Sal sighed as he waited to be buzzed into the psych ward and braced for the inevitable.

He didn’t want to see Baggins in here. Didn’t want to face the reality of what that drug might have done to him.

Sal wasn’t a praying man, not really. He often wished he had the kind of fervent belief others had when it came to certainty that there was a God watching over them. But standing there in the hallway waiting to be buzzed into the mental health ward, he offered up a silent prayer.

I’m not sure if you’re there or not but if you are, please let Baggins be okay.

He rubbed his thumb over the lighter then dropped it into his pocket again. This wasn’t what warriors spent their time doing. This wasn’t preparing men for war.

It was facing what the war had done to them.

The door swung open slowly and Sal stepped into the cold, sterile hallway. There was a female soldier standing in the waiting room, wearing yoga pants and a tank top, sobbing as she tried to console a screaming infant.

Sal tensed, the infant’s screams scraping down his spine like a serrated blade. Emily stuck her head out of an office down the hall and motioned for him to escape the noise. She shut the door behind him and he sank gratefully into one of the chairs in her office.

“Wow, that’s really awful,” Sal said.

“Mom is in here with post-partum depression. We can’t keep the baby on the floor with her and well, things aren’t going well. The baby is colicky, the mom has gotten obsessed with being able to nurse but the baby won’t.” Emily looked at the door. “There’s so much here that people simply don’t want to admit is real.”

Sal pulled the lighter out of his pocket and turned it over in his fingers. “How’s Baggins? Ah, Balboa.”

Emily pulled out a file and turned the page. “He’s okay, honestly. It took a while to get him to completely detox but so far, it looks like he might not have any permanent damage from the drugs. He has admitted to using bath salts but you can’t use that admission against him for any type of punishment.”

“So what does that mean?” He wished Holly was here with him.

“It means we’ve done up a mental health evaluation that says your soldier has had a paranoid episode due to illegal drug use and further military service is likely to aggravate any subsequent effects.” She paused. “In plain English, I’m recommending you separate him from the military.”

I am the meanest motherfucker in the valley. Those words had been his guideposts. His touchstones for determining what the right thing to do was. Train his men for war. Teach them how to maneuver, how to suppress enemy fire. How to come home from the godawfulness that was war.

There were no guideposts now. No way through this the way things stood right now.

Baggins was going home. And Sal was going to send him there.

Part of him was relieved that Baggins wouldn’t have to go downrange again. Wouldn’t have to face the fire of war once more.

But part of him felt like he was betraying the soldier who’d shuttled ammo back and forth when they’d gotten pinned down back on that first tour.

Rationally, he knew this was the thing that needed to happen. But shit, man, Baggins?

“Are you okay?” Emily’s voice penetrated the fog.

He looked up. “Sure. No big deal, right? Soldiers do this kind of stupid shit every day.”

She pressed her lips into a flat line. “It’s okay to be upset by this,” she said quietly.

He stood, dropping the lighter into his pocket. “So I’ll get the file from you and move forward from there?”

“You aren’t going to talk to him?”

Sal sucked in a deep, hard breath. “What am I supposed to say? Sorry you fell in love with the wrong woman, got high and almost jumped off the roof?”

“You could let him know that the chain of command is worried about him.”

Sal closed his eyes for a moment. “I don’t think I can do that,” he said.

There was something cold inside him. Something empty. He tried to summon a memory of Baggins before the war. A memory of the smart-ass kid who refused to keep his damn head down.

But instead, he kept seeing the crying mother at the end of the hall. Hearing the screams of her baby.

He looked down at Emily. “Look, e-mail me when he’s ready to come home. I’ll send someone to check on him and pick him up.”

The small captain didn’t say anything as he left her office.

Sal was halfway down the hall when he saw him.

Baggins stood in the doorway of his room. He wore the shitty gown they gave to kids who didn’t have their own stuff yet. His hair stood out on his head in all directions. The identification bracelet was stark white against the pasty paleness of his skin.

His eyes were red and bloodshot but when he saw Sal, he grinned.

And just like that Sal was transported back. To before he’d stopped sleeping. To before Baggins looked like the shadow of the man standing in front of him.

“You come to spring me out of jail?”

