Chapter 20
Kenzi
We walk for almost two hours before Dozer finds somewhere he is willing to stop, a hunting cabin, half-collapsed and clearly unused for at least a season, but with four walls and a roof that holds, which at this point qualifies as luxury accommodations by any reasonable standard.
I take a mental inventory of our situation.
We still are without a car or phone. Not to mention no identification or money.
Not a lot beyond the evidence case I still haven't let go of, my arms aching in a way that has nothing to do with the weight of it and everything to do with how tightly I've been holding on since the window. Dozer offered to take it from me several times but I couldn’t let it go. This is the one thing I have to contribute to the situation and mission. He’s taking out threats, I can preserve the evidence.
I know they won’t be able to get into my computer.
The third wrong password entered will erase the entire hard drive.
Of course, it’s all encrypted and sent to a cloud, but they’ll never find it.
Neither will the government. I’m good, really good.
"It's not much," Dozer says, doing his usual sweep of the small space, checking corners that barely exist in a cabin this size.
"It has a roof. At this point I'll take a roof."
He gives me a look that says he knows I'm joking because that's what I do when the alternative is admitting how badly the last few hours have rattled me.
There is, in fact, almost nothing else. A single cot.
Blankets gone to mildew. A woodstove that hasn't seen a fire in longer than either of us wants to think about.
No electricity. No running water. Just four walls, cold air, and the two of us stripped down to whatever we'd been carrying on our bodies when the safe house came apart around us.
I set the evidence case down carefully in the driest corner I can find and finally let my arms fall to my sides, feeling the ache settle in properly now that I don't need them for anything. My hands are shaking. Not much. Just enough that I curl them into fists so he won't notice. Apparently, as I’ve learned on this job, my hands shaking is my body’s way of speaking to me.
It’s like a nervous tick or something and I really wish it would stop.
He notices. Of course he notices.
"You should sleep," he says. "I'll take first watch."
"You've been running on no sleep since the train yard. You should sleep first."
"I don't need much."
"Neither do I, apparently, given how well this week has gone, but that's not actually a competition either of us should be trying to win."
He doesn't argue, which tells me more about how tired he actually is than anything he would have said out loud.
I sit down on the single cot, the only real furniture the cabin has to offer, and the mattress gives a protesting squeak beneath me. Dozer remains standing. Naturally. He looks at the door. The window. The ceiling. The evidence case. Me. Then back to the door.
"You know," I say, "standing there glaring at the building isn't going to make it more secure."
"It might."
"Right. The cabin is intimidated."
His mouth twitches. Barely. But I see it, and something warm moves through me that has absolutely no business existing in a freezing cabin after we've just escaped an armed attack.
He finally sits beside me, close enough that our shoulders touch.
Neither of us moves away. The contact is barely anything but after days of his hand at my back, his fingers closing around mine in crowds, his palm steadying me when everything else was moving too fast, I have started to recognize how much meaning he can put into very little.
"There's exactly one bed," I say.
"Cot." He corrects.
"One cot. And it's cold enough in here that I'm fairly sure pride is going to get one of us hypothermia."
"I've slept in worse."
"That's not a no."
He looks at me. I look at him. For one ridiculous second, neither of us seems to remember that we are two exhausted adults hiding in a collapsing hunting cabin because armed professionals just burned down our safe house.
Then his eyes drop briefly to my mouth. My pulse does something stupid. He looks away first.
"Back-to-back," he says.
I blink. "Excuse me?"
"Less heat loss."
I stare at him. "You're making sleeping next to me sound like a tactical maneuver."
"It is."
"Of course it is."
He shifts farther onto the cot, leaving just enough room for me to lie beside him without either of us falling onto the floor.
I almost laugh at the absurdity of it, but then I lie down, because the cold is real and so is the exhaustion, and I am not proud enough to freeze to death just to preserve some imaginary boundary neither of us has actually been respecting for days.
A few minutes later, through nothing more complicated than physics, we're back-to-back beneath the mildewed blankets.
His warmth settles against me almost immediately.
I go still and not because I'm afraid, but because I'm suddenly keenly aware of everything.
The solid line of his shoulder blades against mine, the way his chest is slowly rising and falling, and the fact that his body is warm enough that my own starts relaxing.
