Year of 365

September 16

People walked past you as you sat on the bench, your eyes flickering from one person to the next. No one seemed to look twice at you, as they were preoccupied with their phones, conversations, or a social media post that their friend had just posted. 

You, meanwhile, were occupied with something else that people might not have suspected. About twenty feet away from you sat a large stone fountain, with what looked like a woman frozen at the top of it. 

But, it wasn't the fountain that you were interested in. Instead, it was the man sitting at the base of the fountain, who was currently scrolling through his phone. It was a phone just like any other, or at least, that's what it seemed like on the outside. His fingers were flying furiously on the keyboard and you looked across the park to where your accomplice was sitting. 

A woman with dark skin and light brown hair. She didn't look like she was doing anything remotely interesting, except typing on her own phone, but as you removed the sunglasses covering your eyes, she nodded. It was a gesture so subtle that a passing runner wouldn't have noticed anything, but she knew what it meant. She reached down to the satchel at her side and pulled out her laptop. Again, it was completely normal, except for the screen. Her back was to a large oak, fifteen feet in diameter, so there was no worry about anyone seeing her screen.

The monitor showed only black for about a minute before showing the locked home screen. There were only two profiles on it, one with a picture of the girl, and one with a strange symbol that looked oddly like an hourglass tipped at a forty-five-degree angle. She clicked on the latter and typed in a password so fast that even someone watching her do the password a thousand times wouldn't have been able to read what it was. The screen suddenly changed to another black screen, but this time, there were three apps open on the screen. 

The one she clicked on opened an app that looked like a phone screen. She glanced up to the man that she was sitting behind and smirked when she saw that her screen matched the man's. The inside source had done a good job of slipping the chip into the man's phone.

On the man's phone, was a text screen between him and another number that was unnamed. 

Target will be finished tonight the man's contact had typed out.

Good. I need this finished before tomorrow morning. 

A pause before the man texted something else.

No witnesses, no evidence. Clean scene. I'll be bringing in the force tomorrow.

Of course. I always get away with it.

Good.

The man shut off his phone and got up from his seat at the fountain. He looked around and smiled when he saw a young girl running toward him, her arms spread out wide as she jumped at the man.

"Dada," she exclaimed. She showed him a large lollipop that she had gotten at one of the many sweet carts in the park. "Look what I got!"

The man laughed. "Did Jake get that for you?"

"Yes." She stuck the lollipop in her mouth and the two-headed off, tailed by three burly men, rather obvious that they were bodyguards of a sort. 

They met a black limo at the edge of the park and got in, driving away quickly, but not before both you and your accomplice could read the license plate.

You got to your feet, no longer interested in staying at the park when you had a report to fill out, and your accomplice rose with you.

"I feel bad about taking him into custody when he has a daughter," the woman said as she approached you, her laptop and phone both back in her bag.

"Unfortunately, that's not our decision," you sighed. You felt bad yourself that you would have to end the love between the father and daughter. From what you had read, you had learned that the girl no longer had a mother, since she had died a few years back, and her father was the only family that she had left. She would be sent to an orphanage and, having been in an orphanage yourself, you didn't feel like sending her there was the best. 

"I'll talk to the boss about it," you said.