Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7
R onan knew the pain Fleur was going through, and although he wanted to help her get through the emotional pit she was in, all he could do was be there for her. He could be the one to hold her hand as she worked through it. Damn, there he went again, picturing them as a unit. It was a concept he’d never bounced around his head before. But with this woman, he couldn’t seem to shake the idea that he was supposed to be the hand she held. He was glad no one could read his thoughts. He was thinking in flowers and hearts, and he wasn’t a flowers or hearts type of guy. What the hell had infected him? She had. Obviously. He mentally rolled his eyes.
True, he wasn’t a doctor by any stretch of the imagination, and his brother Deacon had always told him his empathy tank was usually empty. It wasn’t now. Especially around her. He was guarded, true. But that worked for him. For him to truly care, he had to know people. He had his team and his extended family. Strangers were usually held at arm’s length. Fleur was an obvious exception. Something about her just clicked with him, and yeah, he’d crumbled her assumptions that she was the only one who’d suffered or known people who’d been through hell. But to the woman’s credit, she’d screwed her head on straight and showed up. That single factor told him all he needed to know about her. He’d found that people rarely took responsibility for their actions, offenses, and assumptions by flinging blame and making themselves victims. Fleur realized what she was doing and stopped that shit.
He was impressed with her resilience, which was needed to get through the cluster-fuck of an assignment she was currently working. Not many people would.
“There’s a drawdown here.” He motioned to the rosters he was looking at.
“Yes, we were scheduled to downsize and eventually close. We’ve gone from over ten thousand IDPs to just over four thousand. We moved six thousand people to new camps or into Turkey and through other agencies to countries willing to take them.”
“How long would it take you to move four thousand?”
“Depending on the vehicles we could use and how fast we coordinated their movement …”
He watched as she rolled her bottom lip with her teeth and thought. “Running concurrent convoys with one out and one in, I could get them out in two months, but that would be pushing it. And we don’t have the resources.”
He leaned forward. “What would you need to do that?”
“Ha. Well, more vehicles, drivers, fuel, and some way to contact international organizations willing to help take in the people we can’t place in the other IDP camps.”
If they could determine where the intel was coming from, they could get the vehicles and supplies through Al-Tanf Garrison. The long pole in that tent was figuring out how these particular convoys were targeted if they’d been moving people for over a year. But maybe it wasn’t the “how” they should be looking for. Perhaps they should also look for the “why. ”
“The convoys you were moving this year, were they comprised differently?”
“Comprised? I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“Did you change how many people you moved?”
She shook her head. “Always the same amount of people. Between two and three hundred, depending on status. Families take up more room. They have a few possessions, which takes away seating for others.”
“No changes. Okay, I’ll toss that idea.”
“Which was?” she asked as she wrote names on her tablet.
“Maybe they were targeted because of who you were moving.”
She looked up at him and shook her head. “It is always a mix between families and unattended women and children.”
He leaned back and stared at the duty rosters. He tapped his ear. “Dude, you there?”
“No, it’s me, Tink. Dude is offline chasing satellite intel. What can I do for you, Skipper?” Tink’s Smurf-like voice made him smile.
“Hey, Tink, how was the date?”
“Did Dude tell you guys?”
“Yes,” Wraith said in his low growl.
“I’m going to slap that man silly.” Tink huffed. “I had a wonderful time, and he was a perfect gentleman. Now, can I help you with something?”
Ronan chuckled. “Just make sure he stays a gentleman, and we won’t have any problems. But to answer your question, I need you to check on something for me. Has there been a shift in the events in-country in the last seven or eight months?”
“Political, economic, status of fighting between factions, those types of things?” Tink asked as she typed.
“Roger that,” Ronan confirmed.
“Give me some time. The government there isn’t forthcoming about things that happen within their border. I’ll have to use secondary reports and draw conclusions based on what isn’t happening.”
“You’ve got time, Tink. I’m working a hunch.”
“I’ll get you the report as soon as I can. Anything else?”
“No. That’s it for now. I’m clear.” He tapped the mute button on his comm device.
He glanced at Fleur and jerked back. She was right next to him, staring at his uniform. “Where the heck is your microphone?” She moved his collar.
Laughing, he batted at her hands. “Get off me, woman. ”
She sat back and narrowed her eyes. “Bet you don’t say that very often, do you?”
It took him a second to catch her drift. He threw back his head and laughed. “That would assume I have a woman around, which I don’t.”
She straightened suddenly. “A boyfriend or husband, then?”
He shook his head. “I’m not gay, not married, and don’t have a girlfriend.”
