Page 74 of Men of Fort Dale: The Complete Series

Honestly, only so much could be done when a soldier got a little too drunk and feisty.

The military police worked hard to keep everything on base peaceful, though some days were harder than others.

For those that created trouble in town, it was up to the regular police.

Of course, if the soldiers got into trouble with the law, they were in for a whole lot of hell when they came back to base.

The police chief growled. “That’s what you always say, and nothing ever changes.”

“Oh, he’s already out. Drunk tank for the night, but he might be looking at some battery charges and destruction of property.”

“Fine. But I’m growing tired of the General avoiding speaking to me directly. This is the fourth time in two weeks.”

“I understand that, but the general has a lot on his plate.”

Not only that, but Christian had noticed a change in the general over the past couple of days.

Christian had no idea what had happened, but General Winter’s ordinarily quiet and serious nature had become downright surly and almost mute.

Christian had received a grunt that morning when he’d greeted him, which was out of character.

General Winter was not a talkative man, but he wasn’t rude.

“Apparently so busy he can’t make time to speak to the chief of police,” Chief Williams grumbled.

“No offense meant, but General Winter has very little time for things that aren’t absolutely pressing.”

“Right, and his men causing trouble in my city doesn’t warrant his attention.”

Christian narrowed his eyes. “How many drunk and disorderly people do you pick up on a Friday night, Chief Williams? How many people do you arrest for battery?”

“Pardon?”

“How many of them are for domestic assault? Rape? Attempted murder, or even murder?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Christian reached out, opening a message as it popped up on his screen. “I want you to take the number of people you arrest on a weekend for all those things and combine them. Then, I want you to pick out the ones done by the soldiers from our base. Can you do that for me?”

“I can’t say I have the exact numbers right in front of me,” Chief Williams said tightly.

“No, probably not, but I’m sure you have a good idea that if we compared the numbers, you’d find a big difference between the number of people arrested from the city or are tourists and those that come off this base.

So yes, the general is a little too busy to deal with a statistical minority personally. ”

There was a pause before Chief Williams recovered himself. “You little shit.”

Christian shook his head. “I think that marks the end of this conversation. I’ll deliver the message to General Winter. Have a nice day.”

The police chief continued speaking angrily. Still, Christian ended the call without bothering to listen to more. No doubt, the police chief would soon realize he’d been hung up on and would call back.

“Sucks for him since I’m the one answering the damn phone,” Christian muttered.

“Who did you piss off?”

General Winter’s voice from behind brought Christian around with a slight yelp. He was standing outside his office door, frowning at Christian.

“Jesus, sir, you scared the hell out of me,” Christian complained, holding a hand to his beating chest.

He hated it when the general snuck up on him like that.

“I’m putting a damn bell on that door,” Christian continued.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Christian was again struck by the strange mood. Christian wanted to ask what was wrong but didn’t know how. For all their comfort with one another and ease of conversation, there was still that gap between them.

Christian glanced at the phone nervously. “Ah, the police chief?”

“What did he want?”

“Apparently, another private got himself in trouble last night and was thrown in the drunk tank.”

“And? People have been getting drunk and doing stupid things since alcohol was invented. Why is that my problem?”

Christian raised a brow. “As I’ve mentioned before, Chief Williams gets testy when it happens a few too many times for his liking. Though I probably didn’t help by pointing out that compared to how many people arrested who don’t come from here, our soldiers are pretty well behaved.”

“Good. Maybe that will give him something to think about for a while. I’ll speak to him some other time and remind him he has more important things to do than to waste our time.”

Christian squirmed, pleased he wasn’t going to get his ass reamed but still uncomfortable with the irritation in the general’s voice.

It wasn’t like General Winter to express aggravation.

One of Christian’s favorite things about working for General Winter, besides his genuine care for his men, was that he seemed to draw from an infinite well of patience. Seeing him irritable was surreal.

“Uh, sir?”

“Yes?”

Christian tried to hold the other man’s gaze. “Is everything okay?”

General Winter frowned. “I’m fine, why?”

“Because you don’t seem...fine.”

“Really?”

Christian grinned nervously. “Yeah, really. I know I talked about how there are things I don’t know about you, things that are weird not to know when I think about it, but...I know what you’re like day to day. And you’re...off. You’ve been off the past couple of days.”

General Winter blinked at him. “Oh. My apologies.”

“Something wrong?”

General Winter shook his head, the surprise disappearing behind an impassive expression. Christian was almost impressed with how quickly the older man locked his emotions behind a professional mask.

“No. Just a few things on my mind. It will pass. I haven’t been sleeping too well, and I think I might take the next hour to myself. Maybe have a little nap.”

“In your office?”

“Yes, can you adjust my meetings today?”

“I can do that, yeah.”

“Thank you.”

Christian watched him walk stiffly into his office and continued to stare after him.

Since when did General Winter, the workaholic who barely knew the meaning of a proper night’s sleep, take a nap in the middle of the day?

The thought was even more troubling than knowing something was bothering the general.

It was one thing for him to be worried, but for it to coincide with uncharacteristic exhaustion?

“What the hell?” Christian muttered, turning back to his computer.

Fixing the schedule to put everything back an hour was no big deal. Christian’s Saturday might be packed for the first half, but General Winter normally had an easier day. It was nothing to move things around and reschedule the medic’s visit for Monday.

Yet the ease of his work also meant he could ponder what was wrong with the general.

On some level, he figured he shouldn’t be bothered.

Everyone had their off days, after all, and sometimes that went on for more than a day.

And it wasn’t like the general was a young man.

For all Christian knew, General Winter could be in pain, or just slowing down.

Christian wrinkled his nose. “Nah.”

