Page 65 of Dozer

"It feels like it is."

"I know." That stops me. She steps closer. "I know the feeling," she says, quieter now. "I felt exactly that way about Reyes. If I’d seen the second shooter quicker."

Her fingers brush mine. Maybe accidental. Maybe not. I don't move away.

"But feeling responsible for everything that goes wrong isn't the same as actually being responsible for it." Her fingers curl lightly around mine. "You taught me that."

I look down at our hands. Her thumb moves once across my knuckle. "I'm trying to hand it back,” she says.

Something in my chest shifts. She's doing it again. Taking something I gave her and using it on me when I need it. I close my hand around hers.

"You're getting annoyingly good at that."

"At what?"

"Using my own words against me."

"I pay attention."

"I've noticed."

And for a second, we're just standing here holding hands beside a gas station payphone like two people who have somehow wandered into the middle of a disaster and decided, against all common sense, not to let go of each other.

I squeeze her hand once before releasing it. "Extraction's coming," I say. "Twenty minutes. We regroup. We figure out what you can still prove with what you've got, and we keep moving."

"Even without the body?"

"Yes, for now anyway, we move on without the body. We have enough.”

She studies me. "That's a pretty confident answer."

"Somebody wanted it gone badly." I look toward the highway. "That tells us something."

"What?"

"That the body scared them."

Her expression changes. Not much. Enough. "You don’t think they destroyed it."

"No."

"They stole it."

"I think they still need it for something. I think there’s more evidence on it, evidence that they can’t simply destroy but is needed for something."

Her eyes sharpen. The scientist in her wakes up. "Then we prove it without the body," she says.

"We do."

"We make what we've got enough."

I nod. She takes one breath. Then another. Kenzi doesn't need someone to save her from the hard things. She needs someone willing to stand beside her while she faces them.

I can do that. Probably better than I should. And I want to do that, probably more than I should.

The sound of a vehicle approaching pulls both of our attention toward the road.

Extraction. They are here early.