It wasn’t often that Holly felt completely out of her league. She’d been an NCO for so long that she sometimes forgot her own name.

But as Sergeant Freeman left to stand outside her office at parade rest, Holly was at a loss.

Captain Reheres nudged the door closed behind her and sat down across from Holly. “So what do we do, First Sergeant?"

Holly kicked her feet up on the desk and rocked back in her chair. “I honestly have no idea, ma’am. I’ve seen a lot of crazy in my day but this doesn’t make any damn sense.” She motioned toward the door. “Technically, she wasn’t even AWOL. She wasn’t gone for twenty-four hours. For all intents and purposes, she missed first formation. I have my doubts that Sarn’t Major is going to let us give her an Article Fifteen for this.”

“So we’ve got an NCO who is basically doing what she wants and we can’t do anything?” Captain Reheres didn’t bother to mask the frustration in her voice.

“Oh, I didn’t say that, ma’am,” Holly said with a grin. “I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on first.”

Reheres frowned. “What do you mean?”

“We’ve got plenty to start building her packet with. Last night, she’s getting into a very public pissing contest with Sarn’t Pizarro from Diablo Company. Today, she misses formation with Private Balboa, also from Diablo Company. Noticing the pattern?”

“So Diablo Company has NCOs that are leading her into poor decision making?”

Holly shook her head. “Oh hell no, ma’am. She’s not some helpless victim here. She’s perfectly aware of the decisions she’s making. She looks like she wants to stab me in the throat every time she’s in my office and I haven’t even been here a week yet.”

“Nice visual.” Reheres grimaced. “Again: what are we doing here?”

“We’re going to give her an Article Fifteen. It may just take some finagling with the boss to make it happen. I’ll go talk to the sergeant major and have him prep the boss. We need to get this shit cut off at the knees right now. Have you got the paperwork for a no-contact order?”

“I’ve got it saved to my desktop. Who am I keeping her away from? The entire Diablo formation?”

“Ha,” Holly said. “Not likely. At this point, she needs to be restricted to the barracks and forbidden from contacting Balboa or Pizarro. Let’s see if she’s willing to follow orders or if she opts to self-select out of the Army.”

Reheres sighed. “Have I mentioned yet how glad I am to have a first sergeant?”

Holly smiled flatly. “Don’t start thanking me yet. There’s a good chance we could get shot out of this whole deal.”

Reheres stiffened. “Huh?”

“Never mind,” Holly said, instantly regretting her words. Her suspicions were just that—suspicions. She didn’t need to get anyone stirred up until she had more than a hunch to go on. But she had a feeling that Pizarro was more violent than anyone was tracking. Call it her finely tuned spidey senses but that guy was no stranger to interpersonal hostility or actual violence. And not the kind of violence that was only directed at the enemy, either. “I’m going to talk to the sarn’t major. Have the XO in the room when you give her the no contact order.”

“Roger that,” Reheres said.

Holly grabbed her headgear and headed for the door, but was damn near bowled over by First Sergeant Delgado.

“I need to talk to you and your commander.”

She glanced at her commander, who was looking at Delgado like he was the head of an invading army. Oh this shit had to cease. “Come on in,” she said dryly. She stepped back and he closed the door behind him.

“Your Sergeant Freeman is apparently stringing along both Pizarro and Baggins,” Delgado said.

Holly braced her hips against her desk, watching the other first sergeant carefully. His tone was…sandpapery at best. “Well isn’t that a lovely little dead bird to drop into the middle of the office like it’s some kind of prize. Did you kill it yourself?”

Delgado shook his head and mirrored her stance, ignoring Captain Reheres completely. “I’m not amused, First Sergeant.”

“Neither am I,” she said. “You come in here like you own the place, scare the piss out of my commander, and then act like we’re supposed to fall all over ourselves at your genius pronouncement. So unless you’ve got proof that our NCO is sleeping with either of your men—and oh by the way, nothing you’ve said is much beyond contrary to good order and discipline—then get the hell out of my office and take your shitty attitude with you.”

Delgado’s mouth actually dropped open. For a moment he looked stunned, then his expression shifted back to full asshole. “So you’re not going to do anything?”

“Nothing much to do at this point, First Sarn’t,” Holly said.

Delgado turned to Captain Reheres. “You need to get your NCOs in line,” he snapped. “They’re distracting my men from preparing for their deployment. I don’t need them fighting over the females.”