A huge smile spread across her face. “Oh, dang, so sorry to hear that.”
He rolled his eyes. “You, Ms. Buchanan, are trouble.”
She shrugged and turned back to her stack of papers. “I have a feeling you know how to handle trouble.”
Oh, he did, and he’d have no problem handling her. “I’m very adept.”
She glanced over at him and gave him a long up-and-down look. “I’m sure you are.”
Wraith came over the comms. “Skipper, I’ve handed out assignments. Checking on militia posts. Introducing myself.”
Ronan tapped his ear. “Copy that.”
“Back to work.” He nodded at her pile of papers.
“Killjoy, " she said under her breath then returned to her tasks. He chuckled, wrote down the names of the people working in the comm center on Tuesday, and flipped to the next page. As it stood now, he’d split his team into shifts. Wolf and Stryker were on ten at night to six in the morning. Jug was on the swing shift, working from three to eleven, and he and Wraith worked the day shift.
He glanced at his sheet and noticed one name consistently worked on Tuesday. Adil Abdo. He leaned over and looked at Fleur’s list. “Adil,” he said out loud.
“It can’t be him. He’s worked with us since I’ve been here. He’s a local national who lives south of here, and he has a clearance. That’s why he works in the comms tent.” She put her pen down and rubbed her eyes. “It can’t be him. He works five days a week, so it makes sense that he would work the same days.”
“I’m not saying he did anything wrong. We’re just gathering intel at this point.” Ronan leaned back and tapped his ear again. “Tink?”
“Yes, sir?” she answered immediately.
“Please give me all the information you can on a local national, Adil Abdo. He works here at the IDP camp and has a clearance.”
“Ah …” Tink hesitated and then spelled the man’s name. “Is that correct? ”
“Yes.”
“And he has a foreign national clearance?” she asked.
He cocked his head. “Yes, he does. Tink, what’s up?”
“His file is flagged. Any questions have to go through Alpha. If this is an emergency, I can wake him up.”
“No. It's not an emergency. Put a message through to him that I need to speak to him about the guy.”
“Will do, and thank you for not making me wake him up.”
“He isn’t cranky, is he?” He’d give his uncle all kinds of shit for being pissy to his operator.
“Oh, no, but once I called … someone … in the middle of the night, and they were obviously in the middle of something.”
Ronan laughed. “Tell me who, Tink. I have to know.”
“No, sir. I will not. That will go to my grave with me. I was mortified.”
Ronan laughed again. “All right, I won’t push. That’s all I need.”
“Yes, sir. The message has been sent. I’m clear.”
He touched his ear again and looked over at Fleur, who was scanning the front of his uniform. “Still looking for a microphone?”
She lifted her eyebrows and nodded. “I’ll find it. It’s kind of a personal challenge at this point. What did they say about Adil?”
“His file is flagged, and I need to talk to my superior if I want information.”
“Is that bad?”
Ronan shook his head. “No. It could mean any number of things. None of which I’m worried about in the slightest.” Most likely, he’d interacted with Guardian and was protected in some fashion. “If he’s a problem, that information would have been relayed immediately.”
He saw her relief. “I’m glad. He’s a nice kid.”
“Kid?” And that was surprising.
“Guy. For some reason, he strikes me as young, but I suck at ages.” She shrugged her shoulder.
“If I wasn’t here, what would you do now?” Ronan collected his half of the duty rosters.
“There’s always something to do. I go shelter to shelter to make sure everyone has been registered through the admin tent. We have some resources we can give the ones coming out of abuse. Tammara, the camp counselor, will talk with them about coping and how to deal. For those who’re pregnant, we try to identify them and help. We can provide vitamins and possibly extra rations. We try desperately to keep track of everyone, but as I said before, people come and go. We can’t hold them here against their will.”
“Have you ever left the camp to retrieve people in trouble?” He knew she had. When she’d first arrived in the country, she was reprimanded for going close to the conflict zone and removing innocents in the area. That was included in his file on her.
She groaned. “Yes. But believe me, I won’t do that again. I came this close to losing my job after being here for less than a week.” She pinched her fingers together. “But I won’t apologize for what I did. We were able to get sixty people out of the area.”
What she didn’t tell him was that the traffickers had caught her, and if it weren’t for a bombing barrage, she probably wouldn’t be alive. That incident had allowed her to escape. His report on Fleur was extensive. All the Americans who worked at this camp had files, and he had to open his phone and tab in the name for it to come up. Each of his men had the information. None of them were in the dark. Knowledge was power, and shared knowledge was a tactical advantage when working as a team .
