The Hunt in Process

Shaun had almost finished with packing, he had to take care of some trivial stuff like changing the address for his mails but he was mostly set. He arrived at Daily planet and was shuffling through his files when Sam asked him to meet her. Shaun headed towards the office, and when he entered he found Sam was talking to some girl, "Oh come in Shaun, let me introduce you, this is Olivia Miller, she's an intern joining us and I want you to mentor her", said Sam to which Shaun just stood there widemouthed , "Haha, um what?", "Yes Shaun, you are one of our best and I think you will be most suited, is there a problem?", Shaun sighed and smiled, "No of course not, I'm honored". Sam then told Olivia to follow Shaun and take notes on how he goes about during his investigation. Olivia then thanked Sam and followed Shaun. This was a problem for Shaun now, with Olivia following him its not gonna be easy to follow his original goal. "Well Ms. Miller, I'm Shaun Frost and I shall be mentoring you as mentioned by Sam, but before we start, may I know a little about you?", Olivia nodded, "I'm studying at Craig Newmark Graduate school of Journalism here in New York, I have been interested in investigative journalism for some time and I want to experience how things work in this profession",Shaun wasn't really listening, he was trying to come up with something to get rid of her, "Tell me Ms. Miller do yo-", Olivia interrupted, "Olivia is fine, don't call me Ms. Miller", Shaun rolled his eyes without realizing then quickly recovering, "I'm sorry, Olivia, do you have any experience in field work? Like following leads and stuff?", Olivia shook her head. "Okay then, I'm about to head out to talk to some of my sources and follow a lead, would you like to tag along?", Olivia's face brightened up.

Shaun and Olivia left the office, and headed towards the theater which was raided a few days ago, on reaching the site Shaun looked around, as if searching for someone, "Excuse me, who are you looking for?", asked Olivia, Shaun glanced at her, "My source, she should be around here somewhere", Olivia looked confused. An old lady came by pushing a cart, she looked like a homeless woman, Shaun started walking towards her, "Hey, are you around here often?", asked Shaun to which the old lady looked at him with raised eyebrows, "Yeah, I'm 'ere mostly, whatcha want?", Shaun pulled out 20 $ and held in front of her, "Tell me about the group which stayed here at the theater and you get this". "Oh I know them Italians, bad people if ye ask me, snoopin' all the time, very secretive", Shaun nodded, "Good, do you know where they went or what they did here?", the old lady looked down, "I not know much mister, but I 'ear some screams the other day, sounded like some young lassie, some three or four", Shaun handed her 20$ and then asked, "Can you remember when was this?", the old lady checking the bill, "2 days before them police came by". Shaun thanked her and started heading towards the bus stop, while Olivia was following him and taking notes, "Shaun what was that about? What are you working on??". Shaun looked at her, "I'll tell you in the bus, but before that what did you learn right now from that encounter?", "That money is necessary in this field?", Shaun almost facepalmed at this, "No, what you are supposed to learn is that everyone notices something, regardless of how unimportant you might find someone, with proper means useful info can be extracted." Olivia nodded and noted it down, they got onto a bus and headed to the police station. Shaun told her about everything, well except the part of him and Horus killing, and Olivia turned paler each second upon hearing it, "Is this what investigative journalists usually write about?", Shaun smiled, "This is just the beginning".

They reached the police station but before entering Shaun grabbed Olivia and pulled her aside, "Now don't say anything unless I ask you to, and make sure you note down everything you hear inside", Olivia nodded and then both of them proceeded into the station. Mason was working on something and upon Shaun entering the station, he immediately put it down and approached him. "Hey Jake, it's been a while, how's everything at the job", Shaun extended his hand for a shake and smiled, "I'm doing okay. Mason let me introduce you, this is Olivia, an intern at our place and I'm mentoring her", Mason shook her hand and then immediately changed the subject, "So you got any info on the Italian mob? ", Shaun told him what he had learnt from the homeless lady, and Mason's face turned red with anger, "Damn! If only we had been a little early, we could have saved those girls". Shaun glanced at Mason's desk, which had files on them. "So Mason, can you tell me anything you have come across about them? ", Mason sighed, "You do know I'm not allowed to give you any info right? ", Shaun laughed nervously, "C'mon, it's me". Mason handed him a file which had the routes highlighted, "These are the routes we suspect them to be picking up the girls, mostly around 18-22 year olds, but there's no more info about their whereabouts ". Shaun thanked Mason and left with Olivia. Upon exiting the station Olivia asked, "Why did he call you Jake? ", to which Shaun answered without looking at her, "It's better to use an alias when you are in the field, in case someone decides to come at you", Olivia noted it down, and they both headed back to Daily planet.

Shaun was now cooking up a plan to go after the italian mob as he had got the major routes they were working on, but the problem was that Olivia was going to stick with him the whole day which was a pain in the ass. Upon reaching the office Shaun asked Olivia for the notes to see how well she was at noting. She had taken the notes as meticulously as one can be. "You are good at taking notes, just gotta learn how and where to extract the info from", Olivia nodded. They reached Shaun's desk and he sat down to make clipnotes of what he had learnt. "Hello! What do we have here!?", it was Horus, he was eyeing Olivia. Shaun looked up, "Hey, this is Olivia, an intern. I'm mentoring her. Olivia this is my brother Reed", Olivia smiled at Horus and shook his hand. Horus signalled Shaun to move aside with him for a second. "So did you find out anything about those italian bastards?", asked Horus to which Shaun handed him the copy of the routes they usually abducted the girls from, which he obtained from Mason. Horus studied the routes and said, "Ok, since you got your hands full right now, I'll go check out some of these routes, we'll plan on what to do later", Shaun agreed and they both returned back to his desk. Olivia was going through her notes, Shaun was thinking of a way to get rid of her for the day but he knew she won't go away with just saying 'we are done for the day', so he had to come up with a way to send her away. "Olivia, how about we wrap up for the day, I'm gonna give you an assignment which you need to submit in three days, do you think you can do that?", asked Shaun hoping she agrees to that and go away for today. Olivia looked up from her 'notes' and said, "Yeah sure! What kind of assignment?", Shaun, giving out a sigh of relief, replied, "I want you to give me a report/survey on the problems of noisy pet in your neighborhood and how it affects people, the more precise the report the better, then we can come up with a solution to deal with it", Olivia nodded while taking it down in the notepad but then looked up with a confused face, "But how is that gonna help me with improving my investigative skills and attitude towards stuff related to this field?". Aw hell, thought Shaun, this Ms. Serious doesn't stop with her blabbing, trying to keep his composure Shaun replied, "This will show me how much goal oriented you are and also your skills on collecting information". Olivia finally seemed convinced and she gave a smile, saying, "Ok then, I shall meet you in three days with the report", saying this she left towards Sam's office to say goodbye to her, while Shaun couldn't help but regret that he could only keep her away for three days, anymore and she might get suspicious that he's trying to get rid of her.

Shaun went back to his new flat, and now that he's living alone he doesn't have to put up a fake face showing that he's all happy and up-skip everyday. Pouring some juice into a glass he thought about how to proceed, they still lacked a lot of info on the Italians and time was running out. They've gotta do something before it's too late.