When the camera was pointed away from the clump of trees where she knew Bob was hiding, she took off. She had not realized how dizzy moving around behind the camera had made her feel until she started running. Now, with every step she took the view in front of her seemed to shift. The trees kept moving to the left it seemed, but when she adjusted her direction, they were back to her right. Finally, Patton closed her eyes and just ran with the slope of the hill. After a count of fifteen, she felt her foot catch on something and opened her eyes just in time to watch the forest floor rushing up to meet her. She put her right hand out just in time to scrape a layer of skin off the heel of her palm and do nothing to lessen the impact of the hard ground on her ribcage a split second later. Patton knew that a battle-hardened soldier shouldn’t mind a little fall like this, but damn, it hurt. She wanted nothing more than to scream in pain, but before she could take a breath, Bob was at her side, pressing his hand over her mouth.

Patton took a few deep breaths through her nose and steadied herself, allowing a small adrenaline surge to deaden the feeling in her body from sharp pain to dull ache. In those seconds she also saw that she had made it far enough down the hill to be below the angle of the camera. She nodded to Bob and he lifted his hand.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “I couldn’t let you scream. Just in case someone is out and about.”

“Thanks,” said Patton, pulling herself up into a sitting position. “Not sure I could have stopped myself without you.”

“That was quite the balletic maneuver,” said Bob, unsuccessfully trying to stifle a laugh.

“Very fucking funny,” said Patton. “I’ll be lucky if I didn’t break a rib.”

“So do we have ears?” said Bob.

“If I did my job right,” said Patton, “and I assure you I did, we should be able to hear every phone call and read every text and email. Incoming and outgoing.”

“Good,” said Bob. “Now let’s get the hell out of here before Alex does something stupid.”

Ten minutes later, Patton and Bob had rejoined Alex on the other side of the fence, having used a pair of pliers to close up the cuts in the fence links. A careful patrol would notice the fence had been cut; they had no concern that the patrol they witnessed would notice anything. The entire excursion onto the Fox’s Den property had taken less than thirty minutes. By the time Dietrich and Eva passed by on the seven o’clock patrol, Alex, Bob, and Patton were back at the hotel.

8:00 p.m.

“Shit,” said Patton.

“What is it?” said Franklin.

“Dammit,” said Patton. “I don’t understand what’s wrong.”