Holly knocked on the door of Captain Emily Lindberg's office and remembered instantly why she liked the younger captain, despite the fact that she was a doctor and doctors usually made terrible officers. They’d met at a finance briefing at the Copeland Center that had gone horribly wrong, and then bonded over bad coffee while waiting in an endless line. There was a passion in Emily that was hard to miss—she genuinely cared about the soldiers she treated.

Holly had seen her again only briefly while she’d been in-processing, but Emily had given Holly her card and said if she needed anything from the psych department to look her up.

“Guess you weren’t really thinking I’d call in that if-you–need-anything card so soon, did you, ma’am?” Holly said by way of greeting.

Emily grinned. “Come in, First Sergeant. Nice to see you again. I take it you survived your finance briefing?”

“Barely,” she said. “Almost waved the white flag and let them keep my leave days from my last tour in Iraq.”

“What brings you in?”

“Deep dark trauma and personal turmoil,” Holly said dryly. “Not mine, of course.”

“Of course.” Emily grinned.

It felt good to bullshit with the doc. Someone who didn’t take her sarcasm as a pathological personality defect. Like a certain other captain she knew.

“No, seriously. I’ve got a sergeant I’d like you to see. She’s apparently on Probation—that we just found out about, mind you—and she’s admitted to me that she’d been involved in a domestic abuse situation until very recently. I know there’s the whole patient confidentiality stuff but if you can at least let us know what you think the true assessment of the situation is?”

“Sure thing. What do you think?”

Holly shook her head. “I’m not going to poison the well, if that’s okay. I’ve talked to her before and I honestly can’t tell if she’s bullshitting me or if things are just seriously crazy. That’s where you come in. I need you to help me cut through the bullshit.”

Emily nodded. “I’ll shoot you a note later today after I meet with her.”

“Thanks,” Holly said as she stood.

“You got lucky. I just happen to have a cancellation that the front desk hadn’t filled yet.”

Holly headed back across post to the company ops and stepped into the middle of chaos.

Which was apparently how everything in this battalion ran.

MANAGEMENT BY CHAOS. She needed to get a coffee cup made with that saying on it.

Freeman and Pizarro were currently being kept apart by the executive officer and her company commander.

Freeman looked like she was ready to draw blood, although evidently she already had. Pizarro had a trail of blood leaking out of the corner of his mouth.

“Y’all have two seconds to explain to me what’s going on before I call the MPs and let them drag your sorry asses to jail,” Holly said. “You,” she said to Freeman. “Over there. You, over there.”

“Firs’ Sarn’t—”

“Not one goddamned word, Sarn’t Pizarro. Not one,” Holly snapped.

She looked at her executive officer. “Go get Captain Bello. Tell him we’ve got a situation over here.”

“Why aren’t you at your appointment?” Holly said to Freeman.

“What appointment?”

Holly narrowed her eyes. Oh, now wasn’t this interesting. The weepy, innocent girl from the barracks was gone in the flash of those two words. Then, just as quickly, the feigned innocence was back.

“I mean, I’m sorry, Firs’ Sarn’t. I wasn’t aware of an appointment.”

Holly studied Sergeant Freeman and her transformation carefully for a moment. She looked contrite. She sounded contrite. So what was off? It was the flash she’d seen a moment before when Sarn’t Freeman had responded without thinking and hadn’t had her carefully placed shields up.

Holly turned to her commander. “Ma’am, I need an LT to escort Sergeant Freeman to the hospital. She’s getting a direct order to report to the doctor. And if she decides to disobey it, we can add it to her counseling packet for the Article Fifteen we’re getting ready to start processing.”

Sergeant Freeman looked like she was about to argue but the door to the company ops opened and Sal stalked in, his first sergeant close on his heels.

“Perfect timing, gentlemen.”

* * *

Sal’s heart slammed against his ribs the moment he saw Holly once again squared up with Sarn’t Pizarro. She stood in the center of her ops, controlling the situation like the warrior she was.

Still, it took a moment for him to realize that she was safe. Unhurt.

He was mildly surprised that Pizarro was actually listening to her but there he was, standing by the conference room table, bleeding silently.

“What happened?”

“From what I can gather, Sarn’t Freeman decked him,” Holly said.

Delgado raised both eyebrows. “You got your ass whipped by a little girl?”

Pizarro flushed and wisely said nothing. Holly bristled but Sal spoke before she could. “I don’t think that’s really the issue at hand, First Sergeant,” Sal said mildly.

“Get your ass back to the company,” Delgado said.

