Read Online Because of You: A Loveswept Contemporary Military Romance by Jessica Scott - Free Book Online Page A

Because I checked with the motor sergeant and he said he never got the maintenance report that I turned in. To you.”
    Randall pursed his lips and clicked the cap on his pen. “I can double-check on that. But I need the sensitive items report.”
    “I already submitted it through Lieutenant Miller.”
    “I don’t have it and I can’t find Miller.”
    Shane rolled his tongue over his teeth and started counting to ten, buying himself some time before he jumped down Randall’s throat and ripped out his spleen. He made it to three. “I could really give two shits about what’s going on between you and Miller. Igave him the report; he knows when it’s due. If you two can’t act like adults and stop dragging the troops into your pissing contest, I’ll do it for you. But your incompetence has cost us time and blood, so my patience with you is running remarkably thin. Go find him and get the goddamned report yourself. And if I find out that you deliberately failed to get my equipment fixed because you wanted to get even with my lieutenant, I will personally nail your ass to the wall.”
    Randall’s jaw flexed as his nostrils flared. “So that’s how it is?”
    “I think I made it pretty clear.”
    The LT lifted his chin and walked off. Not quite stomped, but it was a close thing.
    Carponti snorted and a full-blown laugh wasn’t far behind. Shane’s temper finally snapped. “This isn’t funny. He’s not doing his job and people are getting hurt.”
    “Not the first time.”
    “And it probably won’t be the last, either, unfortunately. Did you check on Osterman like I asked?” Shane sat back down on his bunk, pulling out his weapons cleaning kit.
    Carponti sobered visibly. “Yeah. He’s already in Germany and he’ll be back in the States by morning.”
    “And?”
    “He’s stable, but he lost the leg.”
    Shane shoved his mail out of the way and rubbed his eyes as soul-crushing agony wrenched his guts. Osterman’s accident was just a tragic fucking mistake. They’d expected an easy path to the compound where their target had reportedly holed up, but what they’d gotten instead was a complex attack. And Shane had led the team into thatgoddamned choke point. The intel had shown a clear path through the village, but the militants had piled up burning trash and tires and created a funnel that Shane’s platoon had to either push through or turn and avoid and end up missing their objectivive. They’d pushed through the kill zone and captured the high-value target, but not without a cost. And it was too goddamned high for an intel mistake. Shane could do better. He’d get reports directly from brigade. He’d scrub the reports himself if the damned staff couldn’t do their jobs.
    But none of that would help Osterman. Shane could move heaven and earth to get correct intelligence reports, but it would still be too damned late for Osterman. He breathed deep and met Carponti’s gaze. He couldn’t change yesterday. He had only today to make a difference.
    That didn’t stop the regrets, though.
    “Fuck.”
    Carponti looked down at his hands and was silent for a long moment. “Yeah.”
    * * *
    “Laura, what’s wrong?” Jen approached her friend, who was directing a soldier’s wife toward the elevators.
    They stood in the middle of the hallway of the army medical center where Laura had spent the morning checking on a couple of wounded soldiers who had come in from Trent’s battalion. Laura worked for Trent’s brigade family readiness group. She often told Jen that the position was a thankless one. Some in the military considered the wives to be a small insurgency. Many times, the spouses felt ignored and maltreated by the military, who they felt didn’t care about their soldiers. It was Laura’s job to mediatebetween the two opposing forces and help the spouses take care of their own issues while getting the officers in charge to bend a little and care more about the wives’ challenges. And it was