Chereads / Maestro of Carnage / Chapter 12 - A Useless Amateur

Chapter 12 - A Useless Amateur

The campus was really big. It spanned three hundred fifty by five hundred meters and had welcomed five presidents, two vice-presidents, and the current sitting secretary of defense. This was how it recruited talented students. Prestige and reputation. It just so happened that four of those presidents were extremely brilliant. The college proudly displayed their achievements in front of the administrative building. One of them lifted the country out of a financial depression. Another ended the cold war in Germany without the troops ever being seen. There was a betrayal within the U.S. Secret Service that was promptly handled by the third. New legislature reformed the department and now dissent was resolved in hours. The last garnered respect and praise for themselves and the college from fifteen other presidents.

Henry only managed to get accepted with his crazy and wacky ideas. The college greatly valued innovation and risk even if it didn't pan out to anything. His first trip was to the hall of history that detailed the college's beginning. In fact, this was his second trip here and was usually the first spot on any tour. He had casually walked around and ended up here. Only five minutes had passed. Still fifty four minutes to go.

There was a girl hugging his left hand while his right was free. He was a bit more assertive with it and so the crowd that was following him got the hint. One hugged him from the back while another simply leaned on his shoulders. The other two were just following closely behind.

The cafeteria. It was twenty three minutes into the hour when he noticed the man with a grin. Just staring at him without averting the gaze. He swear he saw an expression of confusion before it disappeared. Why would anyone be confused looking at him? Look a-likes? Even if that were true, you would just go up to the person to confirm it. So what else? He looked the man over carefully. Details popped up that he remembered. The collectors. The supervisor. They had on jeans and a fleece shirt. Gray and made of cotton or something more durable and smooth across the surface. Not totally smooth because it needed to be durable but more effort went into making the whole thing smooth. The company card hanging around their necks. Shark Investments. A simple name and straight to the point. The name was on the bottom but the logo was a shark eating other fish. Prey. It matched the top of the card he had seen on the men he killed.

So they thought he died, which was to be expected, but when their men didn't return, or were they expected to go somewhere else after him? The confusion on the grinning man suggested they weren't expected to come back immediately. Maybe the man recognized his face and was confused on why he was still alive. He needed to investigate the man but concealment was a good a dead giveaway as anything. It needed to be natural. As he turned, he made note of his surroundings.

He suggested that they grab something to eat and they agreed so the group walked over to the nearest food stand. Hot dogs, fruit platters, coke, water, and other basic things one might find in their local produce section. He ordered a hot dog and water. Meat was always good. Decent source of protein and would keep him longer than some fruit. Water instead of coke because there was too much sugar. It would dehydrate him even though there was water. Instead of the fruit platter he just bought some sliced mango's and ate those. 

He sat and talked with the girls while observing the man in his peripheral. Previous the man had moved lockstep with them, maintaining a consistent distance. Now the man stood just as still as them, looking mostly at him and also talking on a phone. He barely made out part of the man's appearance which meant the man barely made him out as well. He was originally well covered since the man was tailing them and now he was still covered. He talked for up to fifteen minutes and the man stayed there for just as long. Didn't seem to be bothered any by the scorching hot sun, the meddlesome flies, or the young adults around him. Just continued what he was doing fifteen minutes ago.

If this was just an intimidation tactic, Henry Ruthless wasn't scared of such a thing. In fact, Henry Ruthless would even think this man was an idiot for being so openly dumb. Maybe the man was keeping tabs on him but that didn't matter. You don't make yourself obvious when tailing a target. If you did, you were a moron that didn't know anything about the business. It meant you were weak. Nine times out of ten, the phone was fake and instead used as part of a larger scare tactic. The victim would over think the matter and do what the hitman or observer wanted them to do. So he just didn't do any of that and continued to sit and talk and eat.

At thirty nine minutes, the man finally got up, discomfort visible. He was cooling off with the water and the mango's but the man had none of it. Just literally sat there for close to half an hour. Didn't even put the phone away. Just placed it on the table and left in a hurry. An amateur who went straight into the field without reading the manual beforehand. The phone was probably a burner phone that was advertised as untraceable or maybe the man thought that since the phone was a dud that it wouldn't matter if it was lost so he just left. All of that reassured him that this man was really just trying to confirm something on his own.

He decided to use the remaining twenty minutes to interrogate this scout so he got up, excused himself, then walked in the direction the man did.