Chapter 15
Dozer
The lab contact's intel puts our next contact two counties over, and getting there means crossing an active rail yard at three in the morning, which is exactly the kind of plan I hate. There’s too many blind corners, too much noise cover for anyone tracking us to close distance without warning, and enough steel between us and the horizon to make every sightline feel like a bad joke.
I don’t like it and it is not where I would have chosen to do this at.
Turns out, I hate it for good reason. We're maybe a third of the way across, weaving between stationary freight cars in the dark, when the first shot cracks off metal six feet from Kenzi's head.
"Down."
I have her behind a rail car's undercarriage before the second shot lands, my body between her and the open ground on instinct that doesn't need instruction.
Her shoulder hits my chest for half a second before she drops, and that half second is enough for me to register the warmth of her through my shirt, the quick breath against my neck, the fact that I would rather take the next round myself than hear one hit her.
"How many?" she asks, already working the problem instead of panicking, which I note with pride. She impresses me.
"Don't know yet. Stay here."
"Dozer—"
"I said stay here."
She goes quiet. Not because she's scared, but because she's listening. I've learned that difference with her.
I move before she can argue further, low and fast, using the freight cars as cover the way I've used crowds and corridors and every other piece of terrain this job has thrown at me. The yard is a maze of steel and gravel. I prefer terrain I’ve scoped out myself and know.
I don’t know this railyard and it’s frustrating how it’s laid out.
Twenty feet feels like fifty. Fifty can disappear in a heartbeat.
Another shot cracks. I catch the muzzle flash this time.
Then another. Two shooters positioned wrong for coordination, which tells me they aren't a trained team.
I doubt they have any military background or formal training, likely local muscle.
Hired fast, sent to slow us down rather than finish the job.
Slow us down while the trained men catch up.
That makes them dangerous in a different way.
Trained shooters are predictable, but amateurs with guns are chaos, and chaos gets people hurt.
I close on the first one from an angle he hasn't accounted for and end it fast. The second gets a shot off before I reach him. Heat tears across my left side, sharp enough to steal half a breath, more impact than pain. Then pain catches up. I finish him anyway.
"Clear," I call, and hear Kenzi moving before I've finished the word. I turn and find her crossing the open ground toward me at a dead run despite every instinct that should have kept her exactly where I'd left her.
"You're hit."
"I'm fine."
"You're bleeding through your shirt, that is not the same as fine, that is the opposite of fine, sit down."
"I said I'm—"
"Dozer." There's something in the way she says my name that stops the argument before it starts. Command. She’s not going to take no for an answer.
I look at her and realize she's got one hand already out for my arm.
I give it to her. She gets a grip just above my elbow, fingers firm around muscle, and pulls me toward a low equipment box like she's done this before and has no interest in negotiating with the man currently leaking blood onto his shirt.
Something about being handled by her should irritate me. It doesn't. I sit. I know she’s worked for the DOD and has been on a lot of scenes in the past. From how she is moving, I expect I’m not the first gunshot wound she’s seen.
"Let me see."
I lift my shirt. She peels it back from the wound with hands that aren’t shaking at all. Her fingertips brush my ribs as she examines the wound. It's barely a touch, but it still feels like more.
"It’s just a graze," she says with an exhale, already digging through her bag for the field kit. "Deep enough to need cleaning, not deep enough to need more than that if we do it right. You're lucky."
"Wasn't luck. Bad shooter."
"Bad shooter, lucky Dozer. Both things can be true." She looks up at me then, one eyebrow raised. I almost smile. Almost.
“We don’t have to do this now. We should move.”
“No.” She gives me the same one word answer I gave her the first morning of the mission and goes back to work.
The antiseptic burns like hell, but I don't react. Her face is inches from my side, concentration hard. A strand of hair has fallen loose near her cheek. I want to reach out and move it for her. I don't. That would be a mistake. There are several reasons why.
"Hold still."
"I am."
"You're tightening your stomach." She corrects.
"I'm breathing."
"You're breathing like you're trying to win an argument with your abdominal muscles."
I look down at her. "That's not a thing." The phrases this woman comes up with. Perhaps she should be a writer instead of a painter.
"It is now."
