Page 58 of Beautiful Savage
"Send them. Fast. Lots of civilians around."
As we're talking, I check my tracker app. Daphne is still at La Sirena.
"On it," Peytone says.
I end the call. Stand over the bodies for two seconds while the implications settle. Hallstein knows I'm onto him. Somehow he knows I have the file. The Tuesday timeline isn't secure anymore. He's accelerating, trying to snatch me before I can release the dossier. And if he knows about me, he might know about Daphne.
The decision forms instantly. She has to leave Miami. Today. Before he finds out what she means to me.
I walk the remaining fifty feet to the coffee shop. Blood still seeps from the temple cut, mixing with sweat. The limp is obvious. Yamila's eyes widen when she sees me, but she knows better than to ask. In this world, blood is just another Saturday. She starts my usual.
While she works the espresso machine, I duck into the small bathroom. Wet a paper towel, clean the worst of the blood away. The cut's not deep but it's long, will need butterflies later. Good enough for now. The face in the mirror is the one that makes mothers pull their children close. The blood suits it.
Back at the counter waiting for the coffees, I see today's Miami Herald sitting there. Someone left it open to the regional section. The Pristine pages, little town news that nobody in Miami cares about.
My eyes catch on the page. Jarrod Boyce in a suit, his mother beside him at some fundraiser. "Local Business Owner Receives Community Service Award." The hardware store owner who's been waiting for Daphne to notice him, now getting ribbons for organizing charity drives. The kind of man the world celebrates. Safe. Clean. The life waiting for her if she goes home.
I flip forward, not sure why I'm looking. Three pages later, my own name jumps out from newsprint.
A syndicated piece picking up on the Pentagon coverage, running a side article on the need for justice in the military. "Questions Deepen About Dishonorable Dischargee's Military Record." The paragraph is about an unnamed sergeant, believed to be living in Miami under the surname Gunner, employed in private security, described as a troubled veteran with a possible grudge related to a 2017 incident.
I read it twice, and the second time I see the fingerprints. Syndicated. Sourced to "officials familiar with the commission process." Dropped into regional papers the same week three men tried to put a needle in my neck. This isn't journalism. It's preparation. Hallstein is salting the ground, building the unstable-veteran story before my dossier can land, so that when it does, it reads like the ravings the Army always said I was capable of. He isn't defending anymore. He's moving.
My eyes move between the two articles. Jarrod's award on one page, my name beside "troubled veteran" three pages on. Two different futures printed on the same paper. With him she's the hardware store owner's wife, safe and celebrated. With me she's the woman who chose the unstable soldier, explaining that choice for the rest of her life.
In one she's clean. In the other she's mine, and covered in my dirt forever.
I fold the paper closed. Pay for the coffees. Pick up the bread from the bakery next door.
I don't go to the French place for Daphne's croissant. The decision makes itself. Why buy pastries for someone who won't be here to eat them?
The apartment door opens and Daphne sees everything at once. The blood on my temple, still wet from Miami heat. The limp I can't hide. Whatever she was holding drops to the desk. A book, maybe.
Her hands come to my face, fingertips gentle near the cut. The touch burns worse than the wound. "What happened?"
"The situation has evolved," I say.
She steps back, reading what I'm not saying. Her dark eyes track across my face, and I watch her understand before I say it. Too smart, my Daphne. She's always seen through my bullshit.
She sees it in my eyes. The finality. The way my hands are still trembling, not from adrenaline, but from the kind of fear I can't shake with a gun. Still, she holds my gaze, even as the stubborn part of her brain is already drawing up countermeasures.
"You have to leave Miami," I say. "Today."
She blinks, tight, like the word physically hit her. "No."
The word lands between us, absurd in its softness. I want to laugh. Instead, I repeat it, slower. "You have to leave. Two ofLogan's men will take you to Pristine. You'll stay at your father's cottage until this is done."
"I'm not afraid." Her chin lifts, that regal thing she does when she's digging in. Christ, this woman. "We planned together yesterday. We're partners in this. You don't get to send me away like I'm some—"
"Like you're what?" I snap. "Baggage? Collateral? You are." She doesn't flinch. "I'm not letting Hallstein get near you. He's got people in the city, probably eyes in this building right now."
Her mouth hardens into a line I recognize. She moves closer, sets the coffee she's been holding on the counter with surgical precision. "You think I'm going to let you handle this alone?" she says. "You think that's what I want?"
"I don't care what you want," I say, but the lie cracks on the way out. Of course I do. I care more than anything, and that's the fucking problem.
"Liar."
"You're leaving." The operational voice, the one from the first days of captivity. The voice that makes grown men piss themselves, and she's standing straighter because of it.
