It's Always Been You (3 page)

“One of my platoon sergeant’s kids ended up in the hospital. Fighting or something.”

The lie felt awkward and thick on his tongue.

Cox rocked back on his heels. “Was she admitted?”

“No.”

The cannon went off and the entire formation shifted. One of the platoon sergeants called “present, arms” and as one the formation saluted, rendering honors to the flag. Reveille ended and Ben dropped his salute, turning back to the sergeant major.

“I could really use my first sergeant down here, Sarn’t Major,” Ben said. It was as close as he could come to asking Cox for help.

He had some pride, after all.

“He’ll be here in the next day or so. We asked him to sign in early.” Cox spat into the dirt. “So there’s nothing else I need to know about this morning at the hospital?”

Ben bit the inside of his lip and shook his head, hating the job that put him in this position, where he had to lie to the leadership in the battalion or betray one of his own.

Of the two, betrayal was the worse sin. He could sleep at night with the lie—well, if he slept, that is. He and sleep weren’t exactly BFFs.

Beside him, Cox grunted and toed the dirt. “I hope there’s nothing the boss needs to know, Teague,” Cox said quietly.

“Or what, Sarn’t Major? I’ll get fired?” He tried to look hopeful and failed. He was just too damn tired.

“You wish. You’re not getting fired, Teague. You can just get that out of your damn mind once and for all.”

“Shit,” Teague muttered.

Cox shook his head. “I don’t know what the hell is wrong with you. Most officers would jump at the chance to command.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not most officers. I’m not up for throwing my soldiers under the bus to save my own ass.”

Cox stared at him, hard, and Teague wondered if he was getting ready to snap. The old man wasn’t known for his sanity. “There’s more to command than saving your own ass. If you’re too stupid to figure that out, then maybe you don’t deserve this damn job.”

Cox walked away, leaving Ben alone, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.

Cox knew he was lying. He wasn’t sure if Cox knew the specifics but that didn’t matter. He knew.

And he hadn’t called Ben on it.

Ben scrubbed his hand across his mouth, wondering how to read between the lines.

“You look grumpy. Did the coffee pot break again?”

Ben turned to see Sergeant First Class Reza Iaconelli approaching from the headquarters company formation.

“I saw Emily this morning,” Ben said, falling into step with Reza. They were both in PTs for first formation. Good a time as any to go for a long, therapeutic run.

“Yeah, she told me. How’s Escoberra’s kid?”

Ben swallowed the lump in his throat. “She’s okay.”

“What happened?”

“I’m going running. You coming?”

Reza nodded. “Sure. How far you going?”

“I was thinking the water tower across post.”

“Someone’s in a mood,” Reza said.

“Just because your old ass…”

“Don’t start with the rehab jokes,” Reza growled.

“What?” They fell into step, weaving through the masses of formations and bodies running on Battalion Avenue. The sun was just creeping over the corps headquarters across post and the sound of five thousand feet running in formation beat a rhythm into Ben’s chest.

It was a comfortable rhythm.

“How’re things with Emily?” Ben asked.

He glanced over and saw Reza’s face break into a slow grin. “She’s good.”

“Look at you, going all soft and mushy over a woman.” Ben rolled his eyes. “You’ve got it bad, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

A simple statement but one he’d never thought he’d hear from his longtime friend. Reza was always going to struggle with alcohol but he’d found someone to stand with him.

It was a fucking miracle and damn if Reza wasn’t a guy who deserved some good luck.

“I’m happy for you,” Ben said after a long silence.

“Thanks.”

They ran in silence, the only sound the rhythmic shuffle of their feet on the pavement. Ben lost himself in the beat, falling into the rhythm and letting it take over every conscious thought.

“What are you going to do about Escoberra?” Reza asked when they reached the tower.

Ben turned around, heading back toward Cav country.

“I don’t know. I don’t believe Carmen would let him back into the house if he beat up Hailey. She wouldn’t put up with his shit.” Ben smiled. The one time Ben had gone out drinking with Escoberra and they’d gone back to the house drunk and needing a place to crash, she’d put him to bed and then given him hell the next morning, all while cooking him breakfast.

“The lawyer was in the headquarters this morning, talking about it with the battalion commander,” Reza said quietly. “If you’re planning on telling him, you might need to go see him when we get back.”

