Page 47 of Dozer

"For not just handing me four words and calling it a conversation, for actually engaging this time."

His eyes flick toward me again. "You gave me something real." He pauses. "Felt wrong giving you less back."

I stop breathing for approximately one second. It's ridiculous. It’s only one sentence, it's not even particularly romantic. Except it is. At least to me. Because Dozer doesn't say things he doesn't mean. I've learned that. He doesn't throw words around to make people comfortable. He doesn't offer reassurance he can't stand behind. So, if he gives me something real because I gave him something real, then he is telling me, in the only language he seems to trust, that this matters.

I look down at my hands. "I don't have a joke for this."

"I noticed. You would have said it by now.”

I laugh softly. "Don't ruin the moment."

"I wasn't."

"No, you were. You were getting dangerously close to being emotionally available."

"Wouldn't want that." His mouth twitches again.

"Terrifying."

His hand shifts on the console. For a second, our fingers are close enough that the smallest movement would make them touch. Neither of us moves, which somehow makes me more aware of the space between us than I was when he was holding my hand in the train station. It’s a charged, deliberate nothing, both of us pretending we haven't clocked exactly how little distance separates his hand from mine. Both of us wanting to close the space and neither moving.

I finally let my little finger brush his. Barely. An accident I could blame on the road. Except neither of us is fooled. His finger moves against mine. Just once. A quiet acknowledgment, deliberate in a way an accident never could be. My pulse does something profoundly unhelpful, a small traitorous lurch. How are our pinkies touching causing me this reaction? I look out the window before my face can betray me.

"For what it's worth," I say after a minute, because eventually I always find something to say, "I trust you more than I've trusted anyone in longer than I want to admit."

He says nothing. I keep going because stopping now would require me to acknowledge how much courage it takes to say the next part.

"Not just with the case. With—" I gesture vaguely at the space between us. "This."

His jaw tightens. "Same."

One word. That's it. From him, I understand by now, that's practically a speech. And somehow the one singular word feels huge.

I let my hand stay where it is. So does he. For the next few miles, neither of us says anything, and the silence doesn't bother me. That's new for me. The highway slides beneath us, the landscape blurring past, and my mind finally has enough room to catch up with everything that has happened since Hunter's briefing room.

So much has happened in such a short amount of time. Finding the evidence on the body, being ambushed on the road and Reyes’ death, the door of the motel room being kicked in, fake FBI agents… And Dozer. Especially Dozer.

This job was supposed to be about escorting a body, that we aren’t even escorting, anymore. Now it’s getting evidence, what’s left of it, to D.C. Now, it’s about survival and taking down someone powerful. I hadn't planned on it also becoming about the man beside me. The man who doesn't talk much but notices everything, the man who sees fear and doesn't mistake it for weakness, the man whose hand at my back makes me feel safe.

The attraction I have to him is dangerous. Probably more dangerous than the men hunting us. Because bullets are easy to understand. This… there’s nothing easy to understand about what is developing between us.

I turn my hand slightly on the console, letting my fingers settle more fully against his. His hand closes around mine. I don't look at him. He doesn't look at me. Neither of us needs to. I just sit there and let him hold my hand while the highway carries us toward whatever comes next.

I'm not examining what that means yet, I’m just sitting in the moment.

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.