Page 17 of Sawyer
“Angry, shaken, performing calm.” I glance through the French door. She’s back in jeans and a soft gray tee, fingers white around a mug. “She’s not backing off the mural program.”
“Did you expect her to?”
“Nope.”
“All right. Call if she spikes or if anything twitches the perimeter. I’m spinning up OSINT to scrape forums for that phrase—Color can’t cover blood.Might be a signature. Take care of yourself, Sawyer.”
“Always.”
The line goes dead. I pocket the phone and take one more breath of cooling rosemary hedge before heading inside.
Dinner is an afterthought—hernibbling, me not. Riggs texts twice with updates (no usable prints on the snipped cam housing; local PD report filed but sanitized per client privacy). Cam jokes with Edgar, asks for extra lemon, thanks him for the grilled halibut she barely touches. Her elbow’s swelling. I clock it, but she pretends it’s fine.
After plates clear she says, “I’m heading to the studio.”
“Want company?”
“You’ll hover anyway.” She tries for light, and it lands fragile. “Might as well invite the gargoyle.”
I follow her across the courtyard flagstones, past lavender pots, through the converted carriage house that serves as herhome studio. Inside is riot: canvases leaned in stratified color, drop cloths, dangling clip lights, fans, turpentine, drying racks of palette knives like silver tongues. She flicks on music—volume borderline OSHA violation—some driving drum-and-violin track that drills straight into marrow.
Then she paints.
No warm-up. No sketch. Just a loaded trowel of cadmium red hurled across gesso like arterial spray, followed by punches of indigo, char streaks of carbon black, an almost obscene squeeze of titanium white clawed through with the end of the brush handle. The piece is big—six by eight feet—and she attacks it like she’d gladly wrestle the threat straight out of existence if the wall would hold still.
I stay in the doorway, hands loose at my sides, letting the blast wash over me.
People assume a bomb guy like me is immune to spectacle. Truth is, we chase clarity. A device is a puzzle—wires, triggers, force vectors. You learn to see patterns at speed, to track trajectories in chaos. Watching Cam paint is like watching a high-speed x-ray of her nervous system externalize. Every strike, every blend reveals load paths—fear, fury, defiance—before she reins them into composition. She’s venting pressure and rebalancing simultaneously, a controlled burn. It’s... beautiful. Terrifying. Familiar in a way I didn’t expect.
The track crests. She stabs, drags, backhands a splash that freckles her cheeks. Sweat beads at her throat. Her braid loosens until her hair sticks to paint down her forearm. She plants one bare foot on the low rung of the easel, leans, and a small sound leaves her—half growl, half sob—so soft the music almost swallows it.
Almost.
My chest tightens.
I don’t speak until the song crashes and she slaps the remote, killing the volume. Silence surges in behind the ringing.
She startles when she turns and sees me still there. Color floods her face—genuine blush, not acrylic. “How long?—?”
“Long enough to know the wall lost,” I say.
A laugh slips out of her, wet with leftover adrenaline. She drags the back of her wrist over her forehead, leaving a comet of white. “You ever watch somebody cry and punch a pillow at the same time? That’s what that was.”
“Healthier than bottling.” I cross in, slow, letting her choose whether to step back. She doesn’t. “Arm.”
“It’s fine.”
“You’re an unreliable narrator.” I angle her left elbow toward the light. The bruise is blooming violet beneath the skin, outlined where the assailant’s fingers clamped. Anger flares so hot my molars pulse. I rein it in and reach for the compact trauma kit clipped to my belt. Cold gel pack, wrap, small packet of topical arnica I carry because I’ve done this gig long enough to know clients bruise.
“You come standard with that?” she teases as I crack the pack and knead it alive.
“Upcharge for glitter bandages,” I deadpan.
She grins, then sucks a breath when the cold hits. “Ohhhhhh, that hurts good.”
“Keep it there for at least ten minutes.” I hold the pack in place while she leans against a high table spattered with ten thousand past colors. Up close I can count gold flecks in her irises. She smells like citrus hand soap fought with mineral spirits and lost. My thumb brushes an errant streak of red at her triceps, and I force it to stop before it wanders farther.
“Tell me something,” she says after a beat, voice gone low, almost intimate. “Why EOD?”