“Goddamn it,” Ben muttered. “She has no business telling the boss this shit.”

“She sure as hell didn’t see it that way.”

Heat that had nothing to do with the run scorched through his veins. He picked up the pace until his lungs burned and his thighs screamed.

He figured running some of the aggression in his blood out
before
he got a hold of that major was going to be a good thing. Maybe then he’d be able to hold on to a trace of his military bearing.

He wasn’t exactly known for his tact.

They turned into the battalion footprint and lo and behold, there was the target of his frustration.

Ben started across the field, ready to throttle Major Hale.

“Whoa.” Reza grabbed his shoulder, stopping him before he could leave. “Calm the hell down.”

“No. No goddamned staff officer is going to do my job for me.”

“You weren’t going to tell him,” Reza pointed out.

“That’s not the point,” Ben snapped. “Escoberra was like a father to me and goddamn it—”

“Goddamn it what, Captain?”

Ben turned to see the little major suddenly standing behind him. Great, she was a ninja, too.

He refused to salute. “Goddamn it,
ma’am
, you have no business briefing the battalion commander about my soldiers.”

Major Hale lifted her chin. “That’s where you’re wrong, Captain Teague,” she said quietly. “It’s in my duty description to make sure you’re doing your job.” She tipped her head and smiled sweetly. “And since you didn’t opt to inform your commander that one of your NCOs put one of his children in the hospital last night, I did it for you.”

“He didn’t do it,” Ben said, barely restraining the violent anger in his voice.

“That’s not for you to decide,” she said quietly.

“It’s not for you to decide, either,” Ben spat. He took a step closer, not giving a damn who saw. “You might be down here to clean up the battalion, but don’t get your responsibilities confused with my goddamned job.”

She lifted her chin, refusing to back down. A part of him admired her willingness to go toe to toe with him. “Maybe if you did your job,
Captain,
I wouldn’t have to,” she hissed.

“Captain Teague! Major Hale!”

Ben stiffened as the battalion commander’s voice interrupted the anger throbbing in his temples.

He took a single step backward.

“What the ever-loving hell is going on that I’ve got two officers getting into a pissing contest in front of the troops?” Gilliad pinned Ben with a hard look. “And who the hell do you think you are to talk to one of my majors that way?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Major Hale stiffen and straighten to the position of attention.

Ben did the same, searching for a way out of the hole he’d just dug himself into with his boss.

“We were just having a heated debate, sir,” Major Hale said before he could speak.

“That something wouldn’t happen to be Sarn’t First Class Escoberra, would it?”

Ben stiffened. “Sir, I was coming to brief you on that situation after formation.” Not really a lie, not completely the truth, but Ben wondered if LTC Gilliad could appreciate his desire not to crucify someone he’d bled with.

“I’m already aware of it. Major Hale has told me that you’re doing the required paperwork?”

Ben sucked in a deep breath and barely avoided glancing at Olivia. “Roger, sir. I was going to take care of it this morning, then talk to Child Protective Services and see what direction this was going to go.”

LTC Gilliad nodded sharply. “Next time,
commander
, make sure I hear about these things from you first.”

Ben saluted as the old man turned away. “Roger, sir.” He stood for a moment, letting the realization that she’d covered for him sink in.

He pivoted to face Major Hale, noticing for the first time that her hair framed her face and clung to the side of her neck. Seeing
her
and not the woman in the uniform. He opened his mouth to speak but she cut him off.

“Do your job, Captain Teague, so that I can do mine,” she said quietly. She left before he could say anything else.

He watched her go, breathing deeply as his heart rate slowed to something approaching normal. She’d held her ground against the worst of his temper. Ben almost smiled. That was something most grown men wouldn’t do.

She lifted her arms, retying her hair into some twisted mass at the base of her neck to keep it from falling out of regulations. He caught himself wondering how long it was.

He watched her until she was out of sight.

She hadn’t narc’d on him. She didn’t know him from Adam but she had just covered for him. People didn’t just do things like that, not out of the blue.

So why had she?

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 haunted look in his 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.”

“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.”

Ben 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 tipped her chin at him.

“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.” Ben’s 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 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 and 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.”