PART 5
The room stopped breathing.
Vance blinked.
His mouth opened slightly.
Colonel Reeves took one step forward.
“Ma’am, I didn’t realize you had arrived on base.”
I picked up my tray from the rail.
“I came in early.”
The sergeant major’s eyes dropped to Vance’s hand.
Then to my arm, where his fingers had left red marks.
His face went cold.
Not angry.
Worse.
Professional.
“Sergeant Vance,” he said.
Vance’s voice cracked. “Sergeant Major, I didn’t know—”
I turned my head.
The room heard the silence before my words.
“You didn’t know what?”
Vance swallowed.
He looked around at the hundreds of faces now staring at him.
“You didn’t know I was a general?” I asked. “Or you didn’t know women in civilian clothes are still human beings?”
Nobody moved.
Colonel Reeves’s jaw tightened.
The legal officer opened a notebook.
Vance tried again.
“Ma’am, I apologize if there was a misunderstanding.”
“If?” the sergeant major said.
That single word hit like a boot heel.
Vance’s arrogance was leaking out of him now, replaced by the desperate calculation of a man searching for a version of events that might still save him.
“She refused to leave the line,” he said. “I thought she was a dependent interfering with Marines after range training.”
Colonel Reeves looked toward the sign on the wall.
ALL HANDS WELCOME — 1100 TO 1300
Then back to Vance.
“It says all hands,” he said.
“Yes, sir, but—”
“But what?” Reeves asked. “You decided your personal irritation outweighed posted base policy?”
Vance looked at the watching Marines.
A mistake.
Because they were no longer looking down.
They were looking straight at him.
Then the corporal with acne finally spoke.
“Sir,” he said, voice shaking. “Sergeant Vance ordered us to escort her out. She told us not to touch her.”
Vance snapped his head toward him.
“You shut your mouth.”
The sergeant major stepped forward so fast the air changed.
May you like
“Try that again,” he said quietly.
Vance went pale.