Sal clenched his fists by his sides. A thousand lines ran through his brain as possible responses.

Instead he said nothing.

And walked out the door.

* * *

So long as she stayed busy, Holly was reasonably certain she could keep her shit together. It was generally her plan for dealing with life. She had no idea what would happen when she finally had to take her boots off and pretend to work at a normal job that didn’t involve soldiers and their issues.

And the day was certainly cooperating.

Sergeant Freeman stood at parade rest in her office, her hands at the small of her back, her expression a mixture of blank and belligerent all at once.

Holly had just informed her of the medical board and Sergeant Freeman wasn’t exactly happy with the information. She’d requested to speak with Holly alone.

“What exactly do you want to tell me, Sergeant? And do I need to read you your rights first?”

“First Sergeant, I’m waiving my right to silence.”

Holly lifted both brows and pulled a form out of her files, sliding it across her desk. “If that’s really the case, then you need to fill this out and sign and date. And I need a witness that you’re waiving your rights. Ma’am!”

Captain Reheres stuck her head in the doorway. “Yeah, Top?”

“Need you to witness this. Sarn’t Freeman is about to confess and I need you to witness that she waived her rights without any coercion.” Holly handed the young sergeant a form.

“What are we confessing?” Holly asked after Freeman signed and handed the form back.

“Jason isn’t a druggie.”

“Sorry, but the medics seem to think otherwise. Most normal people don’t dance naked on the roof in their underwear and roll around in broken glass.”

“He got up on the roof to draw attention away from me,” Freeman whispered.

Holly leaned back in the chair and waited.

“I’m in trouble, first sergeant,” Freeman said.

Holly barely managed to refrain from saying no shit.

“I started seeing Sarn’t Pizarro when we were downrange.” She swallowed. “I fell hard for him. He said he was divorced, that he loved me.” A deep, shuddering breath. “When we got home, he wanted to get married right away. I didn’t. When he pressured me, I broke things off with him. And that’s the first time he hit me.”

Holly yanked her patience back. Hard. “I’m sure this is all fascinating but what does this have to do with Balboa?”

“The first time Rafael hit me, I went to Jason.” Holly blinked, then remembered Jason was Balboa/Baggins. “We were friends. He tried to convince me to leave Rafael. But I couldn’t.” She hesitated. “Rafael was threatening to bring the drug dogs though the barracks. When the Corps sergeant major came through, I panicked. Balboa said he’d take care of it for me.” Her bottom lip quivered. “He took care of it.”

“What was ‘it’?”

“Purple Haze. Bath salts.” Freeman swallowed. “I was self-medicating when the medication the clinic gave me ran out. I didn’t want to go to the docs here and have them find out. I had no idea he was going to swallow all of it to keep the dogs from finding it.”

Holly felt a slow kernel of rage building toward the woman in front of her. Rage that she was a crappy friend to a guy who clearly was willing to do anything for her.

Her anger was misdirected. It should have been leveled squarely at the sergeant first class who’d hit her. Who’d driven her to self-medicate.

And it was. At least partially. But there was a kid in the hospital right now because the NCO in front of her had put her own needs above the needs of a good friend.

Holly pulled it back. Remained calm. Slid the sworn statement form across her desk. “Please write down everything that you just told me, Sarn’t Freeman.”

When she was finished, Holly had the commander issue the oath, testifying that the statement was true to the best of her knowledge. Then she walked out of the office and to the headquarters and tried to focus on work. Tried to ignore the twisting painful knowledge in her guts that she’d been wrong about Freeman even as she’d been right.

She picked up the monthly reports and saw she had a copy of Diablo’s monthly flag report.

She skimmed the names, then stopped and read it again.

Flags were administrative actions designed to keep soldiers from getting awards. They also were used when people were under pending investigations by the unit or CID.

Like Sarn’t Pizarro supposedly was.

Except that his name wasn’t on the report.

Sal’s signature was on the bottom.

He’d signed it, knowing damn good and well that Pizarro wasn’t on the report.

He’d lied to her.

The realization that he’d played her for a goddamned fool cut her, deeply. It didn’t make any damn sense. She’d been there the day he’d called the cops on Pizarro. There had to be mistake.

But all she could see was his signature on the bottom of the form.