Chapter 25
Kenzi
Morning comes softer than I expect, given everything, and I wake up tangled against Dozer's side in a way that feels less like the accident of a single small bed and more like something we both chose without discussing it, which seems to be becoming a pattern between us.
My body still remembers last night in ways my brain is only now starting to catch up on. There’s an ache in muscles I don't usually think about, the faint soreness that has nothing to do with any of the things this week has otherwise demanded of me.
I remember the weight of him settling over me like it was the only thing keeping either of us tethered to the room.
I remember exactly how quiet he went right before he wasn't quiet at all, the low, wrecked sound of my name the only thing either of us said.
I remember his hands going slow with me in a way that undid me more thoroughly than anything dangerous this week has managed.
I remember how he flicked my clit as if he was an expert on my body and brought me to orgasm twice.
I decide, lying here with his arm heavy across my waist, that I am never getting tired of how he makes love.
His arm is around my waist, and his hand is resting against my stomach like it belongs there.
I lie still for a minute mostly because moving means admitting the night is over, and I don't particularly want it to end yet. I don’t want to figure out what today means and how much has changed between us.
I hope for everything and nothing at the same time.
His breathing is slow and even beside me, the hard lines of his face softened by sleep in a way I haven't seen before, and there's something almost unfair about discovering that the man who looks like he was personally designed to intimidate hostile witnesses also sleeps with one hand curled loosely against the woman beside him.
I carefully slide out from under him. His fingers catch mine before I get more than a few inches away. His eyes don't open.
"Going somewhere?"
"Kitchen."
"Why?"
"Coffee."
His eyes crack open just enough to find mine. "Important mission."
"Extremely."
His thumb brushes once across the back of my hand before he lets go. "Five minutes."
"That's not how coffee works."
"Five minutes."
"You're very demanding for a man who isn't even fully awake."
"Still dangerous."
I smile despite myself and get up.
By nine, the softness is gone and the work has taken over again.
My contact confirms the package is secure and, more importantly, agrees to overnight a working copy back to a secure drop point Hunter arranged.
Not the originals, those will stay exactly where they are until we know this is over, but enough of a duplicate that I can finally, properly, put the full picture together.
I spread everything across the kitchen table, laptop open, decrypted files from the hospital cabinet cross-referenced against the tissue samples I pulled at the morgue.
Dates line up. Patient numbers line up. Trial records connect to shell companies, shell companies connect to contracts, and the government stamp from the pharmaceutical records finally gets a name attached to it instead of just a signature I don't recognize.
My pulse kicks up. "Got him," I say quietly.
Dozer looks over my shoulder. "Who."
I angle the screen toward him. "Senator Whitmore Cole."
He comes closer, one hand braced against the back of my chair as he studies the screen. His shoulder brushes mine, and neither of us moves away.
"Walk me through it."
"He sits on two oversight committees. One of them is specifically responsible for auditing exactly this kind of pharmaceutical contract.
" I click through another decrypted file, hands moving faster now, certainty replacing the exhaustion of the last few days.
"Which means he wasn't just benefiting from the cover-up.
He was the oversight that was supposed to catch it, and instead he signed off on burying it. "
Dozer's jaw tightens. I keep going.
"The trafficking network we thought we were dealing with when this started was never the whole story.
It's the enforcement arm for a much bigger operation. Falsified drug trials. Silenced patients. Families given manufactured explanations. And a senator making sure nobody with real power ever asks the right questions. There’s millions if not billions of dollars at stake here. "
"That's not something we can take down with a phone call."
"No." I look up at him. "It's not."
His hand settles briefly against my shoulder.
"This is going to need Hunter and probably Ruby, if not more of our team. Whoever's protecting Cole has already proven they can hit a convoy clean and track an untraceable phone. We're past the point where two people off the grid can finish this alone." I tell him.
He nods once. "Then we call them."
