Kevin McDougall was on a mission to prevent his own murder.

As of Friday 4:03 PM, he was taking a crucial murder-preventing step of personally inspecting every closet, cupboard and storing space of his house on account of hidden assassins. This was a no trivial feat, considering that his house contained 42 rooms, including an indoor swimming pool and an underground cinema hosting up to 50 people. There were, in result, a lot of closets to check.

Kevin could always ask one of the five of his personal housemaids or a few of the nine of his personal security managers/bodyguards to do it for him, except he didn’t trust them anymore. In fact, as Kevin had concluded two days ago, he could, conceivably, trust himself and himself only. Any number of corrupt schemes and agreements could be hiding in plain sight; even the most loyal bodyguard or housemaid could be bribed, threatened, or recruited by his likely assassins.

No, this was a job better done without assistance.

Now, having inspected all of his kitchens and living rooms, Kevin was engaged in the inspection of his library. The library was primarily used as a background for his instagram photos or for more casual business negotiations; in other words, it was used infrequently, and was therefore an excellent place for an assassin to hide. Meticulously, he ambled the room, peering into the darkness behind the cabinets. He was slightly disappointed to have discovered nothing but a few dead insects.

This has not discouraged Kevin. He had spent the best part of the week trying to uncover the plan behind his assassination, and no evidence to the contrary was able to dissuade him. Kevin did not require evidence; he had a feeling. The feeling of being watched, constantly, his every move recorded and analyzed for blatantly evil purposes. And Kevin always trusted his feelings.

His grandmother was a clairvoyant (or so she claimed…) and had taught him from a young age to consider his intuition. This well-developed sense of intuition had, no doubt, allowed Kevin to not only keep but triple the fortune he had inherited from his father. And now that the same intuition was telling him that he was being targeted for some good old-fashioned killing, Kevin was rather inclined to take it seriously.

At 4:37 PM, he was more than half way done with the inspection, and, coincidentally, also about half way there to completing his daily 10,000 steps. The underground cinema has been declared assassin-free, and he had since moved on to checking all the bedrooms in the house. There were twelve of them.

Earlier that week, Kevin had considered moving to his modest suburban house (which only had fifteen rooms) but realized that it would interfere with his business, and also with his golfing habits.

Still, additional security simply had to be employed. Kevin nodded to himself as he walked the corridors between the bedrooms and dialed his head of security for the fifth time that day. After brief negotiations, it was decided that new motion tracking sensors will be added to the fences and lamp posts. It would cost him twenty thousand dollars, but that was a negligible price to pay for his safety.

Kevin McDougall did not believe in gods, the supernatural, and, indeed, in most perfectly human concepts either. What he did believe on Friday 4:45 PM were three things:

A) someone was meticulously tracking him down

B) it had something to do with his monetary fortune

C) that someone was his ex-girlfriend, Alexandra

*

Two out of three of those statement were true.

Yes, someone really was tracking down billionaire and famous business owner Kevin McDougall. Yes, it did relate to his money in a way, though not in a way that you’d guess. But no, it was not connected to any of his ex-girlfriends.

The person who had dedicated the last two weeks of his life to this task was actually a mercenary by the name of Orson.

This had been Orson’s first gig as a mercenary. As of Friday 4:37 PM, Orson was trying to catch a bus to his motel room.

(He didn’t have a car. Or a driver’s license.)

He had just concluded a very fruitful day of watching Kevin’s mansion, with a pair of pink plastic binoculars from a tree top of a dry sycamore. He considered this a productive day, and was planning to reward himself with a proper dinner for one.

If you were to sit next to Orson on that bus, it would have never occurred to you that you were sharing a seat with an assassin. Not only was Orson of a tall, skinny and lanky complexion associated frequently with grad students and software engineers, he was also wearing a checkered jumper that was clearly purchased for him by his mother and thick metal-rimmed glasses that magnified his eyes and produced a