59

He stood in the middle of his life’s work, an installation that filled the entire top floor of one of the nicest buildings in Broslin. His soundproofed workshop was down in the basement. The downstairs he left as it had been when he’d bought the abandoned building. If anyone somehow peeked in through a boarded-up window, let them see nothing.

But the top floor, here he spent money. The space could have been part of a wing in the Louvre. Not that he ever wanted his art to be moved there. This was his hometown. His museum should be here, maybe with the town named after him eventually. Let the French come here if they wanted to see his work. He was proud to be an American.

The canvases that hung on the walls had been painted in living blood. They’d been his first true creations, the very thing that eventually led him onto the right path.

He’d been in North Carolina to pick up a car he’d bought online. He met a young woman at the hotel bar. She came back to his room with him.

And then she