Page 88 of Dozer

That thought arrives with absolute clarity. I don't have his training. What I do have is nine years of education letting me know exactly where the human body is vulnerable. Turns out forensic anatomy has practical applications nobody mentioned in graduate school.

The baton catches the man's wrist. His grip opens. The incendiary device hits the floor and skitters away beneath the edge of a steel cabinet.

Good. One problem down. Approximately all the others remaining.

The second man comes at me directly. I don't think. Not much. Thinking is usually my thing. Thinking is practically a competitive sport for me. But somewhere in the last week I've learned there are moments when the body gets a vote before the brain finishes holding hearings.

I move. His hand catches my arm. I twist hard, feel his grip loosen, and drive the baton into the outside of his knee. He buckles. I follow through. Not elegantly. Not the way Dozer would. There's nothing cinematic about it. Just adrenaline and fury and the very specific determination of a woman who has been shot at, chased, threatened, hacked, cornered, nearly burned out of a safe house, and forced to wear the same shirt for considerably longer than civilized society should tolerate.

Frankly, I'm out of patience.

He reaches for me again. I strike once more. He stays down. I stand over him for half a second, breathing hard, baton still raised, waiting to see if he plans on making another bad decision.

He doesn't.

"Smart," I tell him. Because apparently, I talk to unconscious criminals too. Good to know. I’ll add it to my increasingly growing list of objects, animals and people, dead or alive, that I speak with. Dead, alive, or unconscious… apparently, it doesn’t matter.

I don't look at either man again, because I don't have time. The biological samples inside the storage unit are intact. Miraculously. I get the reinforced case open and the entire world changes. Everything outside the work goes quiet. The gunfire. Dozer. The blood. The fear. Not gone. Compartmentalized. This is what I know how to do.

My hands move automatically; it’s my turn for muscle memory to click in. I photograph, document, verify seal integrity, compare identifiers, timestamps, preservation conditions. The same clinical sequence I've run hundreds of times, except I've never done it with armed men on the floor and a private security force somewhere outside the room actively trying to murder everyone involved.

There really should be hazard pay for this. I should broach that topic with Hunter. Extra pay for every time my life is in danger. In that case, I should make a handsome sum at the end of this job. Maybe enough to retire.

"Ruby, samples confirmed intact. Uploading verification now."

"Receiving. Kenzi, we need full authentication in the next ninety seconds. Cole's people are already trying to spin this as a break-in. We need the truth out there before that story sets."

Of course they are. Of course, the lie is already moving. That's the thing about lies told by powerful people, they don't have to be particularly good. They just have to get there first.

Not this time.

I work faster. Physical sample identifiers against my duplicates. Hospital records against contract numbers. Contract numbers against Cole's shell companies. Every piece locked to the next so tightly that pulling one loose only exposes three more beneath it.

My hands don't shake. Not yet. I’m sure it’ll come later. It seems like my body delays its reaction to trauma. I’m okay with that. It would be damn inconvenient to start trembling now.

Somewhere behind me, the sounds of fighting continues. Then stops.

Everything inside me stops with the silence.

No. I don't turn around. My entire body wants to. I keep working. Because silence doesn't mean anything until I have evidence telling me what it means. Because if I turn around now and see⁠—

No.

Thirty-one years of thinking too much and this is the one thought I refuse to finish.

"Sixty seconds," Ruby says.

"I know."

"Kenzi—"

"I know, Ruby."

My fingers move faster. Forty-five. The digital package finishes assembling. Thirty. Every dead patient in those hospital files seems to exist in the room with me. People whose names I never learned because someone made sure nobody ever would. Dozer, bleeding in a hallway because he believes this truth matters enough to stand between me and bullets while I deliver it.

Twenty seconds.

"Package built," I say. My voice sounds nothing like I feel. "Ruby, I'm pushing it live."