The range had been running smoothly right up until the point when Holly showed up. Sal knew the moment she set foot on the range complex.

He paused, realizing he’d just thought of her as Holly instead of First Sergeant Washington. When had that happened? When had she stopped being First Sergeant Washington and become someone more…personal? More human. More than the rank on her chest or the uniform she wore to hide her vulnerable parts.

But as he watched her on the range, he realized she was still First Sergeant Washington to his men. And that was a good thing.

Soldiers were all of a sudden preening and pointing and whispering, when they should have been focusing on putting steel on target. Like they’d never seen a female in uniform before. Instead, they were trying to look cool as Holly walked the firing line, quizzing the NCOs about range operations. Sal watched her walk the line from the tower, irritated that her showing up had ground things to a halt. He slipped his hand into his pocket, finding the lighter, warm and smooth beneath his fingertips.

But as he watched her, he realized that it only took a few minutes for the soldiers to pull their heads out of their collective asses.

Then she paused, turning toward the other end of the firing line. He followed where she was looking and saw one of his platoon sergeants teeing off on a soldier.

“Ah shit,” he muttered as she stalked down the firing line toward the confrontation.

By the time he got there, he heard a venom in her voice he’d never heard before.

“I don’t really give a shit what technique you think you’re drilling into him, Sergeant, but screaming at soldiers isn’t exactly the way to inspire self confidence,” she said, not flinching away from the anger and defiance in Pizarro’s eyes.

“I don’t know who the hell you think you’re fooling—”

“First Sergeant,” Sal said from behind her.

Holly stiffened but didn’t turn at the sound of Bello’s voice.

Pizarro inhaled deeply. “Firs’ Sarn’t, Hawkins just can’t shoot. And now she shows up and tells me I have to be nice because it’ll make him shoot better?”

She hooked her hands into the space between her body armor and her shoulders. “Screaming at him is a great way to teach him fundamentals, right?”

“He’s never qualified once in his entire military career!” Pizarro spat.

“Sarn’t P, take a break,” Sal said to the big platoon sergeant.

Holly didn’t acknowledge him as Pizarro stalked off. Instead, she turned to the skinny private. “Get down in the prone,” she directed.

She dropped down next to him and Sal simply stood there and watched, keenly aware that every swinging dick on that range was watching what he did at that exact moment. If he undermined her, she’d be dead in the water for the rest of her time in the battalion, and while she wasn’t on his favorite person list, he wasn’t about to cut her feet out from under her. He wasn’t a complete asshole.

Pizarro would get over his pride being wounded. Maybe.

He watched her as she adjusted Hawkins’ weapon.

“Look, you’re holding your weapon wrong, for starters,” she said. She pulled Hawkins’ arms in tight so that the weapon rested in his palm properly. “Now your finger is wrong. Just the tip goes on the trigger.” She adjusted his grip so that the tip of his finger rested on the trigger. “Pick up a good sight picture and breathe out.”

Hawkins fired three shots before Washington stood up and held up the cease-fire paddle. “Follow me,” she told him.

Hawkins followed like a puppy. Sal didn’t need to hear what he said to see the triumph on his face. Pizarro was going to be pissed but he’d get over it. Especially if it meant Hawkins could now hit the target.

Washington left Hawkins on the firing line and fell into step next to him.

“The next time you feel the need to correct one of my platoon sergeants, I’d prefer you didn’t do it in front of everyone.”

She glanced over at him. “You mean how Pizarro was not correcting Hawkins in front of the entire company? Or how he was screaming at one of my NCOs on the busiest intersection on Fort Hood?”

Sal sucked in a tight breath. “That’s different.”

“No, actually it’s exactly the same. If you want to teach people to shoot, screaming at them is a remarkably bad technique. Like it’s scientifically proven to make people shoot worse.” She paused at the base of the tower. “However, if you want to make people piss themselves, screaming is an excellent starting point.”

“Pizarro is a good platoon sergeant.”

“Next time, you should try telling a lie you actually believe,” she said. “That’s the second time in forty-eight hours I’ve caught him yelling at your soldiers. Is that the kind of organization you run? Management through screaming?”

Sal bristled at the insinuation. “You’re in an armor company, sweetheart. We don’t sit around the campfire and make s’mores.”

“‘Sweetheart’? Don’t be a dick.” She tipped her chin and stared up at him. “There’s a fine line between ‘hoah’ and just being an asshole,” she said quietly. “Pizarro crossed it a long time ago. You give weak men power and bad shit happens.”

Sal ground his teeth in frustration. Part of him hated that she was right. Pizarro might have been a decent platoon sergeant once upon a time, but currently he wasn’t in top form. Sal didn’t know if he wasn’t sleeping or what, but things were not straightening out with him, no matter what Delgado tried to tell him. “I know. I’m trying to give him a chance to unfuck himself.”

