Page 6 of Beautiful Savage
If Morten Hallstein gets appointed to a Pentagon commission, he'll be untouchable. I need to bury that asshole before I lose my chance for good.
"Timeline?" I ask.
"It's moving fast. I only just heard about this, but it's been going in the background already for a month or two. I'd say we only have four weeks or so until the announcement. After that, it'll be official."
She stops talking, and the pause runs into silence.
"So," she continues, "I don't know what your deal is with him, but I'm pretty sure you're not a fan. So if you want to do something about him, you'd better do it before he becomes a Pentagon darling."
"I do."
I have four weeks. Four weeks until Hallstein becomes untouchable. Four weeks until the man who discharged me, who did what he did to those women, becomes the voice of reform.
"Anyway, I thought you should know."
"Appreciate it."
"Take care of yourself."
The line goes dead.
I set the phone next to the loop footage, next to the streaked watercolor. The pieces line up fast. A professional breach at our docks three nights back. A Pentagon announcement in four weeks. An old man in my garden this morning, right above my key evidence, rendering the layout in recon-level detail.
Hallstein knows I have something on him, he just doesn't know what. I have no doubt he was behind the breach at the docks. The only question is whether he was also behind the old man in the garden.
A first scout. That is what this looks like. Or an old man with a sketchbook who liked the flowers from the alley. Either is possible. I cannot afford the wrong one.
The old man's wallet. The daughter's name. The emergency contact in Pristine. She will know her father's movements, his recent work, his contacts. She is also the lever. Young, female, isolated. Take her, and the old man talks. Take her right, and it looks exactly like what people expect from someone built like me.
I roll my shoulders. I feel the Glock's weight.
"I'll investigate," I tell Logan. "A cottage in Pristine. Painter named Gilles."
"Need backup?"
"No."
He nods, back to the monitors. I take the watercolor with me on the way out.
In the alley, my truck waits. Black. Older. Invisible. I walk to the driver's side, keys in my left hand.
My right hand moves on its own, faster than thought. The punch lands on the side panel. Metal meets bone. Pain shoots through my knuckles. I pull back. Blood wells across the second and third knuckles.
I look at it. Wipe the blood on my jeans. Get in.
North on I-95, it's two hours to Pristine. The watercolor is on the passenger seat. The pink streak across the corner has dried dark, set into the paper. My knuckles throb with each heartbeat. The blood goes dark too.
I've been waiting nine years to get something solid on Hallstein, and now I only have four weeks to do it.
The cottage is two miles from the town center, dead quiet. It's four o'clock Monday afternoon. I watched the painter enter his studio an hour back through a gap in the fence. The daughter teaches ballet until five-thirty — I pulled her schedule driving up, so I have ninety minutes to scare a confession out of this guy. Ninety minutes alone.
The front door is unlocked. Small town. Inside, the air is heavy with linseed oil and turpentine. To my left, the kitchen; straight ahead, the living room; to the right, a hallway. I move through each space swiftly, confirming they are empty and that the back door is securely closed. For a moment, the house feels entirely mine.
But the living room stops me cold. On the long wall above the fireplace hang six paintings, each side by side, each depicting the same woman—this painter's daughter, I presume—at a different moment in her life. The first shows her as a young child, hair pulled back, clad in a simple leotard, her expression solemn, her eyes nearly black. Next, she is bathed in sunlight in the kitchen, the light soft against her cheek, picking out the amber in her eyes. In the third, she sits on a porch swing, a book in her hand, lost in thought, the muscles in her shoulders and arms smooth and taut. The fourth captures her in her early twenties, perhaps—turned away, a glass of wine in one hand, small breasts and soft hips somehow enhanced by the simple sundress she wears. In the fifth, she stands amid garden blooms, petals framing her face like a living wreath. And then the last one, the one I cannot walk past: she sits for him, her dark hair tumbling forward to conceal her face, leaving only a delicate jawline and a bare shoulder visible against the shadows.
I recognize that brushstroke—the same hand that painted my bench this morning, the same command of light, every detail rendered with loving precision. Yet these portraits unsettle me. I stop before the hidden-face painting, heart pounding, my Glock heavy in my hand.
My mission was straightforward: extract a confession, gather intelligence, confirm the painter's story. But something in me shifts. Instead of leaving before the daughter returns home, I find myself wanting to watch her face when she sees me. I moveto stand directly beneath her childhood portrait—where she cannot fail to notice me—and wait.
