Page 109 of Leave

“You’d think it wouldn’t be a problem anymore, but there’s always someone.”

“Seriously.”

“So. How did you end up getting punched by a commander?”

“Oh. Right. That.” I chuckled, pushing myself up onto my elbow. “So, night of the Navy Ball. We stopped him just like we stopped everyone else. He rolls down the window, and I mean… a lot of the cars smelled like booze because the passengers were drunk. But it was just coming off him in waves. He was slurring. His eyes were red. There was no way this guy was sober.”

“Was he driving erratically?”

“Oddly enough, no. The way he approached and then pulled up alongside where I was standing, I figured I’d be letting him go, same has most of the people who stopped. As soon as he rolled down the window, though…” I grimaced, my eyes damn near watering just from the memory of the alcohol fumes coming through that window. “I told him to step out of the car, which sent him straight into belligerent.”

Nolan chuckled. “Did he try to pull rank on you?”

“Oh, he tried. And I told him that the two-star admiral who’d left an hour earlier had cooperated because she understood that the law outranks all of us.”

He whistled. “How did that go over?”

“Well, let’s just say my next tactic was to tell him that if he didn’t get out of the car, I would show my bodycam footage to that admiral, and she could decide what to do with him.”

Nolan’s eyes widened. “Oh, fuck. What did he say?”

“A whole lot of misogynistic stuff that I won’t repeat. But he did get out of the car at that point.”

“I bet he did. Was the bodycam thing bullshit?”

I nodded. “Which also told me he was definitely drunk—I knew for a fact he was one of the officers who wanted us to wear bodycams, and he was pissed that we didn’t.”

“Ooh, you got him dead to rights, didn’t you?”

“Yep. So I ran him through a field sobriety test, which he failed so hard, we had him do a few more just because—I mean, fuck it, he was being belligerent. Why not make him do a few more human tricks?”

“Shame there were no bodycams.”

“No, but my LPO was there, and he filmed it on his phone. He told me, ‘Ain’t no fucking way we’re hemming up someone like that without bulletproof evidence.’ Between the videos and the Breathalyzer—dude was fucked.” I chuckled at the memory. “And since I was the one to get him out of the car, I got to be the one to tell him he was under arrest, at which point…” I gestured at my left eye.

Nolan whistled. “Tell me they got that on camera.”

“Every second. Last I heard, they’re still using the video train new guys on how to take someone down and cuff him.”

“Oh, yeah?”

I grinned proudly. “I was pissed and my face fucking hurt, but muscle memory kicked in and I got him to the ground by the book. And it was a damn good thing it was filmed, because he tried to say I was too rough, that I pulled his arm too hard, and—dude, the only reason anyone grabbed or pulled your arm was you were trying to grab another officer’s ankle.”

“Wow. I’m guessing he’s not in the Navy anymore.”

I barked a bitter laugh. “Noo. I’d love to tell you he went to the brig and got demoted so far he had to salute enlisted recruits, but…” I shook my head.

“Oh for fuck’s sake. They force-retired him, didn’t they?”

Rolling my eyes, I nodded. “I guess the CO didn’t want to deal with a court-martial and all that, especially since there were criminal charges. I don’t know all the details—it kind of filtered down from the chiefs. But at the end of the day, he was told he could take a demotion to lieutenant commander and retire immediately, or he could stay in and face a laundry list of charges. He took the demotion and bailed.”

“Of course he did,” Nolan muttered. “I know enlisted Marines who got hemmed up worse than that for a hell of a lot less.”

“Me too. It’s such bullshit. But at least he didn’t kill anyone that night. Hopefully he doesn’t now that he’s a civilian.”

“One can hope,” he grumbled.

“Right? Anyway, I didn’t mean to derail—we were talking about you, not me.”

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