Holly stepped out of her ancient SUV at five-oh-one in the morning and felt the chaos swarming around her. It was battalion run day and she had a sneaking suspicion that this one was going to be an especially big pain in the ass.

Something about getting six phone calls at three in the morning because all six of her platoon sergeants couldn’t seem to confirm that they’d reached 100 percent of their troopers for an alert.

An alert called at the end of the duty day yesterday that should have taken an hour to complete had turned into an all-night event.

And that would teach her for calling a test alert at six p.m. on a Thursday.

But it also told her a lot about how they handled some of the basic things a unit was expected to be able to perform, and she now had a starting point to begin making changes.

Captain Reheres walked up and Holly saluted her commander sharply. “You don’t look happy, ma’am.”

“Apparently, Sarn’t Freeman decided to miss formation today.”

Holly closed her eyes and prayed for patience. “Have we checked her apartment?”

“She lives in the barracks and yes, she’s not in her room.” Captain Reheres hooked her thumbs into her road guard belt. “She was arguing with another soldier from Diablo Company last night.” Reheres seemed to physically shrink into herself when she mentioned Diablo Company. Holly frowned, wondering what Reheres’ deal was. She’d have to ask but she wasn’t exactly sure this was the right moment to pick that scab.

Holly looked at her commander. “I have the sneaking suspicion that you want me to deal with Bello,” Holly said quietly.

That was only partially the truth. The rest of it was that Holly wasn’t sure what the hell had gotten into her last night when he’d handed her the range information, and she needed to keep her distance until she figured out what her hormones’ malfunction happened to be.

She liked sex just as much as the next red-blooded American woman but damn, her entire body had stood up and taken notice last night over the slight touch of his skin against hers.

She was no longer nineteen years old. She was going to show some decorum, damn it.

Even if she did want to strip Sal Bello down and see if the shoulders beneath that uniform were as broad as they looked in uniform.

Captain Reheres pressed her lips into a flat line and nodded. “I don’t like talking to him or his first sergeant,” she said.

Holly narrowed her eyes at her company commander. “Are you serious, ma’am?”

“As a heart attack. His first sergeant ripped my face off in front of the battalion commander my second day in the unit. He could be on fire and I wouldn’t throw piss on him.”

Holly stood for a moment, letting her commander’s words sink in. She turned them over, examined them. Nope, it didn’t matter that Reheres was a puppy.

There was no excuse for her avoiding a fellow officer because he yelled at her. She couldn’t have a commander being afraid of another first sergeant. And one that was top in her class at West Point?

Oh, they were going to talk about this. Just not right now. “I’ll go deal with Bello and Delgado, ma’am.” She barely managed to hide the frustration in her voice. Hadn’t Reheres had any conflict management training at West Point?

But it was just after five a.m. Holly wasn’t due to rip into anyone for another sixty minutes at least. Not before first formation, anyway. Traditions and all that.

She was a little bit cranky as she headed across the PT field toward her company guidon but stopped as Diablo’s colors caught her eye. She made her way through the bodies, clad in grey PT uniforms and the obligatory bright yellow PT belts, milling about, waiting for formation. It blew her mind that they needed to have formation before the formation because people couldn’t get their asses where they needed to be on time, but she’d learned a long time ago that was just how things were done in the Army.

She found Bello ripping into his lieutenants. Quietly. She stood back and watched and discovered that Bello was a master in action.

Those were the worst ass chewings. The ones that made you feel like you were two inches tall and a miserable failure.

She watched the magic happen and wished she’d mastered that particular life skill once upon a time. But her bad habits were too ingrained at this point to try and make changes.

“You’re supposed to be officers. Leaders. That means when a soldier calls you, you answer the damn phone.”

One brave—or incredibly stupid—soul dared to interrupt. “Sir, it’s after duty hours. We’re not on call twenty-four-seven.”

Holly raised both eyebrows at the lieutenant’s audacity but held her silence.

Bello didn’t disappoint. “You want to work a nine-to-five job, Burger King is always hiring,” he said softly. “You are leaders of men. If I can’t count on you to take care of our boys back here, how can I count on you downrange?”

The only sign that he was actually significantly more pissed than he was letting on was the vein pulsing in his neck. She wondered why the lieutenants didn’t look more worried and then she realized they simply had no idea what they were looking at.

“This is the one and only time I will have this conversation with you. The next time a soldier tells me he can’t get a hold of someone in his platoon, you will be having a very bad day. Do you understand?”

“Roger, sir,” they said in unison then they saluted and left. Bello took another moment before he turned and faced her. Something dark flickered over his expression before it shuttered closed.

But not before she’d seen it. In that darkness had been something primitive, something she recognized. A thinly veiled want accompanied by the equally strong need to shut it down.

