She went into her bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. Beneath the dried mud, she was sunburned, and her left cheekbone had a lump on it that gave her eye a distinct squint. Her lips were cracked. Her clothes were filthy. And with bits of mud still clinging in her hair, she looked like a crazy homeless lady. In point of fact, she suspected most homeless people were significantly cleaner than she was now. How in the heck she was going to cover up the toll of BUD/S and make herself over into the recruiting poster in an hour, she didn’t know.

She eyed her shower, then looked back at her reflection. Looked back at the shower.

If she was ever going to be accepted by the SEALs as one of them, she was going to have to start acting like one of them. And that did not include dressing up, primping, and prancing around like the Barbie doll they so loved to accuse her of being.

Without even passing a washcloth over her face, she marched out of her room and went downstairs to wait for the staff car, mud and all.

The driver’s eyebrows shot straight up to his hairline when she climbed in beside him, but the guy said nothing as he delivered her to the back door of the base theater.

Schneider, the public affairs officer, was not so restrained. “I told them to let you have a shower and get cleaned up before you came over here! I have your makeup kit and clean uniforms for you. Crap, crap, crap. Now we’re going to be late. The admiral’s going to be pissed. He has another meeting after—”

“Schneider. Stop.”

He stared at her, not comprehending. She explained. “My instructors did give me time to clean up. I chose not to.”

“You… What?” he sputtered.

“I’m doing the press conference like this.”

“Are you crazy? I can’t put you in front of cameras looking like that!”

“Why not? I’m in the middle of a training day, and this is what I look like in the middle of a training day.”

“No, no, no. This isn’t what the Navy Public Affairs Office has in mind at all. I got explicit instructions from headquarters—”

“It’s not open for discussion,” she interrupted gently. “I do the press conference like this or not at all.”

She didn’t give Schneider time to consider that choice, but instead walked past him. She knew where the stage was and headed directly for it with him running along in her wake, panicking. He actually wrung his hands as he ran backwards beside her, arguing every step of the way.

Ignoring him, she strode right out onto the stage.

The journalists were talking among themselves, checking sound, and talking with their cameramen, since the press conference wasn’t due to start for another fifteen minutes.