Gage clenched his jaw as he glared at Major Hardesty, who was doing a pretty damn good job of glaring right back. With a conference room filled with several members of his wing leadership watching, he didn’t need to get into another dick-measuring contest with Steven.

Gage took a calming breath, but that didn’t stop the growl of unhappiness from infiltrating his words. “What do you mean we need to cut our flying hours by half this month?”

Major Hardesty blew out a hard sigh. “We have to do these upgrades on the planes. If we don’t, we’re putting your pilots and each one hundred million dollar airplane in jeopardy. I know you have to fly so many hours a month, but I can guarantee you that whatever operator asshole who will ream your ass over your pilot training will be a whole lot easier to deal with than the publicity and mess when Congress demands to know why we’re ditching planes into the dirt.”

“The upgrade is that serious?”

“Yes. Why do you think they’ve upped the timeline this hard? It’s not rocket science...” Steven stopped talking, closed his eyes for a moment in a grimace, and shook his head with a good-natured, small smile. “Okay, yeah, it is rocket science.”

Snickers filled the room, and some of the tension that had been building between the two of them released.

“Colonel, this is something we have to do.”

Gage could feel the waves of displeasure coming off the ops group commander. “Can we go to twelve-hour shifts until the upgrades get completed?”

Steven shook his head. “About two-thirds of the guys in the shops are already doing that. It’s summer, and the guys have vacation leave scheduled.”

And this is where it really sucked to be the one in charge. “Our first priority has to be the mission. Until the upgrades are finished, all leave for the maintenance troops who are needed for the work is cancelled.”

Steven sputtered. “You can’t do that. My guys are already working ’round the clock and have been dealing with crazy upgrade and TDY deployments schedules this year. You’re going to kill morale. They can’t continue like this.”

“Then get the upgrades completed faster.” Gage stood, ignoring Steven’s growl of frustration as he strode out of the room.

***

AN HOUR LATER, GAGE strode into his office suite at the wing headquarters. Col. Carter waited for him with an unhappy expression on his face.

“What is it?” Gage asked. “Has something happened?”

“Well,” Carter drawled slowly. “It probably depends on who you ask. Anyone over on the maintenance side of the fence probably thinks that yeah, something has happened. Their new wing commander just fucked them up the ass.”

“Oh, good god. It didn’t take long for Major Hardesty to run tattling, did it? You can tell him and the entire maintenance group to sack up. This is the life they signed up for. The Air Force owns them, and the Air Force says the mission comes before personnel.” It sucked, but that was the way it was. Gage had to ride the fine line between doing exactly that and protecting his people. He hoped that this little ultimatum would give them the needed fire under their asses to get the upgrades done faster than they might have otherwise.

And if it meant that he got to dig a little at Major Hardesty, well, that was just a bonus.

Carter frowned. “Is there something else going on between you and Major Hardesty?”

Gage froze. Dammit, he hadn’t realized he’d revealed his dislike for the man. “Why?”

“It sounds like you came down on him pretty hard.”

Gage rolled his eyes. He didn’t realize Steven was so far into the pocket of his group commander. Interesting.

“And before you jump to the wrong conclusion,” Carter continued, “Major Hardesty didn’t say anything about it. This was coming from his flight chief who happened to be there during your discussion.”

Gage blew out a frustrated breath and turned back toward Carter. “Yes, I came down on him hard. Yes, I made a unilateral decision that will probably come back to bite me.” His troops would hate him. “But I got a call from General McNeely this morning.”

Carter’s eyes widened.

Exactly. It wasn’t often that the numbered Air Force commander called to discuss the flying schedule. And it sure as hell wasn’t a good thing. There was nothing like starting the day with a two-star general screaming his head off and blaming Gage for things he hardly even knew about yet. It didn’t matter that Gage had been on the job less than a week. He’d been given his orders.

“We have to get this flying schedule working again, or else.” Or else, all of the commanders—himself, Carter, and Major Hardesty included—would be looking for new careers.

“Okay,” Carter agreed on a deep sigh. “I understand.”

He began to walk off, but Gage stopped him. “Carter, let the commanders know, subtly, that if we see some improvement, we can slacken the leave restrictions, but until then...our hands are tied.”

Carter pressed his lips tightly together, obviously unhappy with the decision.

But that just made him no different than Gage, who hated what he’d had to threaten this morning. And he was man enough to admit that he probably should call Major Hardesty and apologize for coming down so hard on him. It wasn’t Hardesty’s fault that he happened to be dating the woman that Gage had never gotten over.

***

AFTER SPENDING THE morning chatting on and off with Geoff, Felicia felt more than a little paranoid that she had the worst security ever and that she was a prime target for any thug wanting drugs, animals, or free cat food. So instead of spending her afternoon catching up on paperwork like she should be doing, she found herself pushing through the door of the Terravista police station.

Two hours later, she understood how the base had played into her attack. She’d also spent way too much time discussing every single person in her life who may or may not hate her enough to try to hurt her.

As she pulled her truck out of the parking lot, it occurred to her that this trip to the police station hadn’t helped at all. She’d hoped to settle her nerves, but instead, it had done the complete opposite.