She narrowed her eyes, studying him for a moment. She looked out over the firing line. The rising sun glinted off her eye protection and highlighted the smooth arc of her cheek. It was a rare woman who could look attractive in body armor and helmet but somehow, Washington radiated a power and a confidence that appealed to him on a primitive level. She was the epitome of a feminine warrior, a Valkyrie striding into the fight.

“You don’t train soldiers like that, sir,” she said.

“He’s an infantry platoon sergeant. I’m not going to argue with hundreds of years of tradition.”

She paused, long enough that Sal thought about wagering whether it would be sarcasm or anger that came out of her mouth next.

Instead, it was a cutting remark that sliced open an old familiar wound. “Fine.” She hesitated then. “I never took you for a bully, sir. But that’s exactly the kind of unit you’re developing here by allowing him to do that to your soldiers.”

* * *

Holly flipped through the garbage that was Pizarro’s counseling packets, swearing six ways from Sunday that she was going to make a voodoo doll of Sarn’t Major Cox for making her do this.

If it wasn’t for him specifically asking her, though, she’d never put up with this shit. Pizarro stood next to her, where she leaned against the hood of the Humvee, radiating interpersonal hostility. It wasn’t exactly a comfortable position to be in. “Sarn’t Pizarro, not a single one of these counseling statements is signed,” she said mildly. A moment later, she handed the entire file back to him. “You need to have every soldier sign and date their counseling statements.”

Pizarro looked at her like she had a dick coming out of her forehead. “Every one?”

“Well, if you want to get this kid promoted and this kid put out of the Army, then yes, every one,” she said, pointing out two different packets.

His eyes were pinpricks of darkness, even in the bright Fort Hood sun. He was a threat, plain and simple. She made a mental note to check the installation police report. She had a feeling he’d had more than one run-in with the law.

He was pinging all of her warnings.

That made her uncomfortable. And she hated being uncomfortable.

“I’ll talk to my first sergeant about this,” he said, and there was thinly veiled violence in his words.

“You do that.” She wanted to get away from him. He made her skin crawl with an old familiar fear, one she didn’t feel like unpacking at the moment.

He turned to go, hesitating long enough that her heart started pounding in her throat. Then he was gone, heading back toward the ammo point.

She flipped through the rest of the packets, glad that the other platoon sergeants weren’t as actively hostile as Pizarro.

“So you’re the sarn’t major’s new secretary, eh?”

She stiffened at the ugliness lacing those words. “Well, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to be an asshole.” She turned and pasted on a patently false smile. “Looks like you win the prize, Delgado.”

He shook his head. “I can’t believe they brought you into this unit.”

“I could say the same thing about you,” she said. Her words might as well have been daggers.

Delgado rotated his jaw. “You better watch yourself. This is my formation. These are my men. I don’t give a flying fuck how many hand jobs you gave out to get this job; stay the hell away from my men.”

“You are just the most charming guy, aren’t you?” She straightened. “You’ve got a problem with me, take it up with the sarn’t major. In the meantime, I’m doing my job. Unlike you, if these counseling packets are any indication.”

Delgado glared at her. “Paperwork is for bitches.”

She made a noise like an error button. “Wrong answer, there, First Sergeant. Paperwork is how we get the important shit like, oh, I don't know, new soldiers, beans, bullets, and bandages. Stuff like that. Stuff your company commander shouldn’t be handing me on a sticky note because his first sergeant is too busy fucking off to do his job.”

“Listen you little—”

“First Sergeant!”

Holly couldn’t say when the exact moment that relief crawled over her skin was but Bello’s timing couldn’t have been any more perfect.

Granted, he was not an ally, not by a long shot, but he broke the flow that Delgado had been in. A flow that would have likely ended up with Holly in the hospital with a broken jaw.

“Sir.” Holly straightened but didn’t salute.

“What seems to be the problem?” he asked.

Holly glanced at Delgado, who was daring her to rat him out. She smiled sweetly. “Nothing drastic. Just discussing leadership challenges with your first sergeant.”

Bello’s expression said he didn’t buy it, not for a second, but he didn’t push and for that, she was grateful. The fine line she was walking was dangerously close to leading her off a cliff. “Top, we’ve got a small problem on the range. Can you go see what Hawkins’ problem is?”

“Roger sir.”

When Delgado was out of earshot, Bello turned to her. “You okay?”

She frowned, instantly suspicious of the question. “Not sure where that question or the underlying concern actually just came from. Did you hit your head?”

Bello sighed. “Look, I know my first sergeant. He can be a little sandpapery.”

“A little?”

“Fifty grit at least,” he admitted.

She tipped her chin. “Careful now. I might start thinking you’re making jokes.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Look, I know the sergeant major asked you to run down these packets. So thanks for pushing the issue.”

“All right, that does it. Who are you and what have you done with Captain Cranky Pants?"

Bello made a noise that was somewhere between a growl and a snarl. “Never mind, First Sergeant. Let’s just leave the status quo just like it is.”

He stalked back toward the range, his spine stiff, the muscles in his neck bunched tight.

She watched him go, unsure of where that awkward peace offering had come from and why she’d stuck to her old familiar pattern of screwing things up.