Page 37 of Dozer

"Exactly what I tell you. Nothing else."

I have never in my life been good at that instruction. I've spent thirty-one years being the person who gathers her own data, forms her own conclusions, and acts on them without waiting for somebody else's permission. It's gotten me through nine years of government contracts, roughly four hundred crime scenes, more computer systems than I can remember, and one truly spectacular custody battle over my own career that I won by outworking everyone in the room. None of that prepares me to stand in a parking lot with my heart beating out of my chest, doing absolutely nothing because doing nothing is apparently the smart move. I have never once in my life found doing nothing to be the smart move. I’m a doer, damn it.

"Left, slow," Dozer says. "Toward the dumpster. Don't run."

I walk, slowly, every step feeling like it takes an hour, my shoulder blades aware of that rooftop in a way that has nothing to do with actual information and everything to do with pure animal dread. I can't see the threat. I can't measure it. I can't turn it into a fact I can hold and examine, and I hate that more than I hate the fear. Fear is manageable when it has workable data, give me a body, a weapon, a computer, a photograph, a blood pattern, and I can work with it, I can make fear sit still long enough to dissect it. This is different. This is a question mark with a possible gun aimed at me.

"Behind the dumpster. Now."

I go, crouching in the narrow gap between a dumpster and a chain-link fence, breathing harder than the walk should justify. The dumpster smells like old fryer grease and bad seafood, which is a sentence I never expected to think while hiding from a potential sniper, but apparently my brain is committed to maintaining its usual level of weirdness under pressure.

Dozer crouches down beside me, weapon up, eyes fixed on the gap in the fencing that gives him a partial line toward the rooftop. He is close, too close, technically, close enough that I can feel the heat of his shoulder against mine, close enough that one wrong movement would put us into each other's personal space. Normally, that would be distracting. Right now, it is strangely reassuring.

"Tell me you have eyes on something," I whisper.

"I have eyes on the building."

"That is technically not what I asked."

"I know."

I glance at him. He doesn't look back. I should be annoyed. Instead, a tiny, hysterical part of me thinks, Of course he knows.

"How long do we wait?" I ask.

"As long as it takes."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I've got."

I hate it. Here I am, folded behind a dumpster in a parking lot in some state I couldn't name without checking my phone, waiting to find out if there’s a bad guy on a roof aiming a weapon at me and there’s nothing I can do. I feel panic start to build. I wrap my arms around myself and force my breathing slower. In for four. Hold. Out for four. The same trick I use before difficult testimony, before walking into a morgue, before opening a file containing something I already know I'm going to hate. It works. Mostly.

"I don't do well with being helpless," I say, because the silence is doing worse things to me than the talking would.

"So I’ve noticed."

I turn my head toward him. "That sounded suspiciously like criticism."

"It wasn't."

"Good. Because I am emotionally fragile right now."

His mouth twitches. It's so small I almost miss it. Almost. "You're not emotionally fragile."

"I'm hiding behind a dumpster."

"So am I."

I stare at him for half a second. "That's actually a very good point."

"I have those occasionally."

"Terrifying. Maybe the ambush did kill you and this is your ghost. That would explain the sudden personality development."

This time, I know I see it, the corner of his mouth moves. Barely. But it moves. And for one stupid second, the fear loosens its grip.

Then the rooftop comes back into my awareness. So does Reyes. So does the motel. So does my brother. The words come before I can decide whether I want to say them. "After my brother died, everyone wanted to manage me."