Chapter 18
Kenzi
“This is going to take a minute,” I tell Dozer. “The solution has to have time to work.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to explore.”
“No.”
“No? What do you mean, no? Have you ever heard the phrase a watched pot never boils?”
“No. That is a stupid phrase. Watching it has nothing to do with how long water takes to heat up.”
“You are exasperating,” I tell him.
“Noted.”
“I’m going to explore.” I don’t phrase it as a question.
Five minutes later, I find the file cabinet by accident, which is how most of the best discoveries in my career happen, and I've stopped pretending otherwise just to sound more impressive than I am. My work is impressive enough without having to lie.
I'm crawling through what used to be a records annex when my flashlight catches on something behind a collapsed section of drywall.
At first, I think it's another piece of rusted equipment, but the angle is wrong.
I shove a loose panel aside and uncover metal.
Fireproof. The good kind, the kind designed to survive a building falling down around it.
"Dozer. Come look at this."
He's there in seconds, flashlight cutting across the cabinet, weapon still in his other hand out of habit I now recognize as permanent rather than situational.
"Locked?"
"Not for long." I reassure him.
He looks at me. I look at him. "What?" I ask.
"Nothing."
"That was judgment in your tone."
"Assessment,” he corrects.
"That's your word for judgment."
"It is." At least he’s not lying?
I pull my picks from the side pocket of my bag. "You know, for a man who claims to trust me, you spend a lot of time watching me commit minor crimes."
"Breaking into an abandoned government records cabinet isn't minor."
"Fine. Medium crime."
That gets the smallest shift at the corner of his mouth. I catch it, of course I do, then I turn back to the lock before I can make too much of the fact that making him almost smile has somehow become one of my favorite hobbies.
It takes four minutes. The lock gives with a metallic click, and the drawer comes open with the specific groan of metal that hasn't moved in years. A smell of old paper and mildew rolls out, thick enough to taste.
I lean closer. "Please tell me you smell that."
"I smell it."
"Good. I was worried the last few days had finally broken me."
"They might have."
"Helpful."
Inside are folders. Actual paper folders, water-damaged at the edges but still legible, stacked in neat rows like someone took the time to organize them and then trusted the building to keep their secrets. I go very still.
"Okay."
Dozer shifts closer. "What?"
"I don't know yet." Which is the truth.
I pull the first folder and photograph the cabinet before touching anything else.
Then the second. Then the third. I work methodically, documenting everything, because finding something important is only half the job.
Proving where it came from is the other half, and I've spent too many years watching good evidence get destroyed by people who thought the excitement of discovery mattered more than preservation.
Dozer watches without interrupting. He knows better by now.
The first records are medical. The next are trial documents. Then consent forms. My pulse changes. I flip another page. And another.
"This isn't just old files left behind in a random building," I say, mostly to myself, because the words need somewhere to go. "Pharmaceutical trial records. Falsified consent forms. Patients who were never told what they were actually part of."
Dozer steps closer. "Show me."
I angle the flashlight so he can see. A government contract number is stamped across the corner of several documents. Official. My stomach drops.
"And there it is."
"What?"
"That." I tap the stamp with one gloved finger. "This contract number ties oversight back to a government agency. The same agency that was supposed to be protecting the people in these files."
Dozer studies the page. "You're sure?"
"I'm sure the stamp is real. I'm not yet sure what the contract authorized.
" I flip to another document. "But I'm going to find out." The number looks oddly familiar. Is it the number I saw at the morgue with our dead body? The statistical possibility that this abandoned file cabinet is connected to our evidence is extremely low, if not impossible. Unless, one of Hunter’s contacts is our leak and they sent us to this building because they knew it would be abandoned and an easy place to… No, I won’t think about that.
Dozer goes quiet. Not his normal quiet, the operational one, the one where I can practically see the calculations moving behind his eyes.
Has he come to the same conclusion that I have?
Us being here is not an accident? I start thinking things through again starting with an ambush.
The motel. The fake FBI agents. The contaminated evidence.
