All for You (27 page)

But he hadn’t.

And as time had ticked by and he’d refused to sign the papers and let her go, she’d moved beyond regret. Now, she wanted to move on with her life. Maybe someday she’d be able to think of Trent without the hurt and frustration that kept reminding her of everything she’d lost.

“You have to pay us each a quarter,” Ethan said, stroking the fat orange hamster in his hands. Laura was seriously thinking about buying a cat—that would solve the hamster problem quickly enough. But it would be just one more thing to clean up after.

And she wasn’t really up for the childhood trauma of finding a dead hamster under the bed.

She could only imagine the therapy bills.

She pursed her lips and counted to ten…thousand. “Okay guys, why don’t you go play in the garage or something? Mommy has too many parts in here, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Or move anything. But she didn’t say that out loud, because that would only encourage them to run off with some vital component that it would take her three days to identify and two more days to find online and order. A new dishwasher was not in the budget at the moment. Besides, she wanted to see if she could actually fix the thing herself.

She shoed the kids and their accompanying hamsters out of the kitchen and made her way through the master bedroom to the cache of Band-Aids she hid in her bathroom. The kids were all too eager to use every bandage in the house if she let them, which always meant that she couldn’t find a Band-Aid when she really needed one. She’d resorted to hiding them like they were some kind of precious commodity. In her house, they were.

Laura pulled down the shoebox that held the first aid kit. She held her breath as she cleaned the cuts on her knuckles with iodine, then wrapped gauze halfway down her fingers, covering the empty space where her wedding rings had once been.

She paused, staring at her ring finger. Blood pooled on the pale band of skin there, as if her finger refused to forget the rings that had been there since forever.

Her finger might not forget the rings but that didn’t mean it was a marriage worth waiting for. No amount of waiting or wishful thinking was going to change that. Trent had seen to that. And broken her heart all over again.

She knew in her heart that they were finished. He had lied to her so many times about his deployments. That alone had destroyed her trust in him. And then there was the rest of it…

She was ready for the pain to stop. Ready for her heart to stop waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting, so desperately for her heart to stop beating for a man who was never coming home.

A spike of melancholy pressed on her lungs. Damn it, what was wrong with her today? She was past mourning the death of her marriage. At least she kept telling herself that. So when was it going to stop hurting?

She briefly considered a shot of vodka to numb the pain, but that wasn’t really a good idea since she was alone with the kids. She barely ever had a drink these days. She sighed and glanced wistfully at the discreet box on the top shelf in the bathroom closet. Droughts were not limited to alcohol.

She had gotten used to it, this new normal. While the kids were vibrant chaos, full of life and joy, the married part of her life was…well, it simply was. There was nothing there anymore. No joy. No hatred. Just silence and cold detachment overlying a dull aching sadness.

She simply wanted it to be over. And damn Trent to hell for dragging it out when he wasn’t even willing to fight for them. And the silence between them? Between her and the man she’d thought she’d love for the rest of her life?

She sat on the edge of their bed, one finger rubbing absently over the bruised knuckles and her empty ring finger. She could hear the kids shrieking in the garage. One of the hamsters had gotten away. She smiled. She really didn’t mind them, not when the kids loved the judgmental little beasts so much. It was a gesture of kindness from a man who couldn’t be a father. She knew that.

It didn’t make it hurt any less. She’d married him knowing what she was getting into, thinking her love for him was strong enough to withstand whatever the army could throw at them. Knowing that the army was a demanding job, that he’d be gone a lot. But that first deployment had done something to him, something deeper than just the visible scars on his body.

Once she never would have thought the silence would grow too loud or that his empty side of the bed would become too heavy to bear. Once she would have waited forever for him to come home to her.

But forever was a long time.

And her faith in their love had died long ago on some distant battlefield.

Northern Baghdad,

FOB War Eagle 2005

I
s this hell? Because it feels like hell.” Lieutenant Ben Teague swiped his sleeve across his forehead and accomplished absolutely nothing. Sweat still dripped steadily down his forehead as he walked the perimeter of their tiny combat outpost with his platoon sergeant.

“Don’t start complaining about the air conditioner again.” Next to him, SFC Escoberra scowled at him.

