Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 58377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
Sawyer gives me space. He’s here, yet not, like a star you can find even when you don’t look at it directly. He’ll linger in the hall until my breath evens, then vanish to answer a call. He walks the perimeter at dusk with Riggs, murmuring into his throat mic, and at sunrise I sometimes catch him on the veranda, coffee cooling by his boot while he scans the drive. He’s a constant background hum that makes the rest of the sounds sort themselves out.
I’m not ready to let him back into the sphere where he was before. He knows it, accepts the distance like a man holding a weight at arm’s length because the person beneath it asked him to.
So I paint.
The first canvas back is ugly on purpose—charcoal slashed with sickly green, aluminum gray smeared with the yellow of streetlights I didn’t see but felt under my skin. I paint the ridges of a cargo van floor with the ribbed side of a palette knife, the way sound thudded through my jaw. Then, in the upper corner, almost invisible, I pull a single stroke of titanium white, thin as a breath. Sawyer’s line. The first time he drew it, I thought: protection disguised as motion. Now it looks like a promise I held with my teeth.
Vanessa comes by on day two with Tupperware of arroz con pollo and a bag full of brightly colored scrunchies “for hospital-hair days you escaped but still deserve to accessorize.” She perches on my studio stool and watches me paint until the urge to fill silence makes her burst.
“He should be in here,” she declares after exactly twelve minutes, meaning Sawyer.
“He is,” I say, gesturing to the line. “In a way.”
Vanessa squints at the canvas, then at me. “You’re doing that thing where you make metaphors so potent they turn into people.”
“People made them first.” I dab white into gray until the edge blooms. “He’s giving me room.”
“Which you want,” she says gently, not a question. Vanessa can turn her voice into a blanket when she wants. “How’s your dad?”
The breath leaves me like I’ve been punched. I keep my hand steady anyway. “He’s… talking to anyone with a badge and a subpoena. He apologized.” My mouth twists. “He keeps trying to find the words that don’t exist.”
“You’ll find yours when you’re ready,” she says. “In the meantime, I brought gossip: Hartley has Vale by the portfolio.”
That pulls my head up. “What happened?”
She grins wolfish. “Your soldier boy and his boss pulled strings in places that don’t have strings, and suddenly the United States of Attorney People are very interested in a certain storytelling venture. Vale tried to fly to Vegas; the men in windbreakers met him at the jet. Kestrel Risk dissolved in a press release yesterday morning. Their co-owner is singing like an aria.”
I smear blue into the ugly. “Rourke?”
“Arrested in Lighthouse Point.” Her tone flattens. “Resisted. Guess who resisted back.”
A tremor shoots through me, half fear, half heat that shouldn’t belong with fear and does anyway when it’s Sawyer we’re talking about. “Is he—”
“Alive,” she says. “Bruised. Charged with kidnapping, attempted aggravated assault, use of an explosive device at a public event—”
I nod.
“—and a bunch of words that sound like lawyers flexing,” she finishes. “He has an arraignment tomorrow.”
Rage tastes metallic under my tongue. I rinse my brush in turp and go back to work. “And the van?”
“Impounded.” She shudders. “Saw a photo on a detective’s tablet. Ugly inside. I wanted to drive a fist through things, and you know I don’t punch.”
That night, Sawyer updates me without pushing, standing in the doorway with his shoulder on the frame like he doesn’t trust his hands near my paint. “Vale’s devices gave us more than his lawyers want to admit,” he says. “We found threads to the shell company, notes on Kestrel, and messages to a burner—the one Rourke carried. Hartley’s ADA is building a conspiracy case that ties their ‘story arc’ to the escalation. Kestrel’s co-owner is cooperating for a deal.”
“And my father?” I ask, even though I don’t want to.
“Not charged.” His voice is careful, neutral like a nurse’s hands. “Cooperating witness. He signed an affidavit detailing the scheme and his termination point. He’s stepping aside from the roadshow, maybe the CEO seat for a while. He set up a fund for victims of stalking and manufactured harassment—yes, it’s PR, but it also helps. He asked if he could see you.”
I breathe once. “Not yet.”
Sawyer nods. Neither pleased nor disappointed. Simply noting a waypoint. “Understood.”
We fall into a rhythm that belongs to triage and repair. Mornings I paint, afternoons I meet with Detective Hartley to answer questions I can answer without making my pulse sprint. “You don’t have to look at the photos,” Hartley says, and I don’t, not the bloody details or the angle of the hinge where the door met my shin. I do ask to see the orange triangle sticker. I stare at its torn corner for too long, letting my eyes memorize its peel. Every villain’s choice is this dumb, I tell myself: something small they didn’t think would matter. That helps and makes me furious in equal measure.