Okay, sure, the man wasn’t getting any younger, but a person didn’t just start to run into the ground overnight.

If the general had started to slow down due to age, Christian would have seen the signs long before now.

Plus, he made sure the general saw the medics just as often as he insisted the other soldiers on the base did.

Christian wasn’t supposed to know the results of those exams, but he had an understanding with the clinic that if there was anything he needed to know to keep the general healthy, it should be passed along quietly.

“Dammit, Christian. Don’t do this to yourself. Just...focus on something else,” Christian chided himself.

That something was combing through the message system.

If there was one thing Christian was not the best at keeping up with, it was purging messages.

When he was responsible for both his message box and that of the general, it could fill up pretty quickly if he wasn’t diligent.

Most of the time, though, it ended up being hundreds of messages in each box that he had to go through and delete, save, or mark for later consideration.

However, it did the job of refocusing his mind.

Christian’s inbox had been the first on his list, and he was dismayed to find several hundred messages waiting.

Most of the time, it just required a brief look, but some required him to read the contents.

The task took almost an hour, and it kept his thoughts from his worries.

“Done is done,” Christian proclaimed proudly as he closed his inbox.

Then again, there was still the general’s inbox.

Sighing, he opened it and began combing through it.

Opening the first message, he scanned its contents before deciding it wasn’t needed.

His decision to throw it in the trash folder stopped him in his tracks when he realized there was already something in the folder.

It honestly didn’t matter if he was the one who read it or the general, it would always be Christian who inevitably decided to delete emails.

General Winter left the decision of what to keep and what to get rid of up to Christian, if only because there might be something in the messages that Christian might need.

But Christian hadn’t cleared the old messages in quite a while.

“Dammit, general,” he muttered as he opened the folder.

He stopped, raising a brow at the demanding title. Opening it brought his other brow up.

“Don’t want people to see this?” Christian read aloud.

There was an attachment, a video file from the looks of it.

Christian’s heart pounded as he hovered the cursor over the link, pondering what to do.

On the one hand, it was clearly not meant for his eyes.

On the other, there was obviously something very wrong with this message, and he wasn’t sure he could leave well enough alone when it looked like someone was threatening the general.

He clicked it.

It took the computer a couple of minutes to download the file. A two-minute-long video popped up on the built-in player.

“All that for two minutes? Must be HD,” Christian muttered, clicking the play button.

And immediately froze.

The first few seconds of the movie were taken from the perspective of someone lying on their back. A bedroom could be seen in the background, with pants thrown over a desk chair, a laptop, and a closet. Far more interesting to Christian was the very naked man who stood in the center of the shot.

General Winter.

The camera stayed panned up, just low enough that Christian could see it didn’t look like the salt in the general’s hair had crept to his groin yet.

Amidst the utter shock of what he was seeing, some part of Christian’s brain couldn’t help but think the general was in very good shape for someone closer to fifty than forty.

In the sunlight coming from somewhere behind the camera, Christian could see just about every detail of the general’s body from the waist up.

His body was still tight with muscle, though perhaps it didn’t have the definition of a younger man.

Sparse hair trailed down the general’s flat stomach and up to his chest. His arms looked even more impressive out of his uniform, and Christian’s breath stuttered as he watched the muscles shift and flex.

He was never happier that he’d long ago muted the sound from the computer after being irritated half to death by the message alert noise.

Christian watched as the general bent down, a wicked smile on his face as he ran his hands up the pair of legs of the person filming.

Christian didn’t need the camera to pan down to show the filmer’s straining, eager cock, or to know that the person being stroked by General Winter was a man.

Well, that certainly settled whether or not the general was into men.

Christian sat frozen with a mixture of complete shock and growing arousal as the video continued to play to the end.

He watched as the general, his boss, a man he’d nursed a quiet attraction to for almost a year, worked his way up the filmer’s body.

Light kisses were laid upon the other man’s skin, trailing up the man’s inner thighs to his hips.

The camera shook a little as the general’s mouth continued to wander, taking his time as he explored the other man’s body.

The clip finally ended with the general’s face in full view.

Christian sat there, staring at the image, transfixed by the sight of General Winter’s expression.

Of all the emotions he’d seen on the other man’s face, Christian had never seen pure arousal before.

Lust practically radiated from General Winter’s eyes as he stayed locked in the screen.

And while it wasn’t actually aimed at Christian, he couldn’t help but feel the effect of the expression.

Slowly recovering his composure, he cleared his throat and forced his eyes away from the image.

His uniform pants were uncomfortably tight, and Christian did not want to continue staring.

Though he hadn’t seen everything, and it was obvious the clip was part of a longer video, Christian knew damn well he was going to be adding that to his memory banks for later use.

When his eyes settled back on the screen, he tried to avoid the small window where the stilled video sat.

Instead, Christian looked at the email behind the video and read what was there again.

Though it was apparent the email was threatening, he couldn’t understand its point.

Obviously, someone wanted something from General Winter and was using the video as leverage.

Would it matter if someone saw the video? As far as Christian knew, the general wasn’t married and hadn’t seen anyone seriously in the past year. How could a sex tape be used against him? And what exactly did this person want?

“And who is it?” Christian wondered, his mind now transfixed on the mystery.

The person he couldn’t see in the video?

Looking at the properties of the video didn’t add much information, citing the date as a few days ago.

That didn’t mean much when the clip was obviously taken from a longer video and would have been created recently.

Was it a former lover, spurned by something the man did and seeking revenge? Or was it just blackmail?

“What the hell are you doing?”

The general’s voice sent an icepick into Christian’s chest, and he froze. His mind flashed back to when he had chided the general for being so quiet earlier and the man’s comment about taking a brief rest. Closing his eyes, Christian turned to face the office door.

“Hi, General Winter.”