The compromised labs that shouldn’t have been compromised.
The people who keep finding us no matter how many times we change direction.
It all rearranges itself in my head. This isn't somebody trying to bury one witness.
They're trying to bury a history. A system.
Years of people signing paperwork and deciding certain lives were acceptable losses.
This could be the reason everything has been happening.
Someone powerful needs to hide something that could keep them from being re-elected or cost their company billions in lawsuits.
It would all track. They wouldn’t have counted on us finding this old filing cabinet, because I doubt they even know it exists.
This building is more than an abandoned facility, it’s where crimes were committed.
"How many years?" Dozer asks.
I scan the dates. "At least eight."
He swears quietly.
"That's the professional version," I say.
His eyes come to mine. "Do you have an unprofessional one?"
"Several."
That almost-smile again. Then it disappears.
I keep reading. Names. Dates. Trial numbers.
Patient histories. Death certificates that don't match the medical records attached to them.
Families, notified weeks after the official date of death.
I know we should probably get out of here before the bad guys come and at this point, I have no doubt that they will be coming. I scan quicker.
One file contains a handwritten note clipped behind a falsified consent form. I read it twice. My hands slow.
"What's wrong?"
I stare at the page. "Nothing."
"Kenzi." I hate how quickly he can hear the lie now.
I swallow. "This is somebody's person." The words come out quieter than I intend. I look down at the folder. "Every name in here, they are someone’s family.”
Dozer doesn't move or demand I hurry. He just stands beside me, close enough that his shoulder brushes mine when I shift the folder. That tiny contact steadies me more than it should.
I breathe in. "This is what people forget," I say.
"They see a file number. And they forget there was a person attached to it.
Someone who had a favorite song or a terrible habit or somebody waiting for them to come home.
" My throat tightens. I force myself to keep going.
"That's why I do this. Somebody has to remember that they mattered.
These people have been buried deep in some casefile, and no one even knows what really happened to them. "
The room goes quiet. Then Dozer says, "It does matter." I look up. His eyes are on me, not the file. "You're proving it right now."
I glance back at the evidence. "You're supposed to say something emotionally unavailable right now."
"I could."
"Four words or less?"
"Probably."
I smile.
He reaches for the next folder at the same time I do.
Our hands touch. Neither of us moves. His fingers are warm against mine, rougher than mine, the calluses a reminder that those hands have done very different things than mine have.
For one second, the hospital disappears.
No dead records. No hunters. No government conspiracy. Just his hand against mine.
He looks at me. I look at him.
"Dozer."
"Yeah?"
"We're supposed to be working."
"We are."
Neither of us lets go immediately. Then I pull my hand back, because apparently somebody in this relationship has to occasionally remember we're being hunted.
I clear my throat. "We need to get this out of here. I don’t think we were ever supposed to find it. I also don’t think us being here is a coincidence. I have a feeling they are on their way and we’ve been set up."
"Agreed."
"And we need to figure out exactly how far up this goes."
He starts gathering the evidence while I photograph the remaining documents.
"If a government office signed off on this," I say, "then whoever's hunting us isn't protecting one bad actor." I close the final folder. "They're protecting a system."
Dozer looks at me. "Then we take down the system."
I blink. "That's a big statement for a man who usually communicates in four words or less."
"Big problem." He pauses. "Big statement."
I laugh. It's quiet, but it's real. And for the first time since this started, the fear underneath everything doesn't feel quite as heavy.
Because he's right. Whatever is waiting for us in Washington, they're about to discover something inconvenient.
I'm very hard to scare away from a dead person's truth.
And Dozer? He's apparently very hard to scare away from me. I like that last part a lot.
We leave ten minutes later. The evidence bag is heavier than it was when we walked in, but it's not the weight of the paper I feel. It's the weight of what the paper proves.
Somewhere ahead of us is Washington. Somewhere in Washington is the person who signed these documents. And somewhere between the two, is the truth somebody has spent years killing people to keep buried.
I intend to make sure it stays buried no longer.