Page 8 of Sawyer (The Maddox BRAVO Team #1)

Sawyer

When we arrive back to her place I keep Cam in my sightline all the way from the curb to the foyer.

She walks steady—too steady—the kind of brittle composure you get when shock hasn’t decided whether to crash you or crown you.

I don’t press. Not in front of staff. Not where cameras can memorialize tremors she doesn’t want trending.

Edgar meets us at the door with a damp cloth and a look that belongs on a battlefield medic. “Everything all right, Miss Cam?”

“We finished the mural,” she says, which is both true and not remotely the point. I give Edgar a tight shake of the head: no details yet . He pivots to logistics—tea, ice, dinner—and the routine becomes a ramp we can drive our frayed nerves up without flipping.

While Cam disappears to scrub paint (and evidence powder I dusted along her sleeve) off in the downstairs bath, I step into the side courtyard and dial Dean.

He picks up before the first full ring. “Report.”

“Level just moved from nuisance to credible threat with proximity breach,” I say.

“Contact at rec center women’s restroom.

Male, approx six foot, athletic build, masked.

Grabbed Cam’s elbow long enough to pass a written message—same cream cardstock, ransom-block lettering.

Line read: COLOR CAN’T COVER BLOOD. STOP PAINTING TARGETS.

NEXT TIME I USE RED. Tone’s controlled. Not junkie erratic. ”

Dean swears low. “Is she injured?”

“Minor contusion at left cubital. No penetration, no chemical transfer that I could detect visually. She countered with a knee strike, and created separation. Subject exfil’d via side exit with disabled cam. Wire was cleanly cut. He knew the layout.”

“So we’ve got a planner who’s watched the site, maybe had access to volunteer logistics.” Another pause. “Chain-of-custody on the note?”

“Bagged. I’ll courier to lab via brAVO courier at 0600. I also swabbed her sleeve and the cardstock edge; if he had residue—paint, oil, nitrile transfer—we might pull a trace.”

“Good.” A keyboard clacks. “Riggs staying on your flank?”

“Yeah. I want him embedded here. Also request mobile facial-rec kit for tomorrow’s vendor load-ins and a list comparison—anyone with access to Foundation volunteer rosters, Kingsley vendor databases, recent layoffs from Kingsley Aeronautics security.

If this is leverage against Gregory through Cam, we tighten both ends. ”

Dean exhales—approval salted with worry. “Done. How’s Cam mentally?”

“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—her nibbling, 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 her home 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?”

No one starts with the easy ones. “Because I hated bullies,” I say, surprising myself with the brevity.

“And I hate unfair fights. Bombs are the ultimate unfair fight—cowards wiring shrapnel to timers, giving you no face to punch back. EOD lets you reach in and take that away from them.” I study the bruise again. “Makes it a fair fight.”

She swallows, eyes never leaving mine. “Was it scary?”

“Every time,” I admit. “You get good at compartmentalizing. Breathe, process, follow protocol. Most days the scary part comes after, when you replay what you almost triggered. You learn to respect fear without letting it drive.” I nod at her canvas.

“You just did the same thing. Took the hit, processed, redirected.”

“Yeah?” She looks over her shoulder at the work-in-progress. “Feels more like tantrum art.”

“Tantrums don’t land that compositionally balanced.” I point. “You triangulated load—red anchored high left, black low right, white drawing the eye through. That’s structural.”

She smirks. “Spoken like a man who thinks in blast cones.”

“Guilty.” I lower the pack. “Where’d your art come from?”

She inhales, exhales slowly, as if sifting through boxes.

“My mom painted. Not professionally. She’d spread butcher paper on the kitchen floor and give me condiments—ketchup, mustard, food coloring—and let me ‘paint dinner.’ Dad would come home, step in purple mustard, lose his mind, then laugh because she’d already photographed the mess for some charity newsletter.

When she died, the kitchen got remodeled—stainless, sterile, boardroom chic.

Colors disappeared.” Her mouth pulls to one side.

“So I chased them. Chalk on sidewalks. Spray paint on plywood behind the garage. Oils when I could steal them. Every time Dad took me to a shareholders’ meeting I’d come home and blast another wall in color just to prove the house still breathed. ”

I let that sit. “How old?”

“Fourteen.” She shrugs. “Rebellion stuck. But it turned into something bigger when I saw how kids’ faces change when they put color somewhere no one told them they were allowed to. It’s like oxygen. That’s what I want—oxygen in dead spaces.”

I look at the bruise again. Color can’t cover blood. Our perp wants to suffocate oxygen out of her world. That’s his power play.

“He picked the wrong hallway,” I say.

“Damn right he did.”

We stand close enough that her breath ghosts my throat. Her free hand lifts, and she lightly taps my sternum with a paint-wet fingertip, leaving a scarlet dot over my heart. “Target acquired,” she murmurs.

“Cam…” Warning. Plea. Promise. All tangled.

She searches my face. “If I cross a line, you’ll stop me?”

“I’ll try.” It comes out ragged.

Her smile tilts sly. “Try hard?”

“Hard is the problem.”

We hover in that charged pocket—gravity tugging, protocols bracing—until my phone vibrates sharp against my hip. I step back like I’ve been doused.

“Yeah.” I thumb accept the call. “Riggs?”

“Pulled municipal traffic cam two blocks west of the rec center,” he says.

“Got a maybe-match—painter whites, mask off once he cleared the crowd, hopped an electric scooter. Frame grab inbound. Sending to Dean and you. Plate on the scooter’s rental code traces to a dummy account.

Dean wants to run face through our database. Check your secure inbox.”

“Copy.” I glance at Cam, and she’s wiping the red dot off my chest with the edge of a clean rag, expression half apology, half dare. “Keep digging. I’ll review.”

The call ends. The moment, however, doesn’t.

“Business?” she asks.

“Lead.” I set the gel pack on the table. “We may get an ID.”

“Good.” She leans the bruised arm against her ribs protectively. “If you catch him, I want to see him.”

“We’ll see.” Which means if chain-of-evidence allows and you seeing him won’t land us in litigation. What I really want is to put my fist through his teeth. Not professional. Very true.

She turns back to the canvas, dips a brush in white, then holds it up. “You adding a stroke or you just critiquing?”

“This wall big enough for boundaries?”

“I’ll give you a corner.” She laughs softly. “Draw me a… perimeter.”

Of course she would. I take the offered brush, step in, and with two controlled pulls lay a thin, continuous arc of white that curves behind the chaos of red—subtle, almost hidden—tying disparate blasts together into a hooked shield. Not a cage. A contour. Protection disguised as motion.

She studies it, head tipped. “Always drawing lines.”

“Lines keep you safe.”

“Sometimes crossing them makes the art.” She glances sideways, lashes low. “Sometimes both.”

We’re close again. Close enough that if I angled an inch our mouths would?—

My radio chirps: Perimeter green. Riggs, again, saving the day.

I exhale. “Ice. Ten more.” I nod at her elbow.

“Bossy.”

“Alive.”

She salutes sloppily with paint-slick fingers. “Yes, sir.”

I should leave, but I don’t. I take a stool, sit where I can see the door and the window and the artist who’s become my axis, and watch her layer color over the arc I drew—but not cover it. Never cover. She lets it ghost through, a line only visible if you know to look.

Hours from now I’ll replay this night and wonder if this was the exact moment I stopped being a contractor on a high-net-worth detail and became something else. Bodyguard, sure. Shield, absolutely. But also… collaborator.

And no, Dean, I’m not requesting reassignment.

Not when the most dangerous thing I’ve ever stood in front of is asking me, in paint and half-smiles, to stay.