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T he rising sound of voices in the hospital tent caught Con’s attention. Motion followed the noise, indistinct and generalized before breaking apart into individuals, all headed toward Sophia’s small lab tent.

The group numbered about eight to ten men, all of whom spoke at once, their hands gesturing in large, abrupt movements that had Con moving to step in front of Sophia and the tent without conscious thought. Smoke, River, Henry, and Stalls joined him.

The group paused about fifteen feet away. Their shouting however, didn’t stop, and Con did his best to sort out the various complaints and demands they had.

The sickness is your fault.

You’re not here to help, you’re here to desecrate the dead.

This woman-child should go home to her husband. Her presence here is an insult.

Go home, Americans. Take the sickness with you.

The men kept yelling, but the messages were the same. They didn’t want American military help and they thought Sophia was too young and female to be of any use.

Con replied in Arabic, though one or two of the men were using a dialect he hadn’t heard before.

“We’re here to diagnose the sickness and treat the sick,” Con told them. “That is all. This woman is a doctor and she won’t desecrate the dead. She needs samples from the sick, the living.”

A couple of the men stopped shouting, but the others didn’t.

This is your fault.

What did you Westerners do to us?

Take your diseased woman away.

Well, shit. He was going to have to shake a stick at them. He lifted his weapon and said, again in Arabic, in a dark, loud voice, “Go back to your families. Now .”

Three or four of the men began backing away, disappearing into the dark. The remaining men held their ground and continued to shout.

How hard was he going to have to shake the stick? He flicked the safety off on his weapon, but before he could do anything else, Sophia stepped forward holding up a vial of blood. She didn’t say anything, didn’t do anything but hold the tube high and in front of her.

The men facing them slowly fell silent, then in the face of Sophia with her blood and the four soldiers with their guns.

The men slowly faded back into the night.

Wow, that was one threat he’d never tried before, and damn if it didn’t do the job.

In the hospital tent, a woman began wailing, her grief a knife in the night, reminding Con that the real enemy was one none of them could see.

Except for the woman standing next to him.

Con glanced at her thigh where her Beretta rested in its holster. “Stay here with the team.”

She raised one brow. “Going somewhere?”

“Yep. Going to see if I can find a volunteer to give you the samples you need.”

“Shouldn’t Dr. Blairmore do that?”

“If he was going to do it, he’d have done it. Someone may have made threats.” Con shrugged. “Whatever the reason, you don’t have what you need to identify the bug that’s killing these people.” He angled his head at the big tent. “I’m going to see if one of them wants to be a hero.”

Despite the four soldiers standing with them, she tucked the tube of blood into a pocket, pulled her gun out, checked to see if her magazine was loaded and slid one bullet into the chamber. “Okay.”

Holy fuck. Did she have any idea how amazing she was? Standing there like a young Valkyrie before her first battle, ready to lay down the law as she knew it.

It was all he could do to keep his hands to himself and walk away from her, walk through the canyon of darkness between them and into the house of dying in front of him.

He pulled a mask out of a pocket, put it on and moved to the center of the large tent, surrounded by hundreds of beds, almost all of them occupied. A few of them with corpses. When he spoke, it was in Arabic.

“There is a doctor over there—” he pointed at Sophia and his men, silhouetted by the light coming from her lab tent “—who is trying to discover what is causing the illness and death here. So far, she’s failed. She needs samples of the stuff you cough up from deep in your lungs. She also needs a tiny bit of the fluid that will need to be taken from your spine. The spinal sample will hurt. I can’t guarantee you will get better, or you will live.” He stopped talking and surveyed the many, many eyes watching him. “But these fluids might be able to tell her what’s killing you. Is anyone willing to give me the things the doctor needs?”

For a moment, the stillness in the tent was absolute.

A hand rose from a row of cots at the outer rim of the tent. “I,” said a man, sounding weak. “I will give.”

Another hand rose and the words were repeated.

Another, and another, until nearly a quarter of the people in the makeshift hospital had their hands in the air.

