The man, watching through the twigs of the sprawling shrubbery he hid behind, adjusted his headset, twisted a dial on his listening device.

He had been following the pair since that morning. It wasn’t every day that he ran across subjects with such potential.

Tucking the listening device under his arm, he dug a notebook from his heavy coat, pulling a chewed-up pen from its spiral spine. The pen made a nice, cozy noise as he wrote: “stop.. letting mind run wild… only tree…”

Then he clamped the pen between his teeth, retrieved the listening device, and aimed it at Izak and Sheryl as they stumbled through the forest… away from the cemetery.