dad died—unless it involved interfering in his career where he didn’t want her.

Finally, he broke the silence. “She looks like she’s doing okay.”

Sorren’s eyes darkened and he rubbed his hand over his mouth. “We had her in a hospital last summer. She cuts herself.”

Ben stilled. “What do you mean, cuts herself?”

“Like not trying to kill herself. She just… cuts. She hides it. Really well, actually.”

“How did you find out?” Ben asked quietly. His heart hurt for his first sergeant’s pain and the helplessness written on the big man’s face.

“The school nurse called Melanie,” he said. “Let me tell you, that was a shitty Red Cross message to get in the middle of Mosul.”

“Were you able to go home?”

Sorren shook his head. There was nothing, nothing worse than being called in the war zone and not being able to go home.

Carmen had called Escoberra once. Just once. She’d been in a car accident. Escoberra had nearly lost his mind when the company commander had told him that he couldn’t go home because there were no life-threatening injuries.

Sorren said, “Nah. We had major operations going in Tal Afar. And, to quote my battalion sergeant major, she didn’t try to kill herself. I could deal with it when I got home.”

Ben swore softly. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Sorren shrugged. “That’s the way it goes sometimes. She’s better now.”

“You have my permission to drop your retirement paperwork,” Ben said. His throat wasn’t working right all of a sudden. He’d never wanted kids, never figured he’d be the kind of dad who could raise stable, well-adjusted little humans. But if he did have them? What a terrible thing, to find out your kid was hurting herself.

Guilt damn near choked Ben, and she wasn’t even his daughter. He looked over at Sorren and saw behind the rough exterior. For just a moment, Sorren’s shields fell and he was just a man, a father who wasn’t living up to his own expectations of what a dad should be.

Finally Sorren looked over at Ben.

“I’ll see this deployment through,” Sorren said. “But yeah, then I’m done. I think I’m going to go home. Try to be a dad to a kid who doesn’t need me anymore.”

“They always need you,” Ben said. Maybe that was a lie but Sorren didn’t need to know that Ben rarely called his own mother. He’d stopped needing her a long time ago.

His dad had died in the first Gulf War. Ben could still remember the day the phone call had come in. Because his mom had been a soldier, they’d done the notification differently.

It was the first and only time Ben had ever seen his mother cry. She’d buried his dad and thrown herself into work. Ben had been a kid but it hadn’t taken him long to figure out he’d lost both parents that day.

Mom was a full bird colonel now on some staff in Washington.

And Ben? The only reason Ben was a soldier was because he’d wanted to feel closer to his dad.

Instead, it had driven the final wedge into his relationship with his mother.

Sorren cleared his throat roughly. “So what are we going to do about Foster?”

Ben sighed. “I have no fucking idea. But I know just who to ask.”

* * *

Olivia’s desk phone rang. She hung her head for a moment and counted to three. Damn it, it was always this way. Right before the end of the duty day, when she was planning on sneaking out and working on the rest of the files from home, the phone rang.

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.