Chapter 12
Kenzi
The lab contact's building has better security than most banks I've audited, which tells me exactly how much Hunter's favors are worth, and also tells me, within about ninety seconds of trying to get our secure channel back online, that somebody has gotten into our comms architecture before we've even arrived.
"Someone's in the system," I say, laptop open on a borrowed desk in a back room that smells like old coffee and expensive equipment, fingers already moving faster than my mouth for once, which almost never happens.
"Not brute force. This is someone who had legitimate access at some point and either still has it or handed off credentials. "
Dozer stands behind me, close enough that I can feel his attention without turning around.
He's doing what he always does when we're somewhere unfamiliar, watching doors, windows, corners, anything that could become a problem before it actually becomes one.
He's quiet about it. The man could probably stand in the middle of a fireworks factory and look like he's waiting for a bus.
"Can you lock them out?"
"I can do better than lock them out. Give me a minute."
I don't really talk to him anymore after that.
I'm talking to the problem, which is different.
I narrate my process out loud because it helps me think, because somewhere along the way talking to myself became the same thing as talking to the work, and I've stopped being embarrassed about it around most people a long time ago.
Most people. Apparently, Dozer has become a category all by himself, which is irritating and inconvenient and something I'm choosing not to examine while I'm elbows-deep in a compromised communications system.
"Okay. Okay, you're in our relay, that's cute. That's a nice little backdoor somebody built and forgot to patch. Very sloppy. Very fixable—"
A password prompt blinks at me, mocking. I don't blink back.
"It wants a handshake. Fine. We'll shake hands."
"Talk to me," Dozer says.
"I'm talking to the server, not you. There's a difference." My fingers don't stop moving. "And right now we're negotiating, and it is a delicate process, so please do not rush a woman mid-handshake. This isn't how any of this works."
I hum under my breath. I do that. I've been told it's off-key. I don't even realize I'm doing it until the tune cracks slightly on a note that clearly isn't in whatever song I've started.
There it is. The backdoor's actual architecture opens up beneath my hands, laid bare in a way that's elegant and stupid at the same time, which is how most intrusions look when someone clever enough to build them isn't clever enough to hide them from someone who's spent nine years reading exactly this kind of sloppy government-adjacent code for a living.
"Oh, you're kidding me."
Dozer says nothing. I lean closer to the screen.
"No. No, no, no. You did not leave that there."
"Kenzi."
"Someone built a credential relay into the authentication layer and then hard-coded the fallback." I point at the screen even though he can't possibly see what I'm pointing at from where he's standing. "That's not even subtle. That's basically leaving a note that says, please catch me here."
"Kenzi."
"Ninety seconds."
"Kenzi." Something in the way he says my name makes me glance over my shoulder.
He's looking at me with that expression again, the one I still can't quite catalog because it isn't the professional assessment I've gotten used to.
It isn't annoyance, either. There's something warmer underneath it, something dangerously close to amusement.
"What?"
"Nothing." He pauses. "Keep going."
I narrow my eyes at him, because I'm allowing this man to distract me while someone is actively sitting inside our communications architecture, which feels like a personal failure on several levels. Then turn back to the laptop.
"Ninety seconds," I mutter. "Maybe less if you stop saying my name like that."
"Like what?"
"Like this is funny."
"It is a little funny."
I don't look up, but I feel the corner of my mouth betray me. "You're not supposed to have opinions about my methodology while I'm mid-hack."
"I'm not commenting on your methodology."
"You're commenting on something."
"I'm observing."
"That's the same thing with better PR."
I hear it then, not quite a laugh, Dozer doesn't really do laughs, at least not out loud, not yet, not that I've caught, but something adjacent to one, a low exhale that carries more warmth than air usually does.
I file the sound away. I have been collecting these little pieces of him without meaning to.
The joke about the cooler. The almost-smile in the truck.
The vending machine run. The way he tells me I'm allowed to not be okay without trying to make me okay.
The way he puts himself between me and danger as naturally as breathing.
Now this. A man who thinks watching me dismantle somebody else's security flaw is funny.
I like that more than I should.
I continue to stare at the screen before my brain can make that observation into something inconvenient.
"There you are," I say. The intrusion is sitting exactly where I expected it to be.
I work through the relay, isolate the credential pathway, and start cutting pieces loose one at a time.
Whoever built this wasn't stupid. That's the problem.
They were smart enough to make the access persistent without making it obvious, which means they expected nobody to look closely enough to understand what they were seeing.
Unfortunately for them, looking closely is basically my favorite thing.
"You're going to regret that firewall," I tell the screen.
"You're threatening the computer now?"
"I'm threatening the person who built it."
"Fair."
My fingers move faster. For several minutes, the only sounds in the room are keys clicking, the hum of equipment, and the occasional quiet shift of Dozer behind me.
I know where he is without looking. I know when he's moved closer to the door.
I know when he's checked the hallway. I know when he's watching me again.
It's strange, realizing how quickly I've learned the language of his silence.
The backdoor closes under my hands with a clean, satisfying finality. I sit back.
"Done."
Dozer steps closer. "They're out?"
"They're out. Channel's clean, rebuilt from scratch, better than it was before somebody broke it."
"How long before they try again?"
"Longer than it'll take us to finish what we're here for, probably.
" I stretch, spine popping in three places that have definitely been sitting hunched over a keyboard for longer than is medically advisable.
"I'm good, but I'm not going to pretend I've made us permanently unhackable.
Just currently unhackable. There's a difference. "
"You keep saying that."
"There usually is." I close the laptop halfway, then stop myself. "People skip that part because it's less satisfying than absolutes. Everything is either safe or dangerous, good or bad, guilty or innocent. Real life is almost never that clean."
He looks at me. Really looks at me.
"What?" I ask him.
"Nothing."
"You're doing the thing again."
"What thing?" He asks.
"The thing where you're impressed and you'd rather set yourself on fire than say so."
"I'm not impressed." He denies.
"You're extremely impressed."
"I'm mildly impressed." At least that’s something coming from him.
"Mildly," I repeat, because apparently two syllables have just become the most entertaining thing I've heard all day. His mouth shifts. Barely. I grin. "Wow."
"What?"
"Nothing. I'm just going to treasure this moment."
"Don't." He demands, crossing his arms over his chest and looking at me.
"Too late."
He gives me a look that should probably make me stop. It doesn't.
I close the laptop and slide it into the bag. "You know, for a man who supposedly doesn't talk much, you're becoming remarkably entertaining."
"I talk when there's something worth saying."
"That was almost charming."
"It wasn't meant to be."
"Those are usually the dangerous ones."
He shakes his head and turns toward the door. "We should move."
There it is. Dozer for I don't know what to do with whatever just happened between us, and the safest available option is logistics.
I'm getting increasingly fluent in that particular language the longer we spend trapped together in cars, motel rooms, rest stops, parking lots, and now back rooms that smell like old coffee and somebody else's poorly patched security architecture.
"Copy that," I say, standing and grabbing my bag. I don't push it. Some wins you take quietly and let sit, the way you'd handle evidence too fragile to examine too roughly before it's ready.
Mildly impressed.
From him, I suspect, that's practically a love letter.
And the truly alarming part is that I'm starting to understand why.