She saluted and he returned it sharply and everything was one hundred percent professional. “They really have no idea how pissed you are at the moment, do they?”

“Sometimes I sit back and wonder if I was ever that innocent and clueless as a lieutenant,” he said after a moment. He fell into step with her as they circled around to the back of the formation. “What can I help you with, First Sergeant?”

“You don’t happen to be missing a soldier today, do you?” she asked.

“That’s where that ass chewing just came from. One of my super troopers just called in saying he was in Austin with one of your soldiers.”

Holly frowned. “Did he happen to say why?”

“No clue. I don’t actually give a shit, either, to be honest.”

“I’ll admit to being curious, to be honest,” Holly said. She shifted, needing something to do with her hands. “Did he say if it was medical?”

“He wouldn’t say.”

“My delinquent happens to be my NCO who is already in trouble from yesterday, so she’s getting an Article Fifteen. What’s the deal with your guy?” she asked.

“I don’t know yet. Baggins doesn’t normally go AWOL. He’s generally a good kid.”

“You have a soldier named Baggins? Isn’t that a hobbit from Lord of the Rings?”

There was a tiny crack at the edge of his mouth. “It’s from our first deployment. He was always asking for breakfast thirty minutes after we’d just eaten.” He shrugged. “His real name is Balboa. I just can never seem to call him that.”

“You’re lucky he hasn’t filed a doggone IG complaint on you.” But he didn’t grin. “So what are you going to do with him?” She raised both eyebrows when he said nothing for too long. “You’re thinking of letting this ride, aren’t you, sir?”

She breathed in deeply. And waited. Until the silence stretched between them like an impassible thing.

“I don’t have all the facts yet,” Bello said softly.

She glanced at her watch. “Give me the five-second version of what you do know so I have time to think about it on the run and help you troubleshoot this one.”

Bello just looked at her. “Baggins has a thing for Freeman. Freeman seems to have a thing for sergeants first class. It’s about as screwed up as it gets but since everyone appears to be consenting adults, there’s really nothing I can do at this point.”

Holly looked toward her formation. She needed to be over there in something like three minutes to call them to attention to salute the flag.

“We need to teach you some creative writing, sir,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Good order and discipline. It’s your catch-all for behavior that doesn’t quite break the rules but is causing enough bullshit in the unit to be detrimental.”

He tipped his chin and frowned slightly. “That’s actually brilliant,” he said after a moment.

“I’ve been doing this a long time, sir.” She shifted again. “You’ve got to make a choice here. The choice you make is going to set conditions for the rest of the time you’re in command.” She hooked her thumbs into the back of her PT shorts. Damn it, why couldn’t she figure out what to do with her hands? “If you let this ride without saying anything to any of the parties involved, you’re telling everyone in your formation that whatever they do, so long as they don’t get caught, it won’t matter.” She breathed out deeply.

“Maybe it doesn’t.” He was looking for a fight in those three words. “Maybe worrying about all this bullshit is distracting from what we’re really supposed to be doing.”

She snorted and realized in that instance why her commander didn’t want to deal with him. “And what’s that, sir?”

“Killing bad guys.”

She looked up at him then. Saw the darkness in his eyes and the rawness there. And for a moment, just a moment, she felt her resolve waver. Maybe Cox was just going to have to deal with this guy on his own. “Sir, if we were waging total war, I’d agree with you. But just like there’s more to command than leading soldiers in combat, there’s more to war than killing bad guys.”

“Maybe that’s half the problem with the whole fucking war,” he said bitterly. “We’re half-assing it when we should be going for a decisive victory.”

“You know, I don’t actually disagree with you,” she said. “But that’s not our decision and that’s certainly not how we’re fighting the current war.” She held up her hands.

Sal ground his teeth and looked like he was about to argue with her. Again.

“Look, sir, you can have a problem with me or not; I don’t really give a rat’s ass. But we’ve got to work together for the next year or so unless one of us gets fired, so I’d just as soon you get over whatever moral objection you’ve got to smartass females and I’ll try to get over your crusty ‘anything that isn’t shooting motherfuckers in the face is a waste of time’ attitude. Deal?”

He didn’t respond. Finally, Holly sighed. “What the hell is it going to take to make you happy, sir?” she finally asked.

“You taking your job more seriously. This isn’t a damn joke.”

She took a single step forward. “Don’t,” she said sharply. “Don’t stand there and tell me I don’t take this job seriously. You don’t know a damn thing about me.”

Arrogant captain thought he could run his unit without a first sergeant. That he was going to tell her what leadership looked like? That it had to be all serious and hardcore and rawr caveman tough.

Screw that.

Considering that Cox was probably going to whip her ass for this little stunt, she figured she should probably stop digging the hole she’d just jumped headfirst into.

