All for You (7 page)

“No you don’t,” he whispered.

Reza narrowed his eyes, searching her face for any hint of deception or ulterior motive. But behind the polished demeanor, he caught a glimpse of a hunger, one that he’d known well once upon a time.

Her need to belong was a palpable thing. He could practically feel it coming off her in waves. And yet, the way she stood in front of him, eager to go out to the field with a bunch of dirty nasty infantrymen…it loosened something inside him. Something he hadn’t realized was bound.

Something that wanted to curl up with her and simply feel her heart beat against his. It shocked him with the strength and power of the urge. For once it overpowered the urge for a drink and it rocked him back on his heels with the force of it.

“Going to the field isn’t going to help you understand us any better.”
Only bleeding in combat would help you understand.
But he kept that thought to himself.

“It’s not like I’m planning on going in Combat Barbie and coming out GI Jane or anything,” she said dryly.

Reza laughed because her words were exactly where his thoughts had been heading. “That’s good.” He straightened, curling his fingers to resist the urge to touch her cheek again. “Look, I’ll do what I can. No promises. But I need your help in return.”

“Sure.”

“I need you to find Sloban’s packet. I’ve been getting the runaround from your office for a week and I need answers.”

She frowned and jotted Sloban’s name down in the little black moleskin notebook. “The name doesn’t sound familiar but I’ve done so many files, I could have missed it. I’ll check the log today.”

“Thank you.”

Her smile was blinding and he wondered if her eyes were lit up like her smile. “This means a lot to me,” she said softly.

His throat tightened. “Remember you said that. Do you have your kit?”

A tiny frown burrowed between her eyes. “Kit?”

Reza took the notebook from her hand and jotted down a phone number. “Call these guys and get your gear issued. I’ll let you know if I can get approval for you to come to the range with us.”

Her smile was blinding. “Okay. I’ll e-mail you as soon as I find Sloban’s packet.”

He leaned back on the bike and let her go, biting the side of his cheek to keep from calling her back. From asking her what she thought she was going to accomplish by going to the field with a bunch of knuckle draggers.

Here was his tight, buttoned-up captain, asking to go to the field to see what he did for a living. This same captain who put one of his soldiers in the hospital because he wasn’t able to go to the field. Wisniak did everything he could to escape training. Emily had just asked for it.

Therein was the difference. He could train someone willing to train. He could build up a kid who was weak. But he couldn’t make a man of character out of someone terrified of his own shadow. Who used the system to malinger and avoid his responsibilities.

So he’d take Emily to the field. Maybe he could understand her need to protect everyone.

Maybe he could understand what it was about her that called to him. That made him lose his mind and want something he could not have.

Because she didn’t understand. Some people couldn’t be saved. It was as simple as that.

He had warriors getting ready to go back downrange. Maybe if he helped Emily understand what they did, she could help someone before someone else got hooked on drugs like Sloban had.

Maybe he could make a difference one more time before he got her out of his system entirely.

He swung one leg over his bike and contemplated trying to make it off post without his proper safety gear. Deciding he’d had his ass chewed enough recently, he pulled his helmet on, idly wondering how he was going to survive being ragged relentlessly by the guys for bringing a female to training and knowing that was just a convenient lie.

He felt something when he was around her. Something he hadn’t felt in forever. Alive. Like there was something filling the dead space inside him.

She touched a part of him he hadn’t realized craved touch and now that it had been awakened, he wanted more.

Craved it more than the need for the alcohol that burned through him.

What the hell was he supposed to do about that?

I
t was quiet. The kind of quiet that felt like a thousand tiny spiders crawling up his spine. The kind of quiet that could only be found in the middle of the night in the heart of the western desert outside of Fallujah. Every so often, a burst of automatic weapons fire would punctuate the dark and then silence would fall again—unnatural, heavy.

The silence of death and dying. Because death surrounded his platoon’s position. They were not where they were supposed to be. There was nothing around them in any direction but darkness edged with the eerie green light from his night vision goggles.

And the radio silence carried with it the whispering seduction of the Reaper whose name they bore. His skin crawled in the darkness. Fear clawed at his belly like a live, crawling thing.

They’d taken a wrong turn. It had taken everything Reza had to keep the platoon sergeant from shooting the lieutenant on the spot.

They argued behind him in hushed tones, their whispers carrying on the midnight wind. Reza stared into the eyepiece of his night vision goggles, watching the desert for motion, keeping busy to deny the fear a foothold. He didn’t want to die today. Not today.

He blinked as the sickly green shadows twisted in front of his eyes. Story’s face melted into view. He blinked. Twice. He had to be seeing things. Story was dead. His lungs squeezed tight. He tried to suck in a breath but his lungs fought him.

Story’s face melted into Wacowski’s And then another. And another. Until the faces of his friends blended into a writhing mass of green light.

Sloban laughed in his face. Reza jerked, his lungs locking up, his throat not cooperating. He struggled to break the fear’s grip on his lungs but then the face melted and shifted once more.

And Emily was looking at him, her shadowed green eyes filled with blame and sadness.