Sal watched the exchange. The way Pizarro straightened when Delgado spoke to him. The way his chin lifted and his shoulders went back.

This was more than the power of a first sergeant to direct his men. It was something else that gave Delgado this kind of power over Pizarro.

“Hold up, Top,” Sal said to his first sergeant, then turned to Pizzaro. “Why did she hit you?”

Pizarro lifted his chin and said nothing. Sal raised both eyebrows. “That’s the way you want to play this? Okay, fine.” He pulled out his cell phone and dialed the MPs. “I’ve got an NCO here who just assaulted another soldier. I need an MP unit down here to take him into custody.”

Delgado grabbed his wrist. “What the hell are you doing, sir?”

“Calling the MPs.”

“He was the one assaulted,” Delgado snapped.

“You didn’t see the black eye that Freeman had camouflaged,” Sal said. Holly looked up sharply at his comment but said nothing. “If she hit him, I strongly suspect it’s because he hit her first.”

“I’ll deal with this, sir,” Delgado said.

“Not this time, Top. This has gone too far.” Sal felt Holly’s eyes on him, felt the weight of her unspoken expectations settle around his shoulders.

“If he gets a domestic violence conviction, we can’t take him downrange because of the Lautenberg Amendment. You realize what you’re doing, sir?”

Sal looked pointedly at his wrist, where Delgado still restrained him. For a moment, he thought Delgado was going to swing on him. Then, he released Sal’s wrist and took a step backward.

“Your mind is made up on this?” Delgado asked sharply.

“This is not what we are, Top. We’re supposed to be the good guys. Good guys don’t punch women in the face.”

Delgado shook his head. “We’re warriors, sir. We train our men to kill bad guys then we get our panties twisted when they bring some of that home with them?”

Sal swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. “I can look beyond a lot of things, First Sergeant. I can’t look past this.”

Delgado swore violently. “Of all the politically correct horseshit, this one tops them all. Our boys are heading downrange in a few months. Pizarro knows the fight, knows how to handle them and you’re going to call the goddamned cops on him because he knuckled a fucking whore?”

Something inside Sal snapped. “Don’t, First Sergeant," he said softly. “Don’t justify his actions to me by attacking her.”

He slipped his hands into his pockets and found the lighter. Found comfort in what it meant to him. Helping him in that moment hold on to what he believed himself to be. And what he refused to become.

Because he wanted nothing more than to slam Delgado into the wall and drive those words from his mouth.

“Fuck this shit.” Delgado stormed out, slamming the door to the ops so hard the glass might have actually cracked.

Sal closed his eyes and counted to ten. Then one hundred. Heard Holly clearing people out of the ops to wait for the MPs in the back of the company headquarters.

Then he felt it. A soft, strong hand on his chest. He looked down and found Holly in his space. He was suddenly, painfully aware that they were alone and he had the sneaking suspicion that she’d arranged it that way.

He braced for some smart-ass remark. Almost welcomed it because at that moment, he needed a distraction.

“It sucks having to be the adult sometimes.” She was close, close enough that he could see the faint flecks of blue in her dark green eyes.

He made a noise, unable to speak just yet. Finally he lifted his hand, covering hers where it rested over his heart. “I think I may have just fucked things up with my first sergeant.”

“Probably.” Holly nodded. “For what it’s worth, I think it took a hell of a lot of courage to do what you just did.”

“What, call the cops on one of my NCOs?” Her hand was warm beneath his touch, a source of strength when he thought he might fall.

“No. Make the choice between what Pizarro brings to your company versus what he did to Sarn’t Freeman.” She paused. “Most men wouldn’t have noticed the makeup. Why did you?”

His other hand tightened on the lighter in his pocket. Reminded him of what he was. And what he wasn’t. “My stepmom thought she was better at hiding the bruises than she was.”

He watched a thousand emotions flicker over her face with that one admission.

“That kind of stuff stays with you,” she said softly.

“Yeah.”

They stood there for a long moment, silence wrapped around them. He wanted more. Wanted to pull her close and just lean on her for a moment. To absorb the strength and confidence that came from knowing who she was and what she was doing.

But he didn’t move.

Because that would involve sacrificing everything he’d built his life on and betraying it for how he was starting to feel about the woman who stood before him.

The lighter was cold in his hand now. It offered nothing. No way to navigate through this. No guidepost for figuring out how to choose between the men he led and the war he fought.

Instead, he stood with Holly. A beacon of clarity that made him want more than what the Army offered him, for the first time in his entire adult life.