Wren
Ch. 10
Rich arrived at Claremont Avenue around noon. The sun was high in the sky and the day was unseasonably warm. He regretted wearing such a heavy cloak today. Seeing the avenue stretching before and behind him, with what looked to be a couple dozen benches in each direction, he knew that the cloak was just going to make a bad experience worse. After a heavy sigh, he headed east up the road, taking advantage of what precious little shade there was.
After about an hour of methodically checking the bottoms of benches, he came across one that smelled slightly of burning. Lowering himself under it, he found a message hastily burned into the underside of the wood. It read:
You will find this man in the university library from one in the afternoon to eight in the evening today. Kill him. Your next instructions will be burned under the bark of the largest oak in Sherwood Park.
And next to it,burned into the wood, was an image of a young man, who looked to be about the right age to be a student at the university. The man looked vaguely familiar to Rich. After a few moments thinking, he realized this was the student who was talking to Brandon yesterday when he arrived. This can’t be a coincidence, Rich thought, Brandon’s got something to do with this. The target is a student at the university, and the instructions are burned into the wood. Why would anyone spend the extra time to burn it when etching would do just fine. Brandon is the only person I’ve ever seen who would do so. He does really like burning things. I could go to the university and confront him there, or I could hurry to Sherwood and catch him in the act! And with that, Rich picked himself up off the ground, and took off running towards his destination.