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T here was a small rise to the northwest of the hospital tent. It wasn’t much, but it was better than flat terrain. “Let’s pitch your tent over there,” Con said, thrusting his chin in the direction of the hill. “Close enough for easy access to the hospital, far enough to see trouble coming.” He, Smoke, River, and the Marines grabbed up most of the bags, leaving just two for Sophia.

She made enough noise behind him that he didn’t have to look to know she was back there.

Once he reached the spot he liked, he dropped his bags, nodded at the men, and took hers from her.

They set up the lab tent first. It took them less time to get the structure up than the first time they’d done it, but it took longer to anchor it to the sandy ground. They had to pound anchor pins several feet deep.

Sophia wasn’t idle while they played construction crew. She pulled out the segmented furniture that unfolded into barstool-tall surfaces she called benches . Only these benches weren’t for sitting, they were for the pint-sized lab equipment she was going to use to determine the pathogen causing all the sickness and death.

By the time the tent was anchored, she was setting up her equipment.

Connor left her to it and took Smoke, River, and the Marines aside. “I want you on a two on, two off rotation,” he said to the Marines. “Your job is to defend Dr. Perry and her equipment. If things go FUBAR, she is top priority. Got it?”

“What will you and Sergeants Smoke and River be doing, sir?” Henry asked.

“She’s my primary responsibility. I go wherever she goes. Smoke and River are going to go where they’re needed. You might be coming with us, or you could be staying with the equipment. It’s going to depend on what’s happening at the time. Right now, I want two of you to patrol the area. Look for places where an attack might come from. The other two can set up a tent, which we will all use for sleeping.”

“Yes, sir,” the Marines said in unison. They didn’t talk to each other, but Henry and Stalls got to work on the tent while Macler and Norton began their patrol.

They were already a team. That was a very good thing since their situation was one where no one knew what the outcome might be.

Con walked over to Sophia and crouched next to her. She was sorting through a bunch of power cords and chargers. “What do you plug all this in to?” he asked.

“Everything runs on batteries, like the ones in a laptop computer. See those black boxes?” She pointed at a row of four sitting in one of the open bags on the ground. “Those are the backup battery chargers. Between them and the batteries in the analyzers, I’ve got enough power here for about twenty-four hours of continuous use. After that, I’ll need to charge the batteries with the solar panels.”

He had to admit he couldn’t see anything he’d change with the setup. “That’s pretty slick.”

“It took a while to develop the technology for us to do this. But there’s a strong market for this kind of thing in several industries. From communications to search and rescue.”

“You sound like a commercial.”

She sighed. “Max made me talk in front of one of those Senate committees in order to get the funds to pay for it. I hated every second.”

“I don’t doubt it. Not many politicians have a good grasp of what’s a good investment these days.”

“Max said my being young and pretty helped more than my testimony did.” Her voice dripped disgust and anger.

A strong reaction. “Did anyone come on to you? Those bastards can be pretty handsy.”

“No. I just talked with big words and they eventually went away.”

“You scared them away with big words? Seriously? ” How stupid had the political population gotten?

“It works surprisingly well,” she said in a chipper voice that told him she was happy to have this little defense mechanism. “I’ve done it before.”

“It’s good to know that you do that to people who irritate you. Gives me something to look out for.”

She paused in her work, tilted her head to one side then said, “Yes. If I start talking with really long, complicated vocabulary, you can assume I’m unhappy or irritated.”

“Cool. Let’s set up a couple other secret codes.”

Her response was a semi-happy shrug.

“How about if you want to warn me about something dangerous,” he said. “Let’s decide on specific words or maybe a sentence. What would you say?”

“Okay,” she said with a small smile. “Dangerous situation equals bad allergies acting up.”

“Good one,” Con said. “My turn. For an urgent message, we’ll say it’s time for your medication.”

She laughed. “I like that. What about an enemy that’s pretending to be a good guy, or a good guy pretending to be an enemy?”

“How about, I could really use an ice water with a twist of lemon.”

She glanced at him, a full blown smile on her face. “You’ve been watching too many James Bond movies.”