Ben smirked and patted Sarn’t Escoberra on his shoulder. It was so easy to get his platoon sergeant irritated. “I was not going to mention the AC. What makes you think I’d do such a thing?”

“Fuck off, LT.” Escoberra looked down the alley toward the city that hated them. It was a shit position, as shit positions went. Nothing quite like being alone and unafraid on the battlefield.

“Easy there, big fella. Didn’t meant to get your PTSD all riled up.”

Escoberra snarled and Ben grinned. “You’re in a lovely mood. Don’t tell me you’re cranky about this lovely little mission, too?”

“Don’t start, LT.”

“What? We can barely defend our position, we don’t have enough ammo, and we’re not serving any purpose other than to hold some piece of rock down. The commander can’t even give me a good reason for us to be out here.”

Beside him, Escoberra sighed heavily and lifted his weapon, checking the field of fire. “LT, you need to quit pissing and moaning about this. The men are going to hear you.”

Ben sobered and snapped his mouth closed. His platoon sergeant was right. It wasn’t good to let the boys hear the leadership arguing about the mission. “Let’s change the subject to something less depressing. How’s the family?”

Escoberra eyes crackled at the edges. “My wife seems to think our thirteen-year-old daughter needs a personal trainer.”

Ben coughed, trying to hide a laugh. “Yeah, ’cause that’s all you need is to think about your thirteen-year-old daughter getting smoking hot while you’re deployed.”

“Not funny. I’m not ready for her to grow up yet and she’d not even mine,” Escoberra said quietly. “I love that little kid. I swear to God, if some raging hard-on hurts her…”

“No boy is going to dare come around with you there.”

“That’s the problem. I’m not there,” Escoberra said.

Ben adjusted the strap on his weapon. Inspecting the concertina wire. “Does her dad ever come into the picture?”

“Nah. He’s out of the picture. I’m not complaining, though. She might not be mine by blood but she’s family by every other way that matters.” Escoberra glanced down the road. “And speaking of the commander, guess who’s coming to the family dinner for a site visit later tonight?”

Ben dropped his head onto the sandbag in front of him. “I don’t want to deal with the fucking commander. I’d rather deal with my mother.”

Escoberra snorted. “What’s wrong with your mother now?”

“She called the battalion commander and tried to get me moved to go take an executive officer job. Fuck that, man. I don’t want to count pens and toilet paper.” Ben wiped his gloved hand over his forehead, looking out over the edge of the barrier on the roof. Their single building stronghold wasn’t exactly an impenetrable fortress, but at least it provided a nice view of the city. When things were getting blown all to hell around them.

“She’s just trying to look out for your career.”

“My mom needs to worry about her part of the war and let me worry about mine.” Grit scraped over his skin. “Fuck, man, moms are supposed to bake cookies and kiss your boo-boo when it hurts. Mine eats napalm and pisses razor wire.”

“You never struck me as the kind of guy who had mommy issues,” Escoberra said.

“Screw you, man. I don’t. I was just saying I’d rather deal with her than the commander. The commander is a pain in my ass.” Ben spat into the dirt, not actually wanting to delve into talking about his mother. “We need to get ready to head out on patrol. Maybe I can avoid the commander if I’m too busy getting shot at.”

“Play nice, LT. I’m tired of the first sergeant running a wire brush over my ass because of you constantly fighting with the commander. You’re a lieutenant, he’s your boss. You don’t get to tell him how you really feel about things,” Escoberra said. His words were mild but beneath the calm was a temper. Ben knew firsthand and, as much as he liked screwing with Escoberra, he also knew his limits.

He wasn’t entirely sure that Escoberra wouldn’t take his head off if given the right provocation. “Think of it as an exfoliation treatment,” Ben said after a while.

After an impossible silence, Escoberra finally glanced at him, then looked back out over the endless, dusty city. It was too quiet out there. “The sun is getting to you. You should drink water.”

Ben bit his bottom lip where it had split sometime in their last firefight. It split open again with the movement and he tasted warm, coppery blood. “It’s a hundred and twenty-six degrees. Of course the sun is getting to me.” He adjusted his body armor, itching to go out on patrol and
do
something. “Tell me again why we’re hanging out here?”

