Chapter 10
Kenzi
"Don't move."
Two words, and I freeze so completely I forget I'm mid-stride across an empty parking lot toward a rental car, one foot barely off the ground, like a video game character somebody has paused.
For one ridiculous second, my brain actually supplies the thought that I should probably stay this way until somebody hits unpause.
Then training or whatever strange survival instinct I've apparently acquired over the last twenty-four hours, kicks in, and I lower my foot slowly.
"Talk to me," I say, quiet, barely moving my mouth, because Dozer has gone very still beside me in a way that means something is going on and whatever it is, isn’t good.
"Rooftop. Northeast corner. Don't look at it."
I do not look at it. This takes considerably more willpower than I would have predicted, because every instinct I own wants to snap my head toward whatever he's clocked, catalog it, understand it, turn it into information I can work with the way I work with everything else in my life. Not looking feels like standing blindfolded at the edge of a cliff and waiting to hear if I’ll be pushed off or not when I could step backwards. My eyes stay straight ahead.
"Sniper?"
"Possible. Maybe scouting. Maybe not us at all.
" His voice stays level, but I've learned enough of his register by now to hear the meaning behind it. I am taking this extremely seriously and choosing my words so you don't panic. For the record, it does not stop me from feeling the exact thing he's trying to prevent. My pulse kicks harder. I hate not knowing. I hate that there is an entire rooftop somewhere behind me containing information my brain desperately wants to see and understand. I am able to figure out exactly what it is that I don’t like. Being helpless and out of control. I can’t do a damn thing in this situation to control the outcome and that… that’s what I really hate.
"What do I do?"
"Exactly what I tell you. Nothing else."
I have never in my life been good at that instruction.
I've spent thirty-one years being the person who gathers her own data, forms her own conclusions, and acts on them without waiting for somebody else's permission.
It's gotten me through nine years of government contracts, roughly four hundred crime scenes, more computer systems than I can remember, and one truly spectacular custody battle over my own career that I won by outworking everyone in the room. None of that prepares me to stand in a parking lot with my heart beating out of my chest, doing absolutely nothing because doing nothing is apparently the smart move. I have never once in my life found doing nothing to be the smart move. I’m a doer, damn it.
"Left, slow," Dozer says. "Toward the dumpster. Don't run."
I walk, slowly, every step feeling like it takes an hour, my shoulder blades aware of that rooftop in a way that has nothing to do with actual information and everything to do with pure animal dread.
I can't see the threat. I can't measure it.
I can't turn it into a fact I can hold and examine, and I hate that more than I hate the fear.
Fear is manageable when it has workable data, give me a body, a weapon, a computer, a photograph, a blood pattern, and I can work with it, I can make fear sit still long enough to dissect it.
This is different. This is a question mark with a possible gun aimed at me.
"Behind the dumpster. Now."
I go, crouching in the narrow gap between a dumpster and a chain-link fence, breathing harder than the walk should justify.
The dumpster smells like old fryer grease and bad seafood, which is a sentence I never expected to think while hiding from a potential sniper, but apparently my brain is committed to maintaining its usual level of weirdness under pressure.
Dozer crouches down beside me, weapon up, eyes fixed on the gap in the fencing that gives him a partial line toward the rooftop.
He is close, too close, technically, close enough that I can feel the heat of his shoulder against mine, close enough that one wrong movement would put us into each other's personal space.
Normally, that would be distracting. Right now, it is strangely reassuring.
"Tell me you have eyes on something," I whisper.
"I have eyes on the building."
"That is technically not what I asked."
"I know."
I glance at him. He doesn't look back. I should be annoyed. Instead, a tiny, hysterical part of me thinks, Of course he knows.
"How long do we wait?" I ask.
"As long as it takes."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I've got."
I hate it. Here I am, folded behind a dumpster in a parking lot in some state I couldn't name without checking my phone, waiting to find out if there’s a bad guy on a roof aiming a weapon at me and there’s nothing I can do.
I feel panic start to build. I wrap my arms around myself and force my breathing slower.
In for four. Hold. Out for four. The same trick I use before difficult testimony, before walking into a morgue, before opening a file containing something I already know I'm going to hate. It works. Mostly.
"I don't do well with being helpless," I say, because the silence is doing worse things to me than the talking would.
"So I’ve noticed."
I turn my head toward him. "That sounded suspiciously like criticism."