“Hey, I loved those as a kid. I watched them with my dad. His movie heroes were John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Sean Connery.”

“My dad loved John Wayne too.”

Con lowered his voice and adopted a drawl. “We’re burning daylight.”

She laughed and her happiness hit him between the eyes like someone had shot him point blank.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d made someone happy.

“What’s going on over here?” Len Zobel asked as he swaggered up to the tent. “You two enjoying yourselves?”

Con was watching Sophia’s face when Len stressed the word enjoying a little too much. Her nostrils flared and her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t miss a beat. She looked down her nose at him, hard to do when she couldn’t be taller than five foot two, and said in a tone that could have done a high school math teacher proud, “A little frivolity lowers blood pressure and cortisol levels, and boosts the immune system. Something every individual in this camp could use, don’t you think?”

Len blinked, opened his mouth, then frowned and closed it. “Uh, yeah, I guess.”

“Excellent. Why don’t you take that advice and relay it to Dr. Blairmore.”

There might have been a why at the beginning of her last sentence, but it was nothing less than an order.

“Sure,” Len said slowly. He looked at Con. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

He nodded and they walked a few feet away.

“What the fuck is her problem?” Len asked.

Con didn’t see the point in hiding the answer. “You are.”

“What did I do?”

“You weren’t very nice when you accused us of enjoying ourselves, and she isn’t much of a people-person in the first place, so...”

“So...?”

“So.” Con shrugged. “Don’t be an ass.”

Len grinned at him. “You’re doing her, aren’t you?”

Not as much as I want to. Fuck, he couldn’t say that. “Do I look stupid to you?”

Len glanced over his shoulder at Sophia as she unpacked her stuff. “So, if I apologize really nice, I’ve still got a chance?”

“Not a chance in hell.”

“But—”

He meant to say she’s my responsibility . What came out was a quiet, certain, “She’s mine.”

“I thought you said you weren’t sleeping with her?”

“Only a moron sleeps with the body he’s guarding while in a dangerous situation.” Yep, he was a moron.

“You’re waiting until this little mission is over?” Len watched him for a moment, glanced at Sophia again, then shrugged and nodded. “Don’t blame you, Con. She’s something else to look at.”

If that’s all Len saw, he was an idiot. “She’s got more going for her inside her head.”

“I hope you’re right, because the shit that’s going on in this camp is fucking scary.”

Interesting. Con angled his head at Sophia and Len followed him into their lab’s tent.

“Dr. Perry, Len isn’t a doctor, but he is a good observer. I thought you might want to hear his take on what’s been happening here the last few days.”

She put down the gadget she was unpacking and grabbed a notepad and pen out of a pocket. “When did you notice the first problems? Were you here before the outbreak started?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ve been shadowing Dr. Blairmore since he and his group arrived about four weeks ago. We’ve had a steady stream of refugees coming in from Syria, but nothing surprising until about four days ago.”

“What kinds of things were being treated prior to four days ago?”

“Bullet wounds, cuts, sunburn, broken bones, we had a couple of babies delivered here. All the normal things, I guess.”

She wrote a few things down in the notebook. “And after that?”

“We had seven or eight kids brought in with high fevers. Then a couple of hours later, a few more. That night, the ones that came in earlier in the day got worse. The doctors gave a bunch of them fluids, but it didn’t seem to do much good. They started dying the next day. Then it wasn’t just kids, it was men, women, kids, old people. Everybody.”

Len stopped to swallow hard and take a breath, but Con had seen Len strung out on stress before and that guy was as silent and cold as a glacier. This guy, he was milking his story for everything he could get out of it. Even though Con had already told him Sophia wasn’t available.

Fucking asshole.

“They ran out of IVs yesterday,” Len continued. “Which means the sick started dying faster. Some of them seemed to go crazy. They thrashed around, some had seizures, quite a few choked on their tongues. I helped dig the first burial pit and it almost killed me to see all those little bodies going into the ground.” Len turned away and wiped his eyes.

Holy shit, he was laying it on thick.

“I didn’t mean to get snippy with you earlier, Dr. Perry. I’m really, really tired of taking dead bodies out of that tent over there.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

Con shifted his weight from one leg to the other and had to stop himself from knocking Len on his ass.