“Waiting for the bad guys to drive right by.” Escoberra pointed at a white pickup that zipped by the end of the road, then stopped. Two faces peered out at them.

Ben’s stomach flipped beneath his ribs. His heart started racing in his chest. “You’re really fucking scary sometimes with that warrior intuition shit you’ve got going on.”

Escoberra palmed the buttstock of his weapon. “Call it in. Get air support en route. This could get ugly.”

But Ben didn’t get the chance. A brilliant flash of heat seared across his skin a split second before the boom knocked him on his ass.

And then all hell broke loose.

Fort Hood, 2009

Four years later

C
aptain Ben Teague prayed to the caffeine gods and waited for the espresso machine to dispense the morning sacrifice. He’d never really considered why an infantry battalion had an espresso machine in the middle of the battalion operations office, but right then he wanted to kiss the man who’d had the foresight to buy it and keep it well stocked with beans.

Somehow, he didn’t think that Sergeant Major Cox would appreciate the gesture.

It was four thirty in the morning on a Monday and someone had the good idea to call an alert. Which meant that instead of getting to sleep like a normal person, Ben and everyone else in this clusterfuck of a battalion had dragged their carcasses on post at the ass crack of dawn.

Ben was liable to stab someone if he didn’t get coffee stat.

Funny, he’d actually thought he was going to finally get some sleep. He’d slept like shit last night—as usual—and damn it, he was getting caffeine before the morning briefing.

He kicked his New Kids on the Block trucker hat higher up on his head and counted to ten while the espresso machine ground the beans, then dispensed the precious liquid.

The warning light flashed red and the steady stream of espresso dripped to a halt. Ben wanted to cry.

“It needs water, sir.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious.” Ben shot Sergeant Dean Foster a baleful look, then jerked his thumb toward the espresso machine, saying nothing further. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with Foster’s smart-ass comments this morning. Not when Ben’s sense of irony was still hungover from the night before.

“Did someone wake up on the wrong side of the bed?” Foster asked, taking the lid off the reservoir. “Do you need a hug?”

“No jokes before caffeine. Off with you, minion.” Ben narrowed his eyes then waved his hands. “Now to figure out why the hell we’re here at this ungodly hour,” he muttered.

Not that it mattered. Ben had long ago given up trying to change things. And to think, once upon a time, he’d thought he could make a difference.

What a miserable joke.

“Teague, I don’t give a flying fuck how much you were abused as a child, if you don’t get that goddamned hat off in my building…”

“Good morning to you, too, sunshine,” Ben said to the battalion sergeant major. Any day he could get the sergeant major’s goat was a good day. It was one of life’s few pleasures.

Someday, that would backfire on him. Until then, though…Sarn’t Major Cox was five and a half feet tall and about as wide, and none of it was fat.

“Teague, one of these days…”

“We’ll go take a long hot shower together and you can tell me your childhood traumas?”

Sarn’t Major swung at him but Teague ducked. His hat wasn’t so lucky. Cox grabbed it and tore the thin white mesh in half.

“Oh come on!” Ben threw his arms up in disgust. “It took me at least four hours of surfing the Internet to find that hat.”

Cox held up a single finger then balled it into a fist around Ben’s hat. “Get your sorry ass in the conference room. You’ve got a meeting with the boss in twenty minutes.” Cox threw the hat at Ben’s chest. “We’ve got brothers and sisters who died in this uniform. How about you start treating it with some fucking honor,” he growled as he stormed by.

Ben ground his teeth looking down at the rank on his gray uniform. Honor?

Ben knew all about it. It didn’t get you anywhere.

Foster walked back in carefully carrying the water. “Mission accomplished?”

“Yep. Right on target. And I even did it before coffee.” Ben sighed. “What’s going on?”

Foster shrugged. “No clue, but there’s a line of dudes outside the battalion commander’s office right now.”

Ben frowned. “Huh?”

“’Bout fifteen dudes lined up in the hallway,” Foster said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.

“No shit?”

Ben walked out of the office and turned down the hall toward the conference room. Foster wasn’t kidding. Ben couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a line like this outside the boss’s office. There were sergeants and officers from every company in the battalion.

