Page 61 of Dozer

I take a mental inventory of our situation. We still are without a car or phone. Not to mention no identification or money. Not a lot beyond the evidence case I still haven't let go of, my arms aching in a way that has nothing to do with the weight of it and everything to do with how tightly I've been holding on since the window. Dozer offered to take it from me several times but I couldn’t let it go. This is the one thing I have to contribute to the situation and mission. He’s taking out threats, I can preserve the evidence. I know they won’t be able to get into my computer. The third wrong password entered will erase the entire hard drive. Of course, it’s all encrypted and sent to a cloud, but they’ll never find it. Neither will the government. I’m good, really good.

"It's not much," Dozer says, doing his usual sweep of the small space, checking corners that barely exist in a cabin this size.

"It has a roof. At this point I'll take a roof."

He gives me a look that says he knows I'm joking because that's what I do when the alternative is admitting how badly the last few hours have rattled me.

There is, in fact, almost nothing else. A single cot. Blankets gone to mildew. A woodstove that hasn't seen a fire in longer than either of us wants to think about. No electricity. No running water. Just four walls, cold air, and the two of us stripped down to whatever we'd been carrying on our bodies when the safe house came apart around us.

I set the evidence case down carefully in the driest corner I can find and finally let my arms fall to my sides, feeling the ache settle in properly now that I don't need them for anything. My hands are shaking. Not much. Just enough that I curl them into fists so he won't notice. Apparently, as I’ve learned on this job, my hands shaking is my body’s way of speaking to me. It’s like a nervous tick or something and I really wish it would stop.

He notices. Of course he notices.

"You should sleep," he says. "I'll take first watch."

"You've been running on no sleep since the train yard. You should sleep first."

"I don't need much."

"Neither do I, apparently, given how well this week has gone, but that's not actually a competition either of us should be trying to win."

He doesn't argue, which tells me more about how tired he actually is than anything he would have said out loud.

I sit down on the single cot, the only real furniture the cabin has to offer, and the mattress gives a protesting squeak beneath me. Dozer remains standing. Naturally. He looks at the door. The window. The ceiling. The evidence case. Me. Then back to the door.

"You know," I say, "standing there glaring at the building isn't going to make it more secure."

"It might."

"Right. The cabin is intimidated."

His mouth twitches. Barely. But I see it, and something warm moves through me that has absolutely no business existing in a freezing cabin after we've just escaped an armed attack.

He finally sits beside me, close enough that our shoulders touch. Neither of us moves away. The contact is barely anything but after days of his hand at my back, his fingers closing around mine in crowds, his palm steadying me when everything else was moving too fast, I have started to recognize how much meaning he can put into very little.

"There's exactly one bed," I say.

"Cot." He corrects.

"One cot. And it's cold enough in here that I'm fairly sure pride is going to get one of us hypothermia."

"I've slept in worse."

"That's not a no."

He looks at me. I look at him. For one ridiculous second, neither of us seems to remember that we are two exhausted adults hiding in a collapsing hunting cabin because armed professionals just burned down our safe house. Then his eyes drop briefly to my mouth. My pulse does something stupid. He looks away first.

"Back-to-back," he says.

I blink. "Excuse me?"

"Less heat loss."

I stare at him. "You're making sleeping next to me sound like a tactical maneuver."

"It is."

"Of course it is."