First sergeants as a rule did not tend to cuss out their commanders, not even their acting commanders. Not if they wanted to have a job or anything minor like that.

And she most definitely wanted to keep her job.

But not if it meant dealing with Captain Cranky Pants.

But said captain wasn’t, apparently, going to back down. And that annoyed her even more.

“I know all I need to know.” His kept his voice mild, deceptively so.

“Glad to see you’ve got your mind made up,” she said. Her smile could have cracked glass. “Do what you want, sir. It’s your company.” She saluted sharply and didn’t wait for him to return it before jogging off toward her own formation.

And tried to ignore the sick knot in her belly that came with the realization that Cox was wrong. Bello wasn’t an officer who didn’t listen. He was worse. Bello was one of those officers who didn’t give a shit who his boys hurt so long as they were on his team.

She’d judged him wrong. And that sucked because for a moment, a brief moment, she’d thought she’d been dealing with someone who understood the choices they had to make as leaders.

It wasn’t the first time she’d misjudged someone. And it wouldn’t be the last. But that didn’t make any of it easier to swallow.

* * *

Sal didn’t often consider murdering his battalion commander, but after the eighth mile had passed and everyone else on post had long ago hit the showers, and they were still running, he was rethinking his stance on fratricide.

Add in that he was still irritated with First Sergeant Washington for several reasons and he was just having a shit morning run. Which in turn fed into his crap mood.

And why the hell was he irritated by what Washington had said? She wasn’t wrong—not about the war and how their hands were tied in the execution of it. But she’d looked at him in that moment and he’d felt judged. Inadequate. Like he’d failed some test that he hadn’t known he’d been taking.

She’d caught him off guard with the question about Baggins. He honestly didn’t know what he was going to do with the kid. He didn’t generally go around court-martialling people for their first offense and he really didn’t know why Baggins had decided going to Austin had been more important than getting his happy ass to work.

He’d answered honestly and his answer hadn’t been good enough. And good lord did he hate feeling like this. This woman had him all twisted up inside and he barely liked her. She’d gotten under his skin and damn it, that shit needed to end right about now.

A rumble started in the ranks behind him. It started low, a random cheer. Then another. And another. Until the entire formation erupted with a violent excitement that surged forward like a wave.

He glanced over in time to see First Sergeant Washington with her guidon running down the side of the formation.

He let that sink in for a moment. A female first sergeant had just sprinted past a formation of combat arms soldiers after they’d been running for over an hour.

A slow smile spread across his mouth despite his irritation with her. Oh, she was good. Very good.

In one sprint around the formation, she’d basically called every man in there a punk for getting outrun by a woman. The formation picked up the energy from seeing her running with the colors. Cadences were suddenly louder. Men who had fallen out of the run somehow made it back into the formation.

She was devious, that was for damn sure. Nothing like using their fragile male egos to motivate the entire battalion.

When they finished a few minutes later, walking across the abandoned parking lot, the entire formation was sounding off louder than Sal had ever heard them.

He stepped out and looked back at the logistics company behind his own. Their commander was red in the face but she’d hung in there. First Sarn’t Washington was singing cadence at the top of her lungs and the formation echoed it back to her.

“It’s all right, it’s okay,” she sang.

“It’s all right, it’s okay,” came the response.

Sal was more than a little impressed. But then again he always admired strong NCOs, and Washington clearly had been raised in that tradition. Sal was under no illusions that the men were instantly accepting of a female in their formation but it sure as shit helped that she’d just literally run circles around them.

He looked away from the brilliance of Holly’s energy, no longer irritated with her. No, there was something else he saw in her. It was beyond the uniform. Beyond the sarcasm.

It was her strength. Her willingness to sacrifice herself for her team.

Her willingness to tell it to him straight instead of letting him believe his own bullshit.

It had been a long time since anyone other than Sarn’t Major Cox had called him on it.

The formation ground to a halt and the sergeant major took over from the battalion commander. "First sergeants, see me after this."

Sal approached his truck and saw his missing soldier talking to the female that Holly was missing this morning.

“I’m going to tell them,” she was saying. “You can’t get in trouble for this. If you get another Article Fifteen, they can throw you out.”

Baggins shook his head. “My commander won’t do that.”

“You don’t know that. You can’t trust officers. As soon as it comes down to his ass or yours, he’s going to throw you under the bus,” Sarn’t Freeman said.

“You don’t know him. I trust him.”

She scoffed softly. “You’re a damn idiot. Just let me get your sorry ass out of this situation for once.”

What Baggins did next surprised him and Sal was not easily surprised. Baggins took a single step forward and cupped her cheek with one hand. “Trust me,” he said gently. “It’ll be okay.”