Ben stopped short, his breath caught in his throat. Escoberra stood near the front. His arms were folded at parade rest, his palms resting at the small of his back. He stood solid and unmoving. Ben stood there, frozen. Escoberra shifted. For a moment their eyes locked, and for a the briefest flicker Ben saw the warrior he admired and looked up to when he’d been a scrappy, smart-assed lieutenant. Before he’d failed to defend a man he’d have followed to hell and back again.

Escoberra was a warrior. It was Ben who had changed. Ben who had let the time and the bad memories drive him away from a man who’d been as close to a father figure as Ben could have asked for.

There were shadows in his former platoon sergeant’s eyes now. Deep and dark.

Ben took a deep breath. A single step toward a man he admired and looked up to. Heat crawled up the back of Ben’s neck. He wanted to ask. Wanted to say something to the man who’d saved his ass more times than he could remember.

“Escoberra!” The sergeant major’s voice rang out. Escoberra ground his teeth and looked away before snapping to the position of attention and disappearing into the sergeant major’s office.

It took everything Ben had to stand there while Escoberra walked away. He wanted to ask how the family was. How he was doing since the last deployment.

But Ben let him go. Because to say anything would be to acknowledge that the man in that hallway had changed. Ben didn’t know if it was the war, if it was some fucked-up trauma, but the war had changed him, changed them all.

And Ben no longer knew the man in that hallway. Shame burned on his neck, the weight of his failure heavy around his shoulders.

Ben broke into a wide grin as he walked into the conference room and saw an old familiar face. “Holy shitballs!”

Captain Sean Nichols looked up from his BlackBerry, his dark expression going from guarded to grinning the moment he recognized Ben. “Holy shit, you’re not in jail?”

“Very funny.” Ben gripped his old friend’s hand and pulled him into a one-armed man-hug. “Some things never change. What are you doing here?”

“Looking for a job apparently,” Sean said.

Ben frowned. “Huh?”

“Apparently there’s some command positions opening up soon.” Nichols ran his hand over the back of his neck. “I’m supposed to interview today, but apparently there’s some massive shit storm going on.”

“Yeah, I saw that. Where have you been?”

“Iraq, Afghanistan, and back again.” Sean nodded toward the other officers in the room. There was a big dude in one corner who looked like a professional wrestler, talking with one of the first sergeants. “These all your guys?”

“Nope. Never seen any of them before,” Ben said.

The battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Gilliad, walked in, followed by Sarn’t Major Cox and a small brunette major Ben had never seen before. She walked stiff and straight, her hair pulled back sharply from her face. Her sleeve was missing a combat patch. Ben found himself wondering how she had been in the army long enough to be a major but had somehow managed to miss the war.

He didn’t look away as she scanned the room, her eyes cool and appraising.

Ben wasn’t fooled. He’d seen that look far too many times.

She was a woman on a mission. Just what they needed: a lawyer on crusade. Ben didn’t do crusades.

They all snapped to attention as the commander walked to the center of the room.

“Gentlemen, welcome to Death Dealer Battalion. Congratulations; every one of you in this room will take command in less than a month,” Gilliad said.

Silence hung in the heavens for half a moment. No one moved. No one spoke.

Ben breathed in deep and slow, keeping the ragged edge on his emotions. “Uh, sir, I think there’s a mistake.”

Gilliad pinned him with a hard look. Next to him, the woman looked down at her paperwork, shaking her head, disapproval written on her pretty face.

“Teague, I’ll see you in my office.” Gilliad turned back to the other captains. “Bello, you and First Sarn’t Delgado have Diablo Company. Martini, you and First Sarn’t Tellhouse have Assassin Company. Teague, your first sergeant will be here before the week is out. You’re taking Bandit Company. Navarro, you and First Sarn’t Sagarian are taking Headquarters Company. Nichols, you and First Sarn’t Morgan are taking Chaos Company.”

“Sir—”

“Let the commander finish, Captain Teague,” Sarn’t Major Cox said quietly.

Ben ground his teeth and fought the anxiety twisting in his guts.

Gilliad cleared his throat. “Every company command team in this battalion has been relieved of their duties effective immediately. You all are the new team. Major Hale is going to help with transition on the legal side of the house. We have our hands full, gentlemen, and I expect you to clean house and get this unit back to fully mission ready.”

