Chapter 4
Nobody laughed now.
Not one person.
Briggs tried to yank his leg free.
Riley did not let go.
His confidence cracked.
“Let go,” he snapped.
Riley looked back at him.
“Why?”
“This is training.”
“No,” she said. “This is assault.”
The silence became heavy.
Briggs’s face flushed red.
He knew the cameras were still rolling.
He knew the officers had heard her.
He knew the crowd had felt the shift.
So he did what men like him always did when control slipped.
He got louder.
“You think you can embarrass me in front of my troops?”
Riley tilted her head.
“Your troops?”
That was when Commander Cole stood.
Slowly.
The movement was small, but it pulled every eye in the field.
Briggs saw him and stiffened.
Riley still held Briggs’s leg.
Cole stepped into the ring with the kind of calm that made everyone else nervous.
His face was cold as steel.
The dust moved around his boots.
Briggs tried to straighten, but he was still balanced on one leg.
“Commander,” he said quickly. “This recruit escalated the drill. I was correcting—”
Riley moved.
One clean motion.
She turned her hips, swept Briggs’s standing leg, and put him flat on his back in the dirt.
Hard.
The impact knocked the breath out of him.
Gasps spread through the crowd.
Briggs coughed, staring up in disbelief.
Riley released his boot and stepped back.
Calm.
Balanced.
Untouched except for the dust on her uniform and the bruise forming near her ribs.
Commander Cole stopped beside Briggs and looked down at him.
May you like
“Sergeant Briggs,” he said, “you just attacked the wrong operator.”
Read Part 5 to find out who Riley Carter really was.