Neither of us says anything for a while.
The cabin holds its own kind of silence, different from the hospital's. This one isn’t eerie, no ghosts lurking in these walls.
I feel like we’ve run out of things to be afraid of right now, there’s zero way we could have been tracked to this location, Dozer made sure of that as we moved.
We have nothing left to do but exist next to each other.
I close my eyes. Then open them again, because apparently my body has decided sleep is optional and that my brain needs to run a marathon instead of resting.
"We lost today," I say eventually, quiet, more to the dark than to him.
"We didn't lose."
"Feels like we did. I mean the rental car isn’t a big deal, I’m sure it’ll be tracked and recovered. Everything else is replaceable but still, how do we move forward without communication or money? I mean, let’s not forget that the biggest loss was my last clean shirt,” I joke.
I feel him shift slightly, a low sound that might be the beginning of a laugh he doesn't let all the way out. "We've still got the evidence case, that’s a win."
"That's one thing."
"We've still got each other."
My breath catches. He says it so simply. Like it's obvious. Like us is a fact rather than something I'm still trying to understand.
"Like you said, everything else is replaceable," he adds. “We have what matters.”
I stare at the darkness in front of me. "That's uncharacteristically philosophical of you."
"Cold cabin. Bad day. Makes a man philosophical."
I smile into the dark, where he can't see it. Although, at this point, I'm beginning to suspect he can feel things I don't say. Maybe the dangerous part isn’t the people hunting us, maybe it’s how easily I've started letting my walls down and letting him see me completely.
"Can I tell you something?" I ask.
"Go ahead."
"And you don't have to say anything back. You can just listen, because I think I need to say it out loud to someone, and you're the only someone currently available."
"I'll listen."
There is something about those two words that makes my throat tighten. Not, I'll fix it. Not, I understand. Just, I'll listen.
So, I tell him. "I've spent most of my life being the person who handles things alone.
Not because I don't trust people. Because trusting people to catch me if I fall has gone badly enough times that it stopped seeming worth the risk.
" I swallow, staring at nothing. "And somewhere in the last however many days, running through motels and train yards and burning safe houses, I stopped doing that. With you."
His breathing changes against my back, barely perceptible.
"I don't know when it happened exactly. I just noticed tonight, standing in those woods with nothing left but a case and your hand on my shoulder, that I wasn't scared the way I should have been.
Not because the danger wasn't real. Because I wasn't facing it alone anymore.
" I pause. The next part feels harder. "And some part of me that's been braced for years finally let go and trusted again. "
He is quiet for a long time. Long enough that I wonder if I said too much. Then his hand moves and his fingers find mine. He touches the side of my hand with two fingers, giving me every opportunity to move away.
I don't. Instead, I turn my hand beneath his until our palms meet. His fingers close around mine.
"I don't let people in," he says, voice rougher than I've heard it yet. "Haven't, in longer than I want to think about. Easier that way. Fewer things to lose." His thumb moves once across my knuckles. "You made that harder to hold onto than anyone has in years."
I swallow. "Is that a bad thing?"
"I don't know yet." Honest. His hand tightens around mine. "I'm finding out I don't mind not knowing."
I close my eyes. For the first time since the safe house came apart around us, I feel something that isn't fear.
I feel safe. Not the loud, obvious kind of safe that comes from locked doors and full magazines.
The quiet kind. The kind that feels like another person's hand around yours in the dark.
The kind that doesn't ask for anything except that you stay.
"Dozer?"
"Yeah?"
"You're still taking first watch, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"You're lying."
A pause. "Probably."
I laugh softly, and this time I feel his chest move with the quiet sound he tries to suppress.
"Get some sleep," he says eventually. His thumb brushes my knuckles once more before his hand stills around mine. "I've got first watch."
"You said that an hour ago."
"I meant it more this time."
"That's not how time works."
"I know."
I smile again. Then I let my eyes close. His hand stays wrapped around mine. And somewhere between exhaustion and the steady rhythm of his breathing against my back, I finally stop fighting sleep.
For the first time in years, trusting someone doesn't feel like handing them a weapon. It feels like giving them my hand in the dark and knowing they'll hold on.