Sophia glanced at Con, then examined Len’s face and calmly said, “Apology accepted, but if he doesn’t believe your sob story—” she pointed right at Con “—neither do I. Don’t try to get into my good books with that shit again.”

Len’s jaw dropped then he started laughing. “You two are quite the team, and look at me, I’m laughing .” He walked away, shaking his head, eventually disappearing into the hospital tent.

Sophia sighed. “What a pain in the ass.”

“I’ve got to agree with you there. I don’t think leaving the Army has done him all that much good.”

She gave Con her complete attention for a moment. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

She arched a brow at him, then turned to get back to work.

Trust .

A chill settled over him despite the desert heat.

He hadn’t questioned her ability to read him or give Len an appropriate answer, and she’d noticed.

Trust bound people together. He could already feel the invisible bonds between them squeezing his diaphragm.

He cleared his throat. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Sure. Could you ask Dr. Blairmore if it would be possible for me to take some fresh blood samples from some of the sick?”

“How many do you want?”

“Three. Based on ages. So, one from a child under twelve, one from an otherwise healthy adult, and one from someone older than sixty. Wait.” She opened another bag and pulled out disposable masks and gloves. “Wear a mask at all times and gloves if you think you might have to touch something over there. Coughing doesn’t seem to be an issue, but it’s better to be proactive. Can you give our guys some of these as well?” She looked around. “Where are Smoke and River?”

“They’re looking over the entire camp. Macler and Norton are on patrol.” Con handed out a couple of masks and sets of gloves to Henry and Stalls before he put on his own mask and gloves.

He took a good look around on the short walk to the hospital tent. Things had quieted down now and few people seemed to be moving about. The other side of the tent was another story.

There was a line-up of people waiting to get in, with a couple of aid workers wearing masks and gloves dealing with them.

Dr. Blairmore was listening to the heartbeat of an old man who looked like he hadn’t eaten in a month. Len was standing close by also wearing a mask and gloves. He tapped the doctor on the shoulder after he was finished with the old man and pointed at Con.

The doctor came over. “What?”

“Dr. Perry would like to take three new blood samples, from a child under twelve, a healthy adult, and an older person.” Con looked around at all the people in the tent. “These people are used to you. It might be best if you take them.”

“Whatever gets us help faster,” Blairmore said in a belligerent tone.

It was a struggle not to snarl at the man. “Awesome.”

Blairmore turned and walked a couple of steps back to his patient, but stopped and glanced at Con over his shoulder. “Would it be possible to look at her equipment?”

Not fucking likely, but playing nice might help keep the man out of Sophia’s hair. “I’ll see what she says, but she’s determined to identify the pathogen as quickly as possible and might not welcome other inquiries until after that’s done.”

Blairmore didn’t reply, just nodded and went back to his patient.

Con returned to the lab tent to find all her benches organized with analyzers, a centrifuge, a microscope, slides, and other lab tools. “Ready to work?”

“Yes. The blood samples?”

“Dr. Blairmore said he’d get them.”

“Excellent. If this first round of samples doesn’t reveal the pathogen, there are other samples I’m going to need.”

“Oh?”

“Cerebral spinal fluid, a lung biopsy, and I’d like tissue samples from some of the dead to rule out or definitively identify certain diseases.”

“Which diseases?”

“The list is long.” She raised a brow. “You were there when Max and I discussed it and came up with eighteen possibilities.”

“Yeah, but now you’ve seen the sick. Can’t you narrow it down a little?”

She shook her head. “I make no assumptions, I deal only in facts.” She looked at the hospital tent. “Whatever this is, it’s deadly. The records Dr. Blairmore showed me are frightening. There aren’t any survivors.”

“What?”

“Every patient who has gotten sick has died within twenty-four to thirty-six hours.”

Holy fuck. “That’s not good.”

What was worse was the determination on Sophia’s face. She was going to figure this shit out or die trying. He’d never backed away from a battle before, but he wanted to abandon this one. Pack Sophia up and get her the fuck out of here.