Page 29 of Dozer

So I do what I always do when something gets too close, I analyze it.

Normal physiological response to acute stress.

Elevated adrenaline.

Fine motor tremor.

Respiration, still slightly elevated.

Should resolve.

It should have resolved in eleven to twenty minutes, depending on the individual. I know the studies; I've read the studies. I've written reports based on those studies. Knowing the science never helps as much as people think it should. It just gives the fear vocabulary.

I flex my fingers. Once, twice and nothing.

"Stop." Dozer's voice is quiet.

I look at him. "Stop what?"

"Watching your hands."

Damn it. He noticed. "I wasn't."

"You were."

"I'm a forensic specialist. Observing things is literally my job."

"You're observing yourself."

I open my mouth to rebut, but then close it, because he's right. I hate when people are right and I’m wrong. Especially when they're right without being smug about it.

I turn toward the window. A family is loading into an SUV. A little girl is wearing sparkly pink headphones and carrying a stuffed dinosaur by one leg. Her mother says something to her, and the girl laughs.

The sound hits me harder than the gunfire did. Not because it's sad, but because it's normal. There are people buying snacks, the couple at the pump next to us are complaining about gas prices. A teenager is begging his mother to buy him an energy drink.

None of these people have any idea that six miles back, a man died on a county road because somebody knew exactly where we would be.

The world hasn't changed for them. Not like it’s changed for Dozer, Hunter and Reyes’ family. And, it has for me. I swallow hard and bite back the unexpected tears that are stinging behind my eyes. I won’t cry. Absolutely not.

Dozer doesn't try to fix any of it. He doesn't tell me to breathe or offer me some inspirational quote he probably saw on a military coffee mug. He just sits there, hands resting on the steering wheel even though the engine is off.

Letting me exist in the silence until I’m ready to move. I realize that's probably the strangest thing about him. He doesn't seem afraid of silence. Maybe because he knows silence doesn’t always have to be empty.

"You're not going to say anything comforting," I say eventually. My voice comes out smaller than I intend.

"No."

I look at him. "Most people would try."

"Haven’t you discovered by now that I'm not most people?"

I look back toward the windshield. "You're really not."

He turns his head and looks at me. Not the assessing look he pinned me with in the briefing room. This time, he just looks like he's checking something and doesn't need words to do it.

"You're allowed to not be okay," he says. "For a minute. Then we move."

That's it. Six words about not being okay and four more about moving. And somehow it does more for the tight, wrong feeling in my chest than any of the careful, rehearsed Are you doing all right? conversations I've had since my brother died.