Chapter 17
Dozer
Hunter's contact reroutes us again the next morning.
The lab two counties over has been compromised.
Forced entry, according to the message, although nobody stole anything worth stealing, which tells me immediately what the break-in was really about.
Somebody wanted access, not equipment. Somebody is still one step ahead of us, and I don't like thinking too hard about what that means, because every time I do, the list of people who could be feeding information to our pursuers gets shorter.
The new location is an abandoned regional hospital an off-duty coroner used years ago as an unofficial overflow site, back when the county ran out of room and apparently decided the solution was to stop asking questions about where the dead went.
I don't like it on sight. There are way too many entry points, windows and structural neglect.
The kind of building that's been left to rot exactly long enough to become genuinely dangerous without anyone needing to shoot at us.
The number of hazards from broken glass to rotting floorboards is high.
Kenzi walks in like she owns the place.
"Careful," I say, sweeping my flashlight across a ceiling tile hanging by one corner, water damage spreading dark and uneven above it. "Structure's compromised in places."
"I've worked in worse."
"You've worked in an abandoned hospital before?"
"I've worked in a flooded basement morgue during a hurricane evacuation with a generator that cut out twice." She steps over a section of collapsed drywall without breaking stride. "This is basically a spa day by comparison."
I look at her. She looks back. "Don't judge."
"I'm not." I reassure her.
"You are."
"I'm assessing." And admiring. She’s something else.
"That's your word for judging."
"Works for both."
She smiles, and for half a second the building feels less like a dead thing around us.
I move ahead, weapon low, flashlight cutting through the dark.
She stays close enough that I can hear the quiet rhythm of her boots behind me.
I don’t know how she does it but she never crowds me and she doesn’t lag behind either, she’s always the perfect distance away.
Somehow, she just knows the cadence we need to be in, it’s like we’re in sync.
I've started noticing that. I've started noticing a lot of things about her that have nothing to do with the mission.
The deeper we go, the worse the building gets.
Exam rooms stripped of anything valuable years ago.
Hallways littered with broken tile and plaster.
Evidence that a homeless camp had been set up in here for a while.
There’s rusted gurneys abandoned against walls that have proof someone in recent years slept on them.
The particular silence empty medical buildings seem to specialize in, the kind that presses against the ears because the place was designed for voices, footsteps, alarms, people coming and going, and now there's nothing. I don’t believe in ghosts or the supernatural, but if I did, I’d be certain they lived here.
The place feels exactly like what a haunted worn down hospital should feel like. It’s eerie as fuck and I don’t like it.
Most people get quieter in places like this. Kenzi gets more confident. It’s like she’s comfortable here or something. Her flashlight moves in slow, deliberate sweeps, catching details most people wouldn't notice unless they were specifically looking for them.
"This used to be a records room," she says, stopping beside an open doorway.
I scan the room. Empty shelving covered in dust and a few collapsed boxes. "How can you tell?"
"Shelf spacing." She steps inside, crouching near the floor. "See the dust lines?"
I do.
"Somebody pulled whole sections out at once. Not gradually. Look at the difference here." She points toward the shelving. "That section hasn't moved in years. Those were removed together."
"Records?" I ask.
"Probably."
"Probably." I repeat.
She looks at me and I almost smile.
"Don't start,” she warns.
"I'm not starting anything."
"You just used my word." She glares at me. It’s adorable.
"Probably."
She shakes her head and moves on. I follow, thinking about how well we work together. She sees patterns. I see threats. Between us, we're starting to build a picture neither of us could see alone. That thought stays with me longer than it should.
We find a former exam room deep enough into the building to be defensible. I clear it before I let her settle in, checking closets, corners, the space behind the door, the ceiling access panel, every place somebody could wait long enough to make our lives considerably shorter.
Kenzi watches me finish. "You're going to check under the examination table, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"There's a skeleton under there, isn't there?"
"Wouldn't surprise me."
