SEQUENTIAL ━ Connor // RK800 ✔️

twenty-one ━ in too deep

There was no doubt that she would go insane if she didn't do something soon, and that sort of desperation forced Mia into the situation she now found herself in — fixing up the collar of a stolen button-up shirt and tucking the gun of some town cop she never personally met in a holster that was closer to belonging to the car than to herself, all while staring into the bathroom mirror of the house where Rory had murdered Lucien Terrier, someone who in a past life, she would have called a friend.

Such was her imprudence when deciding to follow through with the plan Connor had laid out so briefly to her that it hadn't occured to Mia until she was in the studio of the deceased painter, using a fake name to a well-meant gallerist, that she didn't even know what she was looking for. She may have helped program his detective interface, but that did not, by any means, qualify her to be up for the task of figuring out the deviant's trail. The single step she took into the art studio where Rory had stabbed Lucien to death and the singular glance at the still stained old wood of the flooring, a stain otherwise still reeking off death despite the air fresheners propped on every surface around the room, was enough to churn her stomach into a twist and remind her — she was not him.

It was too late to back out now, and while that still scared her terribly, failure's consequences terrified Mia just a little bit more. She had to at least try to see this through.

After a brief practice of her smile in the mirror, Mia tucked the folded picture back in her jacket's top pocket and exited the bathroom, the door missing hitting the gallerist by mere millimeters.

"Sorry," Mia kept the smile going. "The smell in the art studio was just..."

"I know," the gallerist returned the cordial smile with an apologetic raise of her eyebrows. She lifted up a glass of water she must have fetched when Mia claimed to be feeling a little sick. "The police did such a poor job in cleaning up after the body," she lamented while watching Mia take that polite single sip from the glass before giving it back, "and Mr. Terrier's parents wanted this place up and running as a gallery as soon as possible, we didn't have time to replace the floorboards. Here." Setting the glass aside, the gallerist took a medical issued face mask from the table and handed it over to Mia. "This should help, if you want to take a more careful look around the art in there. Of course, we will provide glass framing for any pieces from that area of the house, should you be interested in buying them. Scent would not usually stick to the canvas, but you never know."

"That's wonderful," Mia placed the mask over her nose and mouth, but otherwise took no break from speaking, "because I am actually interested in buying several pieces from the art studio itself."

"Really?" The gallerist was righteously shocked, her fair eyebrows shooting upwards and pressing accent shadows around her wrinkles.

The paintings may have been enough to fool some teachers in high school, but now, after Rory had, by the looks of it, been overworked well beyond his limits, all canvases lacked so obviously that something which made art pieces so enjoyable to stare at in the first place. While paintings in museums evoke emotions, staring too long at one of Rory's paintings did the very opposite — they screamed out his lack thereof. The longer one looked at certain pieces paraded around the house, the more distorted and out of place the paintings seemed. It was downright disturbing, and there was no one quite like the poor woman in charge of this messed up gallery to know more about that.

"Of course," Mia found it a blessing in disguise that she could hide her lies behind pretending to be concerned with fixing her mask on.