“So, your primary mission is …” He wanted to understand what it was she did.
“Anti-trafficking. I make sure the people we register with us are accounted for, and if they’re transported to another IDP camp, their paperwork follows them.” She stood up and walked over to her bookshelf where binder after binder lined the wooden structure. She took one down. “Each page is a person.” She flipped the paper and sighed. “The ones with the red ‘X’”—she showed him the page she was looking at—“are people who have left us. The ones who are highlighted disappeared without letting us know they were going. The ones with the red square by their name were lost during convoys. Some died during childbirth. Too young for their bodies to be able to deliver. Some died because of wounds sustained as they fled. Others come in and stayed and never left. Well, until we were told our camp would be closed. A lack of funding is what they said.” She closed the book softly and put it back on the shelf. “I keep records of all of them. The gaining camp gets a copy of these, not the original.”
She sighed and leaned against the main post in the tent. “I’ve arranged for emergency transportation of people out of conflict areas.” She rolled her eyes. “The right way, and I sent convoys to pick them up. But lately, there hasn’t been anyone informing us where the conflict is brewing or if any people need emergency evacuation. I was told I would work with local partners to coordinate rescue operations that targeted traffickers. That’s never happened.” She pulled her thick braid over her shoulder and played with it as she looked out the hazy plastic window. “I was so ready to make a difference when I accepted this job.”
Ronan stood and walked over to her. He once again put his finger under her chin, directing her eyes up to him, and no, he wouldn’t stop touching her. She was soft, beautiful, and had a heart as big as this fucking conflict. Unfortunately, the world had taken a toll on her, and he could feel her bruised soul from where he’d been sitting across the room. “You make a difference. How many people have you logged, transferred, fed, cared for, and befriended since you’ve been here?”
She blinked up at him. “I don’t know.”
He looked over at the binders. “Thousands. Your touch has affected the lives of thousands of people and given them a way to go forward. You’ve made a difference. Looking from an optic that focuses on the immediate past is a fallacy. You've had an impact since the day you walked into this camp. Don’t sell yourself short.”
A sweet smile spread across her full lips. “You are so utterly unexpected in the best possible way.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “How’s that?” Yes, he was too close, and yes, they were whispering, but fuck it. The woman had made it more than obvious she was interested in him, and he wasn’t going to deny she was immensely tempting and sexy in a girl-next-door type of way. Which, at the moment, happened to be his favorite type of sexy.
She placed her hand on his chest. “Most people wouldn’t see what you’ve seen. Most would be entrenched in their lives and move through this camp dealing with their assigned problem or task. You see everything.”
“Everything.” He dropped his eyes to her lips and then back up. She toed up, and he took the invitation. His lips found hers, and fuck him standing, they were just as soft as they looked. He lifted and waited for her to open her eyes. “This can’t lead to anything.”
She smiled up at him, her eyelids heavy. “I already told myself that exact thing. You’ll be here for a couple of months. What’s wrong with having a friend for that time? ”
“Just a friend?” He lowered to her lips and licked them. She sighed and opened for him. Holy hell. Was it possible to fucking know the woman would taste like this? He did. God, he knew she would be so fucking sweet. He felt her arms go around his neck, and his cock had woken the fuck up. Yeah, it so wasn’t the time or place for what they were doing. He lifted and glanced at the tent flap. “Not here and not now.” Shit, was that his voice? He sounded like he’d eaten fucking gravel.
She blinked and then glanced at the flap, too. “Shit.” She licked her lips and dropped to her heels. “I’m … wow. I’m not sorry, but …”
“Yeah.” He ran his hands through his hair and drew a shaky breath. “My fault.” He drew a deep breath and put some space between him and the sexual accelerant next to him. The chemistry between them was uncontrolled at the moment.
“It takes two.” She lifted her hand to her lips. “Wow.”
“You said that.” He walked back to where he’d put his helmet.
“Yeah, but it bears repeating.” She plopped back down on her chair.
“I’m going to …” He nodded toward the exit flap.
She stood up. “Are you upset? ”
Upset? Try harder than a diamond and ready to drill. He chuckled. “No, not upset. Dinner tonight?”
She nodded. “I’d like that.”
He winked at her and ducked out of the tent. As he put his helmet on, he drew a deep breath. Fuck, that was … exceptional. He rolled his shoulders and headed to their camp. He was sure there was something he could be doing, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what. Maybe that was because every fluid ounce of his blood was occupied elsewhere and not currently in his brain.