Page 32 of Dozer

I glance at her again. Her head is bent over the paper, hair fallen forward, hiding part of her face. There's still a smear of blue paint near the edge of one boot. She hasn't noticed it, or she has and doesn't care. Either option feels very Kenzi.

"You always draw after something goes wrong?" I ask eventually, mostly because I've caught myself watching her hand move more than I've watched the slide in mine. I need a reason to look somewhere else that isn't just looking away.

She doesn't glance up. "Usually or I paint. Art is cheaper than therapy and faster than a nap."

"Does it work?"

"Sometimes." Her pen keeps moving. "Tonight it's mostly making a mess of motel stationery." A pause. "But the alternative is thinking about Reyes, so."

I understand that better than I plan to say out loud. Cleaning a weapon I don't need to clean is my version of the same math. It’s something that occupies the hands and buys the mind a little leeway before it lands on the thing it’s actively avoiding.

I finish checking the firing pin. "What is it?" I nod toward the pad. "If you don't mind me asking."

She stops drawing. For a second, she just looks at the page. Then she turns it around and holds it up without much ceremony. Rough lines, nothing photographic about it, but I can make out the shape of a tree line, sharp angles for branches, something that might be a road cutting through the bottom edge.

"The ridge," she says. "From today." Her mouth pulls into a small, humorless smile. "Second shooter's position."

I study the drawing. "You're reconstructing it."

"Kind of." She turns the pad back toward herself. "I process things better when I draw them." The pen moves again. "Turn them into something I looked at on purpose instead of something that happened to me."

That lands harder than it should. I look at the drawing again and there's something in it, the same instinct that had her clocking the muzzle-flash pattern from a footwell in the middle of an ambush, the same mind that spotted inconsistencies in a dead man's body while everyone else was still trying to figure out what the mission actually was. Her brain doesn't know how to stop working a scene once it has one. She just uses different tools than I do. For her, it’s a camera, computer, pen, memory, whatever works.

"Smart," I say.

She looks up. "Don't sound so surprised."

"I'm not surprised." I meet her eyes. "I'm agreeing."

She studies me for a second, the way I've caught myself doing around her more than once already, then goes back to the drawing without further comment. I respect that. Some things don't need to be turned into bigger conversations than they are.

The room falls quiet again, and this time I let it. I don't check the door. I don't check the window. Not immediately. For a few minutes, I just sit there and watch her draw. That's probably not smart, I'm supposed to be watching the room, and watching her shouldn't be part of the job, but there's something about the way she concentrates that holds my attention. When she's talking, she's all movement, hands and expressions and words that come faster than most people can keep up with. When she's working, she's totally different. She’s still, precise, almost fierce. It's the same woman, two completely different versions, and I'm beginning to wonder how many more versions there are and wanting to meet each one.

It's past ten when I realize she hasn't eaten. I do the math without meaning to. The briefing room, drive, facility, morgue, ambush, four more hours of driving and not once in all of that have I seen her put food in her mouth. Coffee at the gas station. Coffee isn't food. I know that math too well from years of running on the same fuel myself, and I also know what happens when a person keeps pushing past exhaustion. Judgment gets sloppy. Hands shake. Reaction time slows. People make mistakes. Right now, I need Kenzi's hands steady enough to read a dead man's skin for lies and respond to danger.

I finish reassembling the sidearm, set it aside, and stand.

She looks up. "Where are you going?"

"Nowhere."

Her eyes narrow. "That's generally not how walking works."

I don't answer. I step into the hallway. The vending machine at the end of the breezeway offers a selection that appears to have been assembled by someone with a personal grudge against nutrition. I pick the two least depressing options; a protein bar, a pack of peanut butter crackers, and a bottle of water. Good enough for government work at least. I’ll make sure she gets a real breakfast in the morning.

I come back inside and set everything on the nightstand beside her legal pad. She looks at the food, then at me, then back at the food.

"You didn't have to⁠—"

"You haven't eaten since this morning."

She blinks. "I've been a little busy, almost dying."

"I know." I sit back down in the chair and pick up the sidearm mostly, so my hands have something to do that isn't watching her reaction too closely. "Eat anyway."

She's quiet again, really quiet, not the working quiet, not the grief quiet, something softer, something I don't have a name for, and I don't go looking for one.

"Nobody's done that for me in a while," she says, her voice barely above a whisper. "Just..." She looks down at the food. "Noticed." A pause. "Without me asking."