We call Hunter together. After making sure he’s in a secure location and on a phone that isn’t being traced, we put him on speaker and walk him through the timeline, the samples, the pharmaceutical trial fraud, the government contract stamp, the senator's name attached to all of it. I hear him go quiet on the other end.
"I need to verify this independently before we move," Hunter says finally. "It’s not that I don’t trust you, Kenzi. I trust you completely. I just want a second set of eyes on it. I’m calling in Ruby." I’m not offended, I understand his need to double check my work, so later he can say he did.
Ruby comes on the line a moment later. I've only spoken to her twice before this, both times briefly, both times impressed by how fast she moves through information most people need hours to parse.
"Send me everything you've got," she says, no preamble, already working before I've finished agreeing.
"I'll cross-reference against what we've already got on file for Cole.
If this checks out independently, it's not just enough to move on.
It's enough to make sure nobody can bury it a second time. "
It takes her forty minutes. Forty minutes that feel considerably longer. I pace the small kitchen while we wait until Dozer catches my hand as I pass him for the fourth time.
"You're wearing a path into the floor."
"I'm thinking."
"You're pacing."
"I can do both."
"Apparently."
I look down at our joined hands. Neither of us lets go. "You're very distracting."
"Wasn't trying to be,” he said.
"Liar."
"Maybe."
That tiny exchange shouldn't make me feel better. It does.
Then Ruby comes back on the line, and her voice has gone flat in the way that tells me she's found exactly what we already suspected. She’s confirming my work and more.
"It's confirmed." I stop pacing. "Cole's fingerprints are all over three different shell entities tied to the pharmaceutical fraud," she continues, "and one of them has direct financial ties to a private security contractor that's been flagged internally before for exactly the kind of clean, professional operations you two have been surviving all week. "
"Which means even federal contacts might be compromised," I say.
"Assume all of them are until proven otherwise. If Cole's this deep, he's got reach into agencies that are supposed to be investigating exactly this kind of thing. We move on our own terms, our own people, until we're ready to make this impossible to bury." Ruby says.
Hunter's voice comes back on the line, decisive now, the sound of a man who's finished weighing options and landed on the only one that makes sense.
"We're bringing the full team into this.
You two have carried this as far as two people reasonably can.
From here, it's Spartan Elite's operation, all the way to D.C. "
Something in my chest loosens at that. Not relief exactly. The danger hasn't shrunk. But the specific comfort of knowing we're no longer facing a senator, a private security contractor, and however many more layers this conspiracy has completely alone; matters more than I want to admit.
"What's the plan?" Dozer asks.
"Working on it. Full briefing once you're back at HQ. For now, stay put, stay careful, and Kenzi—" Hunter's voice softens slightly, the register he reserves for the handful of things that aren't strictly operational. "You did good. Ryan would be proud of the work you just did."
Everything inside me goes still. I stare at the evidence on the table because looking at Dozer suddenly feels impossible. My throat tightens.
"I know that's not easy for you to hear," Hunter adds quietly. "But it's true."
I swallow. "Thank you, Hunter."
The call ends. For a few seconds, nobody says anything. Then Dozer's fingers find mine beneath the edge of the table. He doesn't squeeze. He just holds on. I turn my hand over and lace our fingers together.
I look back at the evidence spread across the table and feel the specific, grim satisfaction of watching a case finally come together after days of chasing pieces that haven't made sense until this exact moment.
"We're not out of danger," Dozer says.
"I know."
"If anything, we're walking toward more of it now that we know exactly who we're up against."
"I know that too."
He looks at me, waiting. I meet his eyes. "But at least now we know what we're walking toward." His thumb moves slowly across my knuckles. "That's more than we had yesterday."
"Exactly."
For the first time since this started, the unknown doesn't feel like the biggest thing in the room. We know the name and now we know what they want buried. But, now they know we have enough to expose them. Which means the next move is theirs and when they move, people die.
I should be afraid, but sitting here with Dozer's hand wrapped around mine, I realize something else. I’m Dozer’s now and Dozer won’t allow anything to happen to me. I know that all the way to my bones.