Holly tapped her finger to her top lip. “See, here’s the problem with your logic, First Sergeant. You seem to forget that your men should be perfectly capable of restraining themselves. If they’re walking hard-ons, it’s because they choose not to be fucking responsible for their own actions. Don’t blame the females for your men’s inability to control their dicks.”

She was reasonably certain there was smoke coming out of Delgado’s ears. Good. The fucker.

“If your females weren’t cockteases, we wouldn’t have this problem.”

Holly bristled but kept her voice level. Screaming at this mouth breathing Neanderthal wasn’t going to accomplish a damn thing. “You’re right. Your men would be doing this with civilian women who we could ignore, right? But because they’re doing all this chest beating macho bullshit with another soldier, we’ve actually got to deal with it, don’t we?”

“Don’t give me any of that feminist bullshit. Keep your NCOs under control,” Delgado snapped.

“Sure. I’ll just go sign for some burkhas while we’re at it. Do you think they have them at CIF? I can get that along with their body armor?” Any chance of a working relationship with Delgado was about to be burned to the ground and she was too pissed off to care. “Go fuck yourself, First Sergeant. Get the hell out of my ops office.”

Delgado looked like he wanted to snap. “All this feel good female bullshit is going to get my men killed.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

He slammed the door behind him and Holly didn’t miss Reheres jumping damn near out of her skin. Holly looked at her commander and let just a hint of her irritation show. “You are going to have to get over this scared of the big bad infantry guy bullshit, ma’am. They eat their young out here and you’re about to be on the menu.”

Reheres swallowed and sat up straight. “I can’t believe you just went at it with him.”

“What’s he going to do? Punch me? He’s just a bunch of hot air. Unfortunately, he’s got influence over a whole formation of soldiers who will take his hot air to heart.”

“So what are we going to do?” Reheres asked.

“We’re going to give Freeman a no-contact order and I’m going to talk to Captain Bello about his first sergeant. After I talk to the sergeant major.” She grabbed her patrol cap and headed for the door, needing some space at the moment to put some emotions back in the box where they belonged. Because they damn sure didn’t belong out in the open where they could be seen and used against her later.

“How are you not afraid of them?”

Holly paused near the door, hating the uncertainty she heard in her commander’s voice. It was the fear of the inexperienced. “Once you’ve had your two front teeth knocked out, you tend to lose the fear of it happening again.”

Holly left before her commander asked any more questions that brought her closer to a bound and terrible memory at the bottom of the abyss that was her past.

* * *

“You don’t have a foot to stand on, kid.”

Holly sighed and sank into the old couch in Cox’s office. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“There’s not a single counseling statement in Freeman’s file. Nothing. If we give her the Article Fifteen, you can bet your ass that some barracks lawyer is going to tell her to appeal. And when the brigade sergeant major sees that there isn’t a single counseling statement other than her failure to report? Yeah, she’s getting her rank back.” He slid the nearly empty folder across his desk to her.

“So what do I do?”

“You build the packet. You make sure you counsel every Tom, Dick and Harry in your formation. Set the standards. Let them know what the expectations are. Then when they screw up, you can nail their asses dead to rights.”

Holly ran her tongue over her teeth. “Sarn’t Freeman is trouble. I just can’t figure out what kind,” she said.

Cox leaned forward. “Your instincts are pretty solid. Get me something to work with and I’ll support you. Otherwise, I can’t help you.”

She ran her hands over her face. “You weren’t kidding about this place, were you?”

Cox stretched out behind his desk. “Told you. So changing the subject, what’s your take on Diablo Company?”

“The commander or the first sergeant?”

“All of the above,” Cox said.

“Bello has an ego the size of a Mack truck. You were right about him not listening to anyone. The first sergeant…I don’t know. There’s something there but I’ve honestly spent more time arguing with their commander about the range than getting into it with Delgado. But Delgado came over to my company today, yelling about how the females were distracting his men.”

Cox grinned. “Oh and I’m sure you told him where to get bent?”

“With gusto, Sarn’t Major.” Holly grinned then sobered. “Still, I think there’s more to his being a douche bag then him just being a douche bag. My commander won’t be around him or Bello.”

“I noticed that about her,” Cox said. “Work on that with her and I’ll keep an eye on things with Delgado.” Cox chewed on his thoughts a moment. “You don’t think it’s odd that your sergeant is tied into two Diablo Company guys?”