For the first time since they arrived earlier that morning, Con saw hope on the faces of the dying.

He strode over to Dr. Blairmore, who looked fit to be tied. “Doctor, I’ll send Dr. Perry over to collect the samples she needs from the volunteers.”

“The local headmen were very specific, no more samples...”

“You told us no samples from the dead. These people aren’t dead. At least, that’s what I think it means when someone raises their hand and says in a recognizable language, “ I will give .” What do you think?”

The doctor swallowed hard. “Yes, I suppose...but what if—”

“Doctor, we’ve got enough difficult realities. We don’t need to start worrying about the what ifs .”

Dr. Blairmore leaned close and whispered, “Some of these men are very dangerous.”

“So am I,” Con whispered back.

“If you insult the wrong men,” Blairmore said hoarsely. “We’ll be the targets after you leave.”

“We brought a lot of food with us, Doctor. That will buy a lot of good will.”

The doctor’s sour face only looked more pinched.

Con patted his shoulder then walked past the other man and returned to the lab tent. Sophia was adding supplies from a box to the first aid bag in front of her. “I got you about fifty different volunteers.”

Her jaw dropped. “I only needed two or three.”

He grinned. “Merry Christmas. What do you need to get your samples?”

“I’ve got everything here.” She patted the bag.

“I told that idiot Blairmore you’d be collecting the samples yourself.”

“Idiot?”

“He’s scared to death some warlord is going to shoot him.”

“Is it justified?”

“Only in the sense that if he doesn’t start cooperating, really cooperating, I might shoot him myself.”

Sophia didn’t bat an eyelash. “I’d offer to loan him my body armor, but I don’t think it would fit.”

“Yeah, his hat size is a lot smaller than yours.”

She laughed, a throaty, happy purr that speared him in place and held him immobile. It set fire to his muscles in a way he thought he’d lost a year ago, a fire that carried no grief or worry, a fire that gave him joy and...one hell of an erection.

Fuck.

“So,” she said, her eyes smiling at him. “How are we going to do this?”

“The team can mind the store. You and I are going to get the samples.”

Len met them just outside the hospital tent with a crooked smile. “What did you say to Blairmore? He’s pissed at you.”

“He’s a pansy ass who’s trying to make way too many people happy.”

“Truth.” Len waved them in. “Don’t drink and drive.”

“Yes, Dad.”

Ten feet away, they stopped to put on masks and gloves. Sophia whispered, “I don’t like him.”

“Oh?”

“He’s a cynic.”

Con had to forcibly keep himself from laughing out loud. “And I’m not?”

“You’re different. You give a shit. He doesn’t.”

That made Con pause. “How do you know that?”

“He makes no effort beyond the minimum. He’s got a sarcastic streak that’s the other side of cruel.”

“Whoa, cruel?”

“And he...”

“What?”

“Whenever he looks at me, he looks at my boobs. He doesn’t meet my eyes, like I’m an object to him.” She leaned even closer. “He gives me the creeps.”

“He’s on the job. Sometimes he has to be an asshole. Besides he’s been hanging out with Blairmore for a while now. Maybe it rubbed off.”

She huffed and said, “Fine.”

Con cleared his throat. “I have older sisters, and that’s the second time you’ve said fine . I know what fine really means.”

“Oh, and what does it mean?” she asked, her tone frankly disbelieving.

“Fucked up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional.”

She stopped walking to stare at him. “Really?”

He shrugged. “Sisters.”

She gave him a lopsided smile. “I kind of like it.” Then she frowned. “But I’m still reserving judgment on your friend.”

“Fair enough.”

Several people held up their hands as the two of them walked through the tent. Sophia didn’t hesitate, choosing someone who was coughing and even had spittle on his face. Con spoke to him in Arabic and translated his responses for Sophia. He said yes to the collection of the mucus on his face, but when her hand closed in on his face he yelled and tried to grab Sophia’s hands. Con restrained him by taking his wrists and holding the sick man’s arms away from Sophia.