"Good. At least someone here is committed to the theme." She never fails to surprise me.
I crouch anyway. Nothing. When I straighten, she's smiling, not the big grin she uses when she's trying to annoy me, something smaller, softer. It catches me off guard. So does the fact that I want to keep it there.
She sets the field kit on a counter and starts laying out what she needs. Gloves. Evidence bags. Tools. Labels. I lean against the wall opposite her.
"You're really not bothered by this."
She looks up. "By what?"
"The building."
"Not particularly."
"Nothing about this bothers you? Death? The decay? Empty rooms that used to hold people who didn't make it…" I glance around the room. "Most people flinch from places like this."
She's quiet for a moment, her fingers resting on the edge of the kit. I've learned that silence means she's deciding whether to give me a joke or the truth. She gives me the truth.
"I don't flinch from it because somebody has to be the one who doesn't." Her voice is quieter now. "Everybody I've ever worked on used to be somebody's whole world. Somebody's kid. Somebody's mother. Somebody's—" She stops, just for a second. "Somebody's brother."
I don't miss it, the look of sadness in her eyes or the way her voice catches.
"If I flinch," she continues, "if I treat them like they're just a thing that used to be a person, then nobody's left in the room who remembers they mattered. I want to be that person for them. The person who remembers how much value they brought into this world."
Something settles in my chest. I'd thought her ease around the dead came from being able to separate herself from them. Perhaps with an emotional distance or maybe professional compartmentalization. That’s the same armor most of us put on if we stay in this business long enough.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to compartmentalize to stay alive.
But, with Kenzi, I was wrong. She doesn't feel less, she’s not setting it aside for later or detaching herself from it all together.
She feels everything and puts it somewhere useful, in giving the dead a voice.
“I guess it’s morbid,” she says.
"That's not morbid," I say.
She gives me a small shrug. "Most people don't see it that way."
"I'm not most people."
Her eyes meet mine. "No," she says softly. "You're really not."
The room changes. Not dramatically, nothing moves, no music starts playing in the background, nobody suddenly decides we're in a different story.
It's just her looking at me, and me looking back, and the knowledge sitting between us that neither of us is talking about what happened in that motel room last night.
Her hand shifts on the counter. Mine is resting on the edge of the examination table. There's maybe six inches between them. I don't move. Neither does she. For a second, I wonder if she notices the distance the same way I do.
Then she reaches for a flashlight, and the moment breaks.
Good. Probably. We don’t have time to see this through. Not right now. But damn it. There better be a time. If this tension between us keeps building, it is going to explode.
I clear my throat. "You mentioned your brother before, said after he died everyone wanted to manage you."
Her hand stops. I immediately know I've pushed farther than I meant to.
"I did."
I nod once. "You don't have to tell me about it, if you don’t want to. Just know I’m willing to listen if you want to."
Her eyes stay on mine for a long second. "That's the thing about you, Dozer."
"What?"
"You say that like you actually mean it."
"I do."
"I know."
She goes back to the kit. I let her. Some things need to be offered, not extracted. I've learned that much about her. Maybe I've learned it because I'm learning her.
Outside the room, the hospital settles around us with a low groan from somewhere deep in the walls. Kenzi looks toward the doorway. I automatically move closer, not enough to crowd her, enough that our shoulders nearly touch.
She glances at me. "You're doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"Protecting."
"Occupational hazard."
"Maybe."
Her fingers brush mine when she reaches for the evidence tray. Neither of us pulls away immediately. It's barely a touch, a second, maybe less. It still feels like a warning shot. She looks down at our hands, then back at me. I release her first.
"We've got work."
"Right."
She turns toward the evidence. I take the door. It's what we both know how to do. She catalogs. I watch the entrance.
But something has changed, and neither of us is pretending otherwise.
We're not just two people trying to survive long enough to uncover a leak and protect evidence, anymore.
We're becoming something harder to separate.
Something I don't have a name for yet. Something I don't particularly want to stop.