Tavish stepped to the back of the room to better assess the three paintings one of his partners, Maddox Vaughn, had brought to the gallery this morning.

On one, done in blackish-brown hues, there was a well-built man on his knees, surrounded by circling, playful, skin-and-bones children, reaching out but unable to touch them.

On another, a gray sky darkened a charcoal ghost town, while its dark river flowed calmly by, full of pale-gray dead bodies resembling leisure boats.

In the last, the most seemingly banal landscape he had ever seen burst from the canvas.

He watched, stunned and awed, as the images struck him anew. They all reminded him of live hallucinations, worldly nightmares.

The figurative paintings done with dense, contoured and concentrated paint were nearly three-dimensional. The layers and layers of paint appeared to have been piled, smoothed, and only then carved; the dark colors produced a dynamic vibration upon the canvas in relation to the lighter tones; each color glowed separately, but then they fused together, barely able to stand on their own.

They punched Tavish in the gut so deep his soul was shaken. He shook his head and blinked, turning to Maddox. He had but one word for it: “Powerful.”

“I thought so, too. Contemporary touch, political sense, from banal, ordinary scenes to extreme psychological situations without losing their permanent tension. The technique has a style reminiscent of…hmm…the impressionists?” Maddox was so excited he was toying with his Dupont cigarette lighter between his fingers. “He promised me three more by the end of this week. I don’t know how no one has discovered her before.”

Tavish looked at Maddox, a small frown between his eyes. “Her? But you said he charged—”

“The artist’s name is Laetitia Galen, and she consigns her paintings in a very small gallery in Leam,” he explained, giving Tavish a business card. “Mr. Belmont, the gallery owner, charged me three hundred pounds per linear meter, after I bargained for a discount. She is probably receiving thirty-five, forty percent of it.”

“It barely covers the material,” Tavish whispered to himself. “We have a great potential on our hands.”

“Do you think Alistair will approve?”

“If she is half as good as I’m imagining, for sure he will.” Tavish’s gaze was drawn back to the image. “If he won’t, I already have.”

* * *

A firm knock on the door frame made Tavish turn his head from his computer screen.

The older version of himself, his powerful entrepreneur brother, Alistair MacCraig, was leaning on the jamb of his office door.

Tavish rose from his chair and circled his table to embrace him. “It wasn’t that urgent.”

“Your voice had a catching tone,” said Alistair, with a smile on his face. “I couldn’t resist seeing what took my brother from his ever-so-calm and brooding state.”

“I don’t brood.”

“Nae, you sulk,” Alistair replied, deadpan.

Tavish rolled his eyes heavenward, opened the connecting door to the showroom, and turned on the lights. “Here.”

Alistair stepped to the three canvases hanging on the farthest wall and scanned the images. After a few minutes, he whistled low and turned to Tavish. “There’s an innate, hidden ambiguity to this work. I’d say it’ll be the new rage, if it has consistency.”

“Aye,” he said, his stare fixed on one of the images. “It has something unique. This carefulness, thoughtfulness of the drawing, and yet it comes out as a vibrant, restless scene.”

“This artist could be a fucking genius, Tavish Uilleam,” Alistair said, still admiring the paintings. “How have you contacted him?”

“Her. Maddox and his assistants couldn’t find any contact info for a Laetitia Galen. I called the gallery that sold her paintings, probing for information, but they were evasive.” Tavish made a vague gesture in the air that puzzled Alistair, as his brother was one of the most straightforward people he knew, always economical with gestures and even more so with words. “I never thought I would be asking you this, but there’s always a first time in life.”

“Ask what?”

The words left Tavish’s mouth with the certainty ingrained by his sharpened military and medical instincts. “I’m going after this artist. I want her address, even if it takes Baptist to get it.”

“Oho, Brother!” A wicked smile opened on Alistair’s face and he fished his iPhone from his inner jacket pocket, dialing the number of one of the best private investigators in Britain. “Alistair MacCraig here. I need you to find someone for me.”