Reza bolted awake in the driver’s seat of his car, his skin pulled tight against his bones as his heart attempted to break free from his chest. Fear skittered over his spine like the Reaper dancing over his grave and he shivered, turning the truck on to warm up the cab against the early morning chill. He threw his arm over his eyes and counted to one hundred by threes. The fear did not retreat but then again, Reza hadn’t expected it to. It was always the same nightmare. Faces dancing in the desert, like specters beckoning to him from across the river Styx. Mocking him for their deaths. His failure to keep his boys alive.

Emily wasn’t dead. Neither was Sloban.

His head was just screwing with him. The nightmares always screwed him up when he detoxed in Iraq.

Fuck, man, Emily had been dead. He scrubbed his hand over his face and covered his mouth. She wasn’t his to protect. Wasn’t his to mourn.

Reza sat there, gripping the steering wheel. The flask in his glove box called to him. Whispered seductive things. Just one sip. One and it would push away the nightmare’s lingering grief and fear.

One sip, right? He could do that. Hating that he was such a miserable failure, he reached into the glove box. The flask was cold beneath his palm. He sat there for a long moment, holding it. Staring at it.

Needing it.

The clock on the dashboard said five twenty-six. He made it a habit of getting onto post early, before the crush of traffic at the main gate that backed up Highway 190, sometimes for miles. He didn’t always sleep in the cab of his truck but he hadn’t been sleeping well lately. The nightmares had been getting worse and he was running on about four hours of bad sleep a night. He dragged his hand through his hair and wondered if he’d get back to sleep or if he should walk into the company ops and check his e-mail.

His brain danced over the nightmare again and again, the faces of the dead tormenting him. Mixed in together, enemy and friend alike. All dead.

Death, apparently, did not recognize divisions like religion or uniforms. Reza had told himself that he’d done what he needed to do to bring his boys home. But alone in the dark, it no longer seemed like a good enough reason to have led the charge full bore into battle like he had. The Queen of Battle had whipped him into a frenzy more than once.

And every time he’d told himself it was justified. It was the right thing to do. That if he didn’t kill the enemy, then it could be one of his boys hanging from that bridge in Fallujah or being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.

He’d grieved more than once over the friends he’d lost. But he hadn’t expected the guilt over the enemy dead to weigh on him as well.

War was something he was good at. But there was a price. Wasn’t there always? The dead refused to let him go. And he punished himself when they didn’t do enough. The flask warmed in his hand. A means to dull the pain, so that the guilt wouldn’t eat at him.

Just a little to keep the monster inside him placated enough that it wouldn’t consume what little was left of his soul.

Just one sip. Just one and he could forget. At least for a little while. He scrubbed his hands over his face once more, then put the flask back into the glove box.

He couldn’t bring back the dead. And the grief would always be with him.

Maybe tonight, if he still hadn’t slept, he’d take a drink. Just one. Just to take the edge off so he could sleep.

Until then, he had work to do. And he had to be sober to do it.

Cars and trucks were slowly filtering in. The parking lot would fill and some desperate private would soon be trying to squeeze an Escalade he couldn’t afford into a motorcycle parking spot or next to a dumpster. And once a week, Sarn’t Major Giles would catch someone and the bad parking would stop for a day and then pick right back up again.

Funny that a man who excelled at leading warriors in combat was reduced to bitching about parking on the grass back home.

Was that what they’d gone to war for? So that people could complain about parking?

Reza walked into the battalion headquarters and headed up the short flight of stairs to the operations office. He figured he might as well try and do things the right way for once when it came to training, especially since he knew the ops officer. Captain Evan Loehr had been his company commander once upon a war and while they’d always gotten along relatively well, it hadn’t been until Loehr had started dating Captain Claire Montoya that Reza had really gotten to know the man behind the uniform. Claire was Reza’s sister in every way but blood. He was pretty sure he would be dead if not for her coming to bail his happy ass out on the run to Baghdad back in the early part of the war. They’d gone through war together and she’d stood with him until the very end, when his drinking had gotten the best of him.

He hadn’t been able to protect those he cared about from the worst of himself.

He was just like his father, after all.

His heart clenched when he remembered her crying over him in that hospital bed a few months ago. God, but he’d fucked up royally. He couldn’t stand to think of the disappointment in her eyes if he started drinking again. He rapped on the doorjamb as Evan shot the middle finger at his computer monitor.

“Obviously, some of Claire’s bad habits are rubbing off on you,” Reza said by way of greeting.

“I hate this computer,” Evan muttered.

“Isn’t it a little early to be swearing at the electronics?”

“Very funny.”

Reza leaned against the door to the cubicle. “How’s Claire?”

“Hating life out at NTC,” Evan said with a wicked grin. The captain’s face lit up when he talked about Claire. God but Reza was glad she’d found someone who loved her for who she was.

She used to joke that she was going to be a crazy cat lady. But beneath the joke had been a very real fear that she was too broken to love.

Evan was a good man. And as long as he kept Claire happy, Reza wouldn’t have to rip his spine out.

Win-win all the way around. So long as Reza wasn’t the one who hurt her.

Because he had no doubt that Loehr would do the same to him.

“Why does that make you smile?”