"It wasn't."
"Good. Because I am emotionally fragile right now."
His mouth twitches. It's so small I almost miss it. Almost. "You're not emotionally fragile."
"I'm hiding behind a dumpster."
"So am I."
I stare at him for half a second. "That's actually a very good point."
"I have those occasionally."
"Terrifying. Maybe the ambush did kill you and this is your ghost. That would explain the sudden personality development."
This time, I know I see it, the corner of his mouth moves. Barely. But it moves. And for one stupid second, the fear loosens its grip.
Then the rooftop comes back into my awareness. So does Reyes. So does the motel. So does my brother. The words come before I can decide whether I want to say them. "After my brother died, everyone wanted to manage me."
Dozer doesn't move. Doesn't look away from the fence. Doesn't tell me he's sorry. That alone makes it possible to keep going.
"Manage me," I continue. "People kept telling me how to grieve.
When to grieve. Whether I was doing it right.
Like grief was a checklist somebody else got to grade.
" My throat tightens. "I hated it so much I stopped letting anyone help with anything.
Ever. For years." I stare at the gravel beneath my boots.
"I got very good at doing things myself so nobody could tell me I was doing them wrong. "
Dozer is quiet for several seconds. Then he says, "This isn't that."
I look at him.
"I'm not managing you. I'm keeping you alive until it's safe to move. There's a difference."
"Feels similar from down here."
"It's not." His eyes finally meet mine, steady, uncompromising. "You're not helpless. You're outgunned in one specific category, right now, in this exact parking lot. That's not the same thing as being helpless."
Something catches in my chest.
"Tomorrow it'll be a different category," he continues, "and you'll be the one keeping both of us alive."
I stare at him, his words land harder than I expect.
Not because they are soft, but because there's no pity in them, no attempt to make me feel better about being scared.
He just gives me the truth. And somehow the truth is better.
He isn't asking me to become smaller so he can protect me.
He's telling me that I can be exactly who I am and still let somebody else carry a piece of the weight when it isn't mine to carry. Nobody has ever said it quite like that. Maybe nobody has ever understood that this is what I've been fighting against all these years. I’m not fighting being protected, I’m fighting being controlled and there’s a difference.
"Okay," I whisper.
He nods once. We wait.
Twelve minutes, maybe fourteen pass by. Time stretches strangely when every second could contain a decision that changes everything.
Every move is a life-or-death choice. Dozer doesn't move much.
His attention stays locked on the building, his weapon steady, his body angled just enough that if something comes from the wrong direction, he'll be between it and me before either of us has time to think.
His shoulder stays pressed against mine. Neither of us moves away.
Eventually, his voice cuts through the quiet. "Clear."
He rises in one smooth motion and offers me a hand.
I look at it for half a second before taking it.
His fingers close around mine. He pulls me to my feet, and for one brief second, we're closer than either of us needs to be. His gaze drops to my mouth. Mine does the same. It lasts maybe a heartbeat, maybe less, but I feel it. The sexual tension between us is there. It’s a shift in the air, the awareness of the other person and the question neither of us are willing to broach.
Then he lets go.
"Movement stopped," he says. "Might've been nothing. We're not testing that theory here."
"New car?"
"New car."
I nod. "Excellent. Because I was really starting to get attached to this one."
"You don't even know what kind of car it is."
"I know. That's how emotionally available I am." I shrug. He’s not wrong. I haven’t paid a lot of attention to the make or models of the cars we’ve been switching between.
That almost-smile appears again. "Come on."
I let him lead the way this time. No argument, no need to prove I could've found my own path through the lot just as fast. Somewhere in the last fourteen minutes, hiding behind a dumpster with my whole nervous system on fire, I've learned something I didn't expect to learn about the difference between being managed and being protected.
I still hate being helpless. I probably always will.
But I'm starting to understand that accepting protection doesn't make me helpless.
Maybe trust isn't giving somebody else control.
Maybe it's knowing exactly when to hand them the part of the job they can carry better than I can and trusting they'll hand it back when it's mine again.
That is new and terrifying. And, if I'm being completely honest with myself, a little bit addictive.
I follow Dozer toward the new car. I don't look back at the rooftop. I don't need to. For the first time since this nightmare started, I know exactly where I stand.
Beside him. Not behind him. Not beneath him.
Beside him.
And that distinction matters more than I want to admit because it’s exactly where he wants me to be.