CLOSED STARTER FOR @kazofdirtyhands.
To Kaz Brekker’s credit, Jamie did not realise she had been burgled until she was actually inside her apartment. He left no sign of a forced entry, no signal of his presence at all, and it was not until she reached the living room that she realised something was incredibly wrong.
COUNTERFEIT ART IS A CRIME - BUT NICE WORK. The frame was empty, and where The Blind Leading the Blind had hung, now there was a blank, grey, space, and those words written in large black letters, scrawled, as if by a mocking voice. And she could hear it in Kaz Brekker’s voice, and she knew. It took no deductive reasoning beyond the incredibly obvious fact that he was the only person whom she could think of who would be petty enough, daring enough, and reckless enough to do something like this.
Jamie Moriarty was not one to dwell on feelings of fury. She had immediately walked to the desk in her home study, her heels clipping on the wooden floor, her emotions as cold and sharp as ice. And she had sat at the desk, and pulled out her notebook, the same one in which she had doodled pieces of the man from her persistent and irritating dreams. She turned to a fresh page, and wrote, her hand gliding across the page smoothly and quickly, each thought efficiently recorded, so as to keep her thoughts in order. Where others might have been burning with the thought of retribution, Jamie felt cold with it, steady and calm.
Inej Ghafa, she wrote, in her neat italic script. May be averse to physical contact? She disliked not knowing for certain -- Inej seemed to be a more likely target, and Jamie felt no qualms about using the woman to hurt Kaz.
She did not consider at all, as she sat there, how odd it was that she, an art restorer, felt so comfortable plotting revenge. It felt as much a part of her as her artwork did, or her many facades. She supposed this wasn’t a surprising turn of events -- she had always been morally lacking, and not cared. This was simply an expression of that. And this man had dared come into her home, had dared to steal what was hers, and deface the frame.
After much planning, Jamie decided on the Ockham’s Razor approach -- the simplest approach was, invariably, the best one. It would be easy enough to confront Kaz immediately, and to decide from there which course of action would be the quickest and most efficient way to hurt him for what he had done. She was not above admitting that she didn’t have enough information on the man to yet deduce the quickest way to get revenge.
And this was how, a mere half an hour later, she found herself standing outside his front door, having contacted that airheaded reporter she’d met at the coffeehouse to ask for Kaz’s address. The girl had been more than happy to give it to her. So, Jamie knocked sharply, and as soon as the door opened, she smiled a bland, hateful, smile. “Hello Mr Brekker,” she said. “I think you have something that belongs to me. I would very much appreciate it if you returned to me.”
