She touched base next with the duty officer, who unlike her wasn’t expected to be in HQ unless there was a problem—because he was only a phone call away, and in theory, so would she be, but that wasn’t how their base commander liked things to go, so she got to ride a deskallday.
Not a problem. She logged into the network from the duty desk and checked her email again. Since she knew she’d be around for the next twenty-four hours and had tons of time to fill, she didn’t feel bad at all when she then flipped over to a browser window and went to check on flights forhertrip.
She’d won a week’s stay at a high-end resort on the Caribbean island of Miralinda at a kink conference she went to in Seattle the month before. It wasn’t the usual all-inclusive type of holiday she preferred to take, but even paying for the flights separately, she was going to come outahead.
Seattle had been a great weekend. She hadn’t hooked up with anyone, but she’d had two great scenes—just kink, no sex—and a couple of evenings that rolled effortlessly from dinner to drinks to late-night laughs back in someone’shotelroom.
Her knee bumped against the inside corner of the duty desk, where the metal was curled under, but not enough, so it ended up stabbing her every time she used thisspace.
Karma reminding her that her two worlds didn’t get to blend. She had two tribes, and she loved them both, but they needed to stayseparate.
Before she could dwell on that further, the dutyphonerang.
“This is Master Sergeant Saunders,” she answeredcrisply.
“Boss, we’ve got aproblem.”
She sat up a little straighter. It was one of her section 2ICs, an instructor on the same course whose range had run late the night before. They’d headed deeper into the field after the range, and were doing attack training all day. “Everythingokay?”
“Our breakfast hasn’tarrived.”
She glanced at the clock. Thirty minutes late. Yeah, that was a problem. “Did you call thekitchen?”
“They said they sent it out an hour ago, and we sentitback.”
Which is why he was calling her, and not just dealing with it himself. She sighed and stood up. “On it. You have enoughessentials?”
“We’ve got rations we can bust open to service a basic first meal for everyone, but it’s not enough calories to begintrainingon.”
She was already in her truck. “I’ll figure out what the problem is and get the food outtoyou.”
“Thanks,boss.”
Don’t thank me yet,she thought to herself. Their field exercises were happening on the far side of the blacked out range. She had a really good idea of who turned around her troops’ breakfast delivery—and she wasn’t sure she had the authority to override whatever muscle-bound numpty was standing guard out where the joint task force group was doing their super-secrettraining.
