Page 81 of Dozer

Ghost is already there when we walk in, leaning against the wall, near the door with the particular stillness he's perfected over years of being the guy nobody hears coming, until it's already too late for whoever he's coming for. He straightens when he sees us, gives Kenzi a once-over that reads as assessment, not judgment, and nods once.

"Heard you two had a rough week."

"Understatement," Kenzi says.

"Heard you also caught a senator." Something that might be respect flickers across his face. "Good to finally meet the woman who kept Dozer alive and apparently talking in full sentences."

Kenzi glances at me, delighted. "He talks in full sentences? I've been getting maybe four words at a time this whole trip."

"He's rationing," Ghost says. "Trust me, four words from Dozer is a soliloquy."

I let that pass without comment, mostly because it's true, and because watching Kenzi fall easily into the same rhythm of banter with my team that she built with me over the last week does something to my chest I haven't fully braced for.

She belongs here.

The thought lands harder than it should. Not because I don't want it. Because I do. Too much.

Kenzi catches me looking at her and raises one eyebrow, that familiar spark returning to her eyes now that we're somewhere with walls that aren't actively collapsing around us.

"What?" I ask her.

"Nothing."

"That look is definitely not nothing."

Ghost clears his throat. "Six words. See? He's already showing off."

Kenzi laughs, and I glare at Ghost.

Ruby is at the far end of the table already, three monitors up, hair pulled back, moving through data with the same speed she always has. She looks up long enough to give Kenzi a genuine smile.

"Your forensic work is, honestly, better than what I get from federal labs," she says. "I've cross-referenced everything against Cole's financial history for the last six years. It's worse than we thought."

"How much worse?" Kenzi asks.

"He's not just protecting a pharmaceutical fraud ring. He's been laundering funds through the same shell entities to finance a private security contractor that's been running black-bag jobs for at least three other clients we can identify. Which means whoever has been attacking you all week, well they are not amateur hour. That's a fully funded, fully operational shadow security force answering to a sitting U.S. senator."

The room goes quiet. Not surprised quiet. Working quiet. The kind that happens when the problem gets bigger.

Kenzi reaches for the edge of the table, and my hand finds hers beneath it. Her fingers curl around mine once. I'm not sure when touching her became instinct. I only know I'm no longer interested in stopping it.

Hack comes in halfway through Ruby's briefing, drops into a chair with the particular restless energy I've come to expect from him, already scanning the files on the shared screen with the kind of focus that means he'll have three more angles of attack figured out before the rest of us finish reading page one. Hack is a consultant, a contractor that Hunter brings in. His work isn’t exactly by the books or legal.

"I can get us eyes inside his security detail's comms," Hack says, not looking up. "Give me six hours."

"Give yourself four," Hunter says, walking in behind him, folder in hand the way it always starts, except this time the folder is three inches thick instead of the single sheet he handed me at the beginning of all this. "We move fast on this one. Cole's people already know we're circling. Every hour we wait is an hour they use to bury something else."

Hunter sets the folder down. The sound is quiet. It still feels like a starting gun.

The room settles into the particular rhythm I trust more than almost anything else in my life. Hunter laying out the shape of the operation, Ruby and Hack already building the digital scaffolding underneath it, Ghost running logistics on entry points and extraction routes, all of it happening in the kind of shorthand that only comes from years of trusting each other completely.

I've always known what this team is. Family isn't a word I've used often. But sitting here now, with Kenzi's thumb moving once across the side of my hand beneath the table, I finally understand that family isn't always the people who knew you first. Sometimes it's the people who stay. Sometimes it's the woman who walks into the middle of your worst week and somehow makes the idea of losing her more frightening than the bullets ever were.

"Museum of Health and Medicine," Hunter says, pulling up a floor plan. "Cole's people moved what's left of the physical evidence to a secure forensic lab inside the facility, under a cover story about a routine research transfer. We believe that's where they intend to destroy it completely once they've confirmed nothing else is out there that contradicts their version of events."

"Which means they don't know about the duplicate," Kenzi says.

"They don't. And they can't find out, not until we're already inside." Hunter looks at me, then at her. "Dozer runs security on entry and extraction. Full team on him for backup. Kenzi runs the forensic handoff and the digital exposure simultaneously. The second we're inside, you need to get that evidence verified and pushed live before anyone has a chance to destroy what's left or spin a story faster than the truth can spread."