Ben blew out a low whistle. He’d never heard of something like this. Not in his entire life as a military brat or his own career. One commander, maybe two in rapid succession, but an entire battalion worth of leadership fired on the spot?

And Gilliad expected Ben to be one of the new commanders?

Not in this lifetime.

Gilliad continued. “The forward support company leadership is changing out, as well. That new command team will be on the ground shortly.” He glanced over at the small major. “Major Hale has my guidance. Your number-one priority for the next forty-five days is getting rid of the shitbag soldiers running this unit into the ground. I want the druggies gone. I want the dealers and the gangbangers gone. I want the fucking criminals out of my army. Am I clear?”

A murmured
hoah
went through the gathered men.

Ben said nothing.

His lungs had stopped working.

Command.

He didn’t want this. He couldn’t do it.

There had to be a mistake. The boss could find someone else.

He had to.

Because to command, you still had to believe what you did mattered.

And Ben hadn’t believed that in a long, long time.

Major Olivia Hale watched the captain at the edge of the room. His back was stiff and straight and he radiated unspent fury. She wondered at the tired lines beneath his eyes, the hard set of his jaw.

She wondered why he was so furious being told he was taking command. The rest of the men had stiffened with awareness. Excitement. Command was the greatest reward for an officer’s hard work—a chance to lead soldiers and make a difference. Olivia would command in a heartbeat if she could. Successful commanders made their units better places.

So why didn’t this dark and angry captain want the job?

She lifted her chin. Whether or not the angry captain took the job wasn’t her problem. Her job was to help clean up this unit. She’d been personally asked to assist by the division commander—she’d been on his staff many moons ago when she’d been a brand-new shiny lieutenant and she’d loved working for him. He’d been decisive. He’d been a mentor.

She hadn’t been able to say no when he’d asked her to help this battalion.

“Gentlemen, I need time with each of you to go over the current status of your legal situations.” She pointed to the stacks of folders in front of her. “I’ve got each company’s information here. Please take your files and look over them before you come see me.”

Gilliad nodded once in her direction. “Olivia is the best at what she does. We are going to clean this battalion up.”

The angry captain shifted and she saw his nametag. Teague.

“Motherfucker,” he muttered, loud enough for the entire room to hear.

“Teague!” Sarn’t Major Cox exploded, but LTC Gilliad held up his hand.

“In my office. Now, captain.”

Teague shoved off the wall and stalked out of the conference room followed closely by the battalion commander.

She watched him go, her gaze hanging on the man behind such fierce anger at being given a great honor. What kind of man interrupted his battalion commander?

What kind of man was so angry at the thought of being a leader?

She pushed her thoughts away. He was not her problem. She focused on the men in front of her as they stopped by the conference room table.

A tall, lean captain with dark hair and green eyes stopped near the table. “Sean Nichols, ma’am. Do we have any discretion in these cases?”

“What kind of discretion are you talking about, Captain Nichols?”

“In general. Do we get to say this kid did a dumb thing and he deserves a second chance?”

Olivia said nothing for a long moment, knowing there was a difference between the right answer and the legal answer and even the army answer. “That’s going to be a conversation between you and the battalion commander.”

The tall captain nodded once and left, and after another moment Olivia was alone in the conference room with the sergeant major.

She didn’t quite know what to think of Sergeant Major Cox. He was her height but stocky, and he looked mean as hell. She definitely wasn’t used to his kind outside of the hospital headquarters where she’d used to work.

“Things are going to get rough around here, ma’am,” he said after a long silence. His voice sounded like gravel and rocks.

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean?”

“You start taking away people’s livelihoods and things start getting tense. So while I have no doubt that the new commanders can handle things, just watch yourself around here. Don’t hesitate to let me know if you’re having problems with any soldier.”

“Thank you for the warning,” she said, not wanting to alienate the command sergeant major. “I’ve seen the misconduct you have down in this battalion sergeant major. The quantity doesn’t even come close to some of the terrible things I’ve seen.”

“I hope you’re right.” Cox sniffed. “One more thing. You see that?”

He pointed toward a black cowboy hat with gold cord wrapped around the base that he’d carried in with him. “Yes?”

“Get one. You can’t be assigned here without it.”