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She chuckled. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“No, I mean?—”
She rolled over and put her finger on his lips. “I know what you mean. I thought about it while driving back here yesterday. Hours and hours of nothing else to do except a solid self-examination. If you still open that job door for me, I’ll walk through it. I know there are no promises, and what’s between us is young, but I agree with you. I’m not going to let you get away from me either.”
“Damn, you’re fucking perfect.” He leaned in and kissed her soft lips. “Fucking perfect.”
“Ah, Skipper?”
Fleur squeaked and dove under the sleeping bag. Ronan laughed at her. “Yeah?”
“We had another breach. Wraith said to come get you.”
He was laughing almost too hard to hear Wolf’sresponse, but those words put shit into perspective again, and he shut that shit down, immediately all business. “I’ll be right there.”
He was up and out of the sleeping bag in an instant. “Over there. Wipes.” Fleur pointed to a small plastic box. Ronan used a couple quickly and was dressed in under three minutes.
He bent down and kissed her quickly. “Be safe.”
“I will.” She nodded, holding the sleeping bag over her breasts; he grabbed his weapon and M-4 and hustled out.
“Where?”
“Behind the structures tent. It wasn’t there when I initially walked around the perimeter. When I circled this time, there it was.”
“From inside or outside?”
“Inside, and there’s a fuckton of tracks,” Wolf swore bitterly. “Small tracks, Skipper. Stryker is trying to follow them. I swear if I catch the bastard responsible for doing this, I’ll kill them myself.”
“Let’s put a hold on murder until we know all the facts.” Ronan agreed with his man, though.
“Fine, but killing is still on the table, right?”
“For damn sure,” Ronan said as they walked. Before he got to the hole in the fence line, he popped into the structure’s tent. All the tools were missingfrom the shelves. He walked over to a large metal bin. There was a lock on it, and it was secure. Ronan exited the tent a second later and reached the entry point for the breach. Sure as shit, the wires were bent back toward the outside. But this one was different. The person inside would have had to go through the hole and make another one on the other side of the fence that held the tractor and attachments they used to dig and fill holes.
Ronan ducked through the hole and made his way over to where Wraith was squatting down. Wraith held up a hand, and Ronan stopped. In Arabic, Wraith said. “It’s okay. He’s not going to hurt you, and neither am I.”
Ronan dropped down to see who Wraith was talking to. A little girl was tucked underneath the tractor, obviously terrified. He stood again. “I’ll get Fleur.”
“Yeah, that would be good,” Wraith said in a soft, calm voice. “I’m just going sit here and talk to her.”
Ronan went back through the hole in the fence. “Dude, wake Jug up and have him bring Fleur to the structures tent ASAP.”
“Copy.” Dude’s reply was immediate.
Ronan turned as his name was called, “Good morning. I wanted to thank you again for the tents.We were able to move in the majority of the IDPs that didn’t have shelter. We'll be in fine shape once we get the convoys going.” Miller smiled at him and then saw Wolf. His brow creased. “What’s going on?”
“A breach in the fence,” Ronan said. “We have a small girl hiding under the tractor. We’ve sent for Fleur. She’s terrified.”
“Son of a bitch.” Miller scrubbed his face.
Ronan didn’t say a word. There wasn’t anything to say. The camp, with fences meant to keep the occupants safe … didn’t. And the person he believed to be helping from the inside could be innocent. That was hard to remember; he had a fine line to balance this walk on. As soon as Dude and Tink gathered enough information, he’d be able to act, but at this point, he couldn’t.
Fleur jogged down the pathway. Her combat boots were unlaced and flopping as she ran. “What do you need?”
After Ronan explained the situation, Fleur crawled through the hole in the fence and went over to where Wraith was still talking quietly to the girl. Wraith stood up and left, and Fleur smiled at the little one. It took about two minutes for the girl to be coaxed out from under the tractor. During that time, Jug and Shelly arrived.
“Where is she?” Shelly asked.