She stepped away, swiping at her cheeks. “No it won’t. This is a stupid idea and it’s going to get you hurt.”

“What’s going to get someone hurt?” Sal asked before they could sneak off.

Baggins snapped to the position of attention. Freeman hesitated then followed suit.

Sal returned their salutes but did not put them at ease. He left them standing there at the position of attention.

“Nothing, sir,” Baggins said.

“Nothing, my ass. Why the hell weren’t you in formation this morning?”

Freeman took a step backward and Sal stopped her with a glare. “I don’t think you need to go anywhere just now, sarn’t,” he said to the petite blonde.

She narrowed her eyes and stared at him like she wanted to slap him.

“Sir, I’m not going to answer any questions,” she said.

Baggins looked at her, his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide. But only for a moment; then he snapped his mouth closed.

“Baggins?”

Baggins shook his head, his lips pressed firmly shut.

Sal swore under his breath. “Sarn’t Freeman, report to your commander immediately. As in right now. Do not report to the barracks. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Am I clear?”

“Roger sir.”

She took off as fast as her thin gladiator sandals could carry her.

Sal turned back to Baggins. “Want to tell me what’s going on here?”

Baggins had the decency to flush and look away. “It’s not mine to tell, sir.”

Sal looked at his former gunner. Baggins was skinnier than he’d been downrange. He was clearly worried about Freeman but it was the lack of trust in Baggins’ answer that stung the most.

Sal ground his teeth and breathed deeply, yanking back on his disappointment. “Stand by my office and wait for First Sergeant Delgado.”

Baggins trotted off, leaving Sal alone. He leaned against the hood of his truck for a few minutes, staring at his empty hands. Wishing he had the lighter to keep them busy as his thoughts raced around a track with no answers.

“Look, just because you got beat by a girl in the run today doesn’t mean you have to go all emo and depressed and everything.”

He looked over at the woman whose voice was rapidly becoming familiar. “It wasn’t a race.”

“I noticed you didn’t grab your guidon and follow me there, Mr. Infantry.”

He snorted. She was goading him. Maybe this was her idea of a peace offering. “So you can run. So can most of the formation.”

“Clearly we were in two different formations,” she remarked, “because the half of the formation that was behind me was not actually doing what I would call running. More of a half-assed shuffle while trying not to puke up last night’s hot wings.”

He almost smiled at the visual. “Found your missing shithead, by the way.”

Holly leaned against his truck, bracing one knee on the front tire. “Oh yeah? Did she happen to turn up with your missing shithead?”

“And she got it in one, ladies and gents.” He glanced over at her. “Sent her to stand by your office and wait for your commander.”

“Good call. Well, I hope they have a good story, if nothing else.”

Sal frowned at her. “You’re never serious, are you?”

She lifted one shoulder. “It’s a survival skill. If I took all of this as seriously as you, I probably would have died from a heart attack and given up trying to make a difference a long time ago.”

He studied her silently. “Do you still believe that? That you can make a difference?”

She hesitated. A moment, maybe longer. Then finally she nodded. “With everything that I am.” Quiet words, laced with the force of belief.

He looked at her then, her face flushed from the run, her hair clinging to her neck. “What do you do away from work?” he asked suddenly.

She looked up sharply. “What is this ‘away from work’ you speak of?”

He snorted quietly. “Yeah, I guess that’s fair.”

“I don’t have much by way of hobbies,” she said. “Didn’t actually plan on it that way but it just kind of happened.” She was watching him now and he forgot his previous irritation with her and just took in the way her skin looked. He had the sudden, blinding desire to see if the flush traveled down her neck to the rest of her.

“What are you looking at?” There was an edge of her voice now. A warning, maybe. Or something else.

“You.” A simple, loaded answer.

She smirked. “I figured that out already, smart guy.”

They were alone in the parking lot but that didn’t make what he was about to do any less stupid.

She went still the moment he reached for her. He felt the stillness in her despite his fingers not touching her skin. He suddenly wanted to know what it felt like if she came apart beneath his fingertips.

“What are you doing?”

“Something stupid,” he whispered.

“Again with the obvious,” she murmured. Her voice hitched and it did something to him that he could unnerve her without even touching her.

“Am I crossing the line?” He would stop if she asked him to.

“All kinds of them.” Her voice was thick. Warm, like melted honey.

He curled his fingers next to her face and lowered his hand. “That’s a shame.”

Her chest rose as she sucked in a deep breath, then another one. “I’ve got to go,” she said after a moment.

She turned and started walking away then paused, looking back at him over her shoulder. “You know, if you ever want to start a hobby…”

She left him standing there, his body hard and aching at the possibilities in that single, hanging sentence.

He hadn’t read her wrong. The want was mutual.

What the hell was he supposed to do about it?