“Because she’s loving every minute of life in the 3rd Cavalry Regiment.” There was an odd note in Evan’s voice when he spoke of Claire. A note that made Reza relax a little more.

“Glad to hear she’s not getting her ass handed to her out there,” Reza said lightly. She’d been offered a rehab transfer after the epic screw-up in Colorado and she’d taken it. A hard penance in a hard unit but Claire was up for the challenge. “Speaking of getting their asses handed to them, I have a rather…unorthodox request.”

Evan stopped where he’d started typing. He picked up his coffee cup and took a sip, studying Reza quietly. “This ought to be interesting.”

Reza sighed and folded his arms over his chest. Better now than never. “One of the psych docs wants to come out and observe training.” Reza was proud of himself. He actually managed to get the statement out without choking on it.

Evan frowned. “So why are you asking me?”

“Because you’re the ops officer and that’s normally how these requests would come if it was an official tasking.”

Another sip of coffee. “And this is not an official tasking because…”

“Because she’s treating a few of our troopers and she wants to know what it is they face on a daily basis to get a better idea of the stressors in their lives.” The truth. A simple, honest request.

“Okay.”

Reza blinked as Evan set his coffee cup down. “Okay?”

“Okay.” Evan glanced up from where he’d started typing. “Why do you sound surprised?”

“Just expected a little more argument, that’s all. It’ll be worse than having civilians on the battlefield.”

“Marginally. She’s had some military training, right?”

It was Reza’s turn to frown. He hadn’t the slightest clue what kind of military training she had, if any. Maybe she’d just been handed her uniforms and told to report to Fort Hood. Stranger things had happened. “I have no idea,” he admitted.

“Well, find out. And make sure she doesn’t accidentally set off any pyro.”

Reza winced at the jab and flipped Evan off. “Very funny.”

Evan cracked a grin as Reza left the office and headed down to his own.

Fifty-six e-mails waited in his inbox. He skimmed the contents, clicking immediately on the first note from Emily.

He’d asked her for help finding Sloban’s packet and she was keeping her promise. Something so little meant so damn much to him right then.

Every day was another day that Sloban struggled to show up.

He wasn’t using, though. He swore it.

And Reza wanted so badly to believe him.

But he knew firsthand how hard the monkey was to shake.

Emily tossed her body armor down on her office floor with a curse. She turned at the sound of soft laughter behind her. Olivia stood in the doorway, her favorite white and red coffee mug cradled in both hands in front of her.

“I never thought I’d hear the day where you’d cuss,” Olivia said.

“Yeah well, you try putting together your Inceptor Body Armor,” she growled, “without instructions. There is not a single person in this entire clinic that knows how to do this.” She glared down at the pile of gear. “There’s pouches and pockets and straps and…”

“And lions and tigers and bears, oh my,” Olivia said.

Emily glared at her friend. “Not funny.”

“It’s a little funny. Seeing you flustered like this? Totally funny.” Olivia moved closer to the pile of gear sitting next to the empty plastic bags it had come in. She toed an empty pouch. “Did you just pick this up?”

“An hour ago. I thought it would come put together. I mean, who just hands a soldier a pile of gear and says ‘here you go, figure it out’?”

“That would be the US Army,” a male voice said. A male voice that she was becoming all too familiar with.

Emily turned at the sound and tried to ignore the way her entire body stood up and took notice. Reza was a big man without any gear on. But now, wearing full body armor, he stood in the doorway of her office and consumed the space around him. The body armor made him look massive, like a warlord, dressed for battle. There was something different about the shirt he wore beneath his body armor. It hugged his skin like a t-shirt instead of being the normal loose fitting uniform top she wore.

“Are you serious?” Emily said when she realized she was being incredibly rude by staring at him.

“It comes with instructions,” he said mildly. She narrowed her eyes as the edge of his lips curled suspiciously.

“I’m quite certain that no live human being wrote those instructions.” Beside her, Olivia laughed quietly. “You’re not helping.”

Olivia laughed harder and eased around Reza toward the door. She stopped and patted him on the shoulder. If Emily hadn’t been watching him carefully, she might have missed the slight flex of his jaw as Olivia’s hand slid away. He stiffened and eased back, out of her way.

“Have fun with this one, Sergeant,” Olivia said. “I don’t think she’s ever been camping.” Olivia stepped out of the office, leaving an awkward silence behind her. Emily shifted uncomfortably.

Reza’s eyebrows lifted over the edge of his glasses but they drew down again the moment he saw the state of her body armor. He pushed his glasses to the top of his head, studying the pile. A slow heat crept up her neck at the disapproval she saw in his eyes.

He glanced up at her. His dark eyes were the color of whiskey, deep malted brown. “You’ve never been camping?” he asked.

Emily folded her hands in front of her. “Do I get kicked out of the cool kids club if I say no?” she asked quietly.

Saying nothing, he crouched down by her gear and started laying out pieces side by side.

“My dad used to take us camping,” he said softly, sorting through her gear.

“Who is us?” She knelt down next to him, trying to figure out how he was sorting all the pieces.

“My mom and me.” He started lining up things that looked like they were vaguely the same.

“Why do you sound so sad when you say that?” she asked.