Page 40 of Dozer

"You'll get it."

Her eyes meet mine again, and there's something there I recognize because I've seen it in operators staring down a mission that just changed underneath their feet. Determination. Not fear. Determination.

"I can salvage some of this," she says. "Maybe more than some."

"I believe you." The words are out before I think about them. She goes still, just for a second, then nods and gets back to work.

I pull my phone. Standard channel is compromised, we both know that now, so I use the backup line Hunter set up specifically for this scenario, the kind of contingency you build because you've been doing this long enough to know contingencies always eventually matter.

Hunter picks up on the second ring. "Talk."

"Evidence integrity is compromised. Somebody got close enough to introduce a contaminant to the samples. Kenzi caught it, but if she hadn't, we'd be delivering junk to D.C. and calling it truth."

There's a pause on the line. Not a long one, just the length of a man doing the same fast recalculation I've already done, weighing what this means against everything else already in motion.

"Options," Hunter says. That's the whole reason I trust him. Not, are you sure? Not, walk me through exactly what happened. Just options. Forward motion. The assumption baked all the way through that if I'm calling, it matters, and if Kenzi says it's compromised, it's compromised. Full stop.

"Kenzi thinks she can salvage part of the sample set. Won't know how much until she has real time with it. Not at a rest stop."

"Do you trust her assessment?"

"Completely." The answer comes without hesitation.

There's another beat of silence. I understand what Hunter is doing. He isn't questioning me. He's weighing the situation, deciding whether the contamination changes the mission enough to pull in a full team instead of letting the two of us keep moving.

"Keep moving," he says finally. "I'll get you a secure lab contact. Off the grid. Someone who owes me and doesn't ask questions."

"Copy."

"You're not stopping again until you're there."

"Understood."

"Dozer." Something shifts in his voice. Quieter. The register he uses for the handful of conversations that aren't strictly operational. "Whoever's doing this is close. Watch each other's backs. Both of you."

He hangs up before I can answer. Fine by me. There isn't much to say beyond an agreement I've already been operating on since the motel door came in. We know the body isn’t the target anymore, our other team hasn’t come across a single hiccup. It’s the evidence Kenzi has that they want and apparently will stop at nothing to destroy.

I look back at Kenzi. She's still working. Careful hands sort through the samples, separating what she thinks is compromised from what might still be clean. Her laptop is open, fingers moving across the keyboard between checks, and her mouth is doing that thing it does when she's thinking hard, it’s pressed into a thin line, lower lip caught briefly between her teeth. I know better than to distract her. I also know better than to pretend I'm not watching. She’s beautiful and I want to suck that lip out from between her teeth and press it to mine. I’m not sure when I started feeling this way, but I can’t deny the attraction between us.

She catches me staring.

"How bad is it?" I ask.

"Bad." She holds up two vials. "Not unsalvageable."

"Those clean?"

"As far as I can tell." She sets them apart from the rest. "Whoever did this either didn't have time to hit everything, or didn't know which samples actually mattered most." She looks at me. "Either way, we've still got something worth dying for."

"Nobody's dying for it."

"Figure of speech."

"Not really, given the last week."

Her mouth curves into a real smile this time, quick, small, but real. "Fair."

I watch her repack the case. Every movement is careful, deliberate. She doesn't rush just because we're in a hurry. She doesn't let urgency turn into sloppiness. It's the same thing I saw at the morgue. The same thing I saw when the convoy got hit. She doesn't freeze when things go bad. She gets sharper. That matters more than I want it to, because I've spent most of my adult life learning that competence is one thing and trust is another, and whatever is happening between Kenzi and me is starting to feel dangerously close to both.