“I think it’s very odd but I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit down and let their company leadership blame it all on the fact that Freeman is a female. It takes two to tango and Pizarro is the senior here.” She rubbed her hands on her thighs and stood up. “Guess I’ll get started on those counseling packets.”

“Have fun. And while you’re at it, I need you to do me a favor.”

She stopped, waiting for him to drop what could only be bad news in her lap.

“Work with the other companies on their legal packets.”

She glared at her mentor. “Is it wrong that I was hoping you’d forget about that?”

“Only because I know you know how to do these things better than any of these guys. I want you mentoring the platoon sergeants on this, Holly.”

She ground her teeth. “You hate me, don’t you.”

“Nope. I just know you’re exceptionally competent and I plan on working the hell out of you.”

She flipped Cox the bird on the way out of the office, knowing he could take the joke. It was good being here with him. Reassuring in a lot of ways. Even if he did keep piling on to her workload.

She walked outside of the battalion headquarters in time to see Bello stalking toward her. “Oh good God, you’re like a goddamned bad penny,” she said as she saluted him.

Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say.

“I hear you and my first sergeant had a disagreement.”

She lifted her chin, unwilling to take any more of his shit. “I didn’t make him cry, did I?”

“No, but he did have some colorful things to say about you.”

“Did you defend my honor?”

He looked at her then and she thought she almost saw a crack at the edge of his mouth. She was starting to take it as a personal affront that she hadn’t made him laugh or even crack a grin yet.

“Well, I at least stopped him from burning a picture of you in effigy, so I guess that’s a start.”

Holly tipped her chin at him. “Did you just make a joke?”

“No.”

Holly grinned. “You really need to relax, sir. Maybe get a flask at work. Take up smoking. Seriously, you’re going to die of a heart attack by the time you’re forty.”

“I think we’ve had this argument,” Bello said.

“We have. Let’s leave it alone for once, shall we?” She paused. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning for the separations packet scrub.”

“What packet scrub?”

“The one sarn’t major scheduled with all of our platoon sergeants to get the legal packets up to speed.”

“We’re going to be on the range tomorrow morning.” Irritation crept back into his voice.

“Not your platoon sergeants,” she said.

“Yes, my platoon sergeants. My lieutenants can’t lead themselves out of a paper bag, let alone lead an operation without their NCOs, and we’ve got limited ammo. I need my NCOs on the range.”

Holly lifted one eyebrow. “Fine. I’ll meet your platoon sergeants at the range and they can back brief me while your lieutenants are running range.”

“Look, I appreciate that you’re just trying to do your job but I don’t have nearly enough time on the range as it is,” he said. “I need them shooting.”

“You also need your soldiers who aren’t deploying off your books so you can get new soldiers in,” she said. “This is the only way to get rid of soldiers who aren’t contributing to the fight. You actually do need to do this.”

He closed his eyes and for a moment his expression was pained. Not the careful mask he kept in place. No, what she saw there was worn down and tired.

And afraid.

Fear was the last thing she thought she’d see on Sal Bello’s face. And instead of pissing her off, it drew her closer, made her want to know more. Made her want to reach out to him and offer to help, to ease the burden of command. Because that’s what good first sergeants did.

Except that it wasn’t a first sergeant type feeling twisting in her gut. It was something warm. Something dark and needy.

Something personal.

“What are you afraid of?” she whispered.

He opened his eyes and looked down at her. And in that moment, she saw the depth of the uncertainty that he hid from everyone.

“Failure.”

There was no smart comeback for that single, loaded word. No smart-ass comment that would ease the tension and move them back into familiar territory.

Because she was far too intimately acquainted with that word and everything it brought with it.

* * *

“I can’t help with the fear,” she said softly after a long silence had dragged on between them. “But I can help you on the range tomorrow.”

He lifted one brow, looking down at the stick of dynamite that was contained in that deceptively small package. “How?”

She grinned. “How about you let me surprise you?”

“I hate surprises.” But he was intrigued at this new side of her. This warmth looking back at him. The warmth that made him want to reach for her and feel her body curl into his.

She grinned and patted his cheek. “You’ll just have to trust me then.”

She walked back toward her ops, leaving him standing there wondering just what she had up her sleeve for tomorrow.

And the want inside him grew, making him wish for something that could never be.