Silver Stars (Front Lines 2)

His face is inches from hers; she can see the glitter of his eyes. They speak in whispers.

“We should catch some Zs,” Rio says, mostly as a way of shutting him up.

“Just tell me, Rio.”

“Tell you what?”

“Do you love him?”

She takes a long time to answer as she spools through memories of Strand. Their first awkward date. The plane ride they took. The picnic. Their first kiss. And the hotel room in Tunis.

What can she say? What can she say when she has slept with Strand? Can she answer anything other than, of course I love him?

In the end she says, “I’m not sure love is a thing I can do anymore.” She means it to be airy and flippant, but it sounds sad.

“Love isn’t a thing you do or don’t do, Rio. Love is everything, and it swallows you whole or it’s not love.”

Is he seriously flirting with her? Here? Now? With both of them side by side in a freezing hog wallow?

She forces a small laugh and twists away from him, pressing her back against him, feeling his warmth on her numb backside. “And how do you know so much about love, Jack Stafford?”

He lays his free arm over her and wraps it chastely around her belly. “I just do,” he whispers to the curve of her neck. “I just do.”

33

RIO RICHLIN—MONTE CASSINO, ITALY

The first crossing is accomplished only by a small American force, which is then stranded when the main force falls back in disorder, and is then killed or captured by the Germans.

Rio has missed this particular tragedy by the time she and Jack make it back to the platoon.

“What. The. Hell,” Geer says on seeing them stumbling through the rain. Geer is in a deep hole with Pang. The two of them are standing in eighteen inches of water. Pang is patiently bailing with his helmet while Geer is shoving mud into a sort of dike meant to keep water from simply flowing unimpeded into their foxhole.

“We thought you two were dead or captured,” Pang says, and grins.

Jenou and Cat are in a second hole—there are foxholes of various depth and complexity dug all along the sector, many of them having started as shell craters. Cat has managed to find a few sticks and has used them to give some angle to her shelter half, creating a sort of sagging, pitched roof so rain runs off onto the ground . . . before draining right back into the hole.

Jenou climbs sloppily out of their hole and runs to Rio. She runs with arms outstretched and Rio goes to receive her hug, but at the last minute Jenou passes Rio and embraces Jack.

“We missed you!”

“Oh, very funny,” Rio mutters.

Jenou relents and throws an arm around her friend and says in a low voice, “Goddamn, Rio, you scared the hell out of me.” Then in a yell, “Stick! We picked up a couple of replacements

!”

Stick appears, a sodden, mud-covered, and exhausted man. But he has energy enough to smile and clap both Jack and Rio on the back. “Where have you clowns been?”

“We spent the night in a minefield,” Rio explains.

“Might have been better off staying there. We’re getting ready to make another push.”

“Everything okay?” Rio says it with an emphasis Stick understands to mean, Has anyone else been wounded or bought the farm?

“You saw Magraff?” Stick asks in a low voice.

Rio and Jack nod.