After she was finished, she retreated quickly and changed gloves, a move Con copied, then went on to another volunteer. Only she didn’t choose as quickly this time. Many of the sick put their hands up again, saying I will give in Arabic, but Sophia seemed to be looking for something specific.

She wasn’t finding it.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“That man, he seemed coherent enough to give consent, but then he tried to grab me.”

“Yeah, it was a little weird, but he’s sick, so...”

“The CSF sample I need to take is very painful. If the patient moves, I could damage their spinal cord. They can’t move once I’ve started.”

Well, shit.

“Come on, let’s talk to Blairmore.”

The doctor was on the other side of the tent and scowled at both of them as they approached.

Sophia explained what happened with the first patient and asked if confusion of this degree was a common symptom of the disease.

Blairmore frowned, but said, “Not all patients show that much confusion, but some do. We’re seeing a lot of seizures.”

“I really need a CSF sample.”

“You think this is a meningococcal infection?”

“I should have seen something come up in the blood samples, but I haven’t. It could be viral. Will you help me get a sample?”

“You don’t understand how dangerous it is to do something the leaders of this camp have refused to allow.” Blairmore glanced at Con, who flashed his teeth. “Plus, you’re a woman. One bodyguard isn’t enough. Ten aren’t enough.”

“They’d kill me for trying to fight this, whatever it is?”

“Yes,” Con said. “They will. You’re a challenge to their authority, no matter how well meaning.”

“Every moment that passes means more people will die.”

An old man approached slowly, stopping a few feet away, but making eye contact with Con.

When Con met his gaze, the man spoke in Aramaic, a language as different from Arabic as Latin was from French. He had to mime not understanding, but the old man wasn’t giving up.

“Doctor?” the man asked, glancing at Sophia.

Con nodded.

The old man gestured for them to follow him.

“Should we go?” Sophia asked.

“He’s speaking a different language than most of the people here. He might have something different to show us too.”

Con and Sophia followed.

The man led them to another part of the tent, the section where the dead were being wrapped in cloth before burial. The old man stopped and put his hand on the head of a body, that of a young woman. He pointed at Sophia then at the body and pantomimed taking something from the body. The motions were made without hesitation.

“Is he giving me permission to take a sample from her?” Sophia asked Con.

“No, I think he’s telling you to do it.”

She glanced around. “Do you think if I did it quickly, would anyone notice?”

“Let’s find out.” Con moved to stand next to the old man and angled himself so he was blocking Sophia from view from the majority of the tent’s occupants.

Con tried asking a few questions, looking to see what words in the languages he knew corresponded to words in Aramaic. From the blank look on the old man’s face, not too many.

Sophia knelt next to the woman, putting her pouch of collection equipment on the floor between her knees. “Can you turn the body?” she asked Con softly.

He complied, using a flashlight as if they were just examining the body for outward signs of disease. Then he tried talking to the old man some more, using a tone that was loud enough and frustrated enough that anyone listening in would think he was trying to ask questions about the woman’s health before she died.

With the woman on her side, Sophia was only visible from the eyes up and she kept those down as if she were praying.

After a couple of minutes of charades, she whispered, “I’m done.”

“Don’t get up yet,” he cautioned her. “Put everything away now, so it doesn’t look like you just took samples from her. Have a look at a couple other bodies too.”

She stayed where she was for several more seconds, then got to her feet and bowed a little to the old man.

She turned and looked down at the body of a boy. She didn’t touch him at all, just examined what she could see with a sharp gaze. “Do you see the sweat?” she asked Con, gesturing at the stained blanket on the cot.

“Yeah.” He glanced around. “They all look like that. Is it from the fever or something else?”

“I don’t know. It just seems excessive, and yet they look dehydrated. See how the eyes are sunken and the lips shriveled.”

“What does it mean?”

She tilted her head to one side and looked at body after body. “I don’t know.” Her voice had a hard edge to it.

Dr. Sophia Perry didn’t like it when she couldn’t understand a disease.