She presses gauze against the wound, and I feel her palm settle briefly against my side to hold the pressure. She is completely unaware of the damage that small contact is doing to my ability to think about anything except her hand. Or maybe she's aware. Kenzi notices everything.
"You're staring," she says without looking up.
"I'm watching what you're doing."
"That's a very professional answer, even if it’s not true.”
"It is."
"Sure..."
She wraps the gauze tight enough to hold without cutting circulation, fingers moving with practiced precision.
I watch her hands because watching her face feels too obvious…
and there’s a good chance that if I watch her face I’m going to do something that can’t be done in the middle of a mission.
I’m going to grab my asset and kiss the hell out of her.
That’s a complication we don’t need amid all these other complications.
The thought affects me in ways it shouldn’t and I jerk away from her right as she applies more pressure.
"You know," she says, "for a man who spends most of his time keeping other people alive, you're a genuinely terrible patient when it comes to yourself."
"I'm not being difficult."
"You're sitting there like agreeing to be treated is admitting a personal defeat."
"It's not."
"Could've fooled me."
She smooths the edge of the tape down, then leaves her fingers there for one second longer than necessary.
Neither of us moves. Her eyes lift to mine, and the rail yard seems suddenly much quieter than it was a minute ago.
There's gunfire residue in the air, along with the scent of diesel.
The wind rustles around us and the scent of her shampoo, faint and completely out of place in all of it, reaches me.
"You okay?" she asks. The question isn't about the wound. I know it.
"Are you?" I ask.
Her mouth curves slightly. "Deflection."
"Some call it care.” She looks away first. I let her.
"There," she says, taping off the last of the gauze. "You'll live. Probably scar. Add it to the collection, I'm sure."
"Thanks."
"Don't thank me yet. I'm going to need you to actually rest for more than four minutes, which I already know is not a thing you do."
"I rest."
"You sit while you clean and reload weapons. That's not resting. That's a different kind of working."
I don't have an argument for that, mostly because it's true.
She starts packing the kit, but I catch her wrist before she can pull her hand away.
The movement is instinctive. Her skin is warm beneath my fingers.
She looks down at my hand, then back at me.
For a second, neither of us says anything. I should let go. I don't.
"You're not fragile," I say. Her expression changes. "I've been treating you like you needed protecting from everything. You don't. You needed someone to actually let you prove it."
Her breath catches, almost too quiet to hear. "Yeah," she says. "I did."
I release her wrist slowly. The absence of her skin against my palm is more noticeable than it should be. She zips the kit closed but doesn't move away immediately. Neither do I.
There are things sitting between us now that neither of us has named.
The attraction isn't new. I'd been aware of it for longer than I wanted to admit.
What is new is the trust wrapped in it. The certainty that if I hand her something important, she won't drop it.
The knowledge that if I get hurt, she'll put her hands on me and make damn sure I stay standing. Attraction can be ignored. Trust and whatever this is… this realness between us… can’t.
"You scared me," she says quietly.
I look at her. "Sorry."
Her eyebrows rise. "That was almost an apology."
"That was an apology. Don't get used to it."
A real smile breaks across her face.
She stands and offers me her hand. I take it.
Her fingers close around mine and then she pulls me upright, and we stand too close.
Close enough that I can feel her breath, close enough that if either of us moves an inch, this stops being something we can pretend to ignore.
Her eyes drop briefly to my mouth. Then back to my eyes.
I know that look. I also know exactly how badly I want to answer it.
I want to taste her. I want to feel her lips pressed against mine. I want…
Instead, I step back. "Move."
She exhales, almost a laugh. "Romantic."
"Not trying to be."
"That's your problem."
Maybe. Or maybe it's hers too. Or maybe I can’t. I can’t be romantic while we are running away from people who want us dead.
We get moving again ten minutes later. She checks the bandage twice before we reach the car, then once more when we're inside. I let her. I even let her keep her hand on my side for the last check, her fingers pressing lightly beside the dressing while she makes sure there's no fresh blood.
"Good?" I ask.
"Good."
I start the engine. The rail yard disappears behind us, swallowed by darkness and distance, but the feel of her hand stays with me. Some things are easier to survive than others. A bullet, apparently, is one of them.
Her touching me like she cares whether I make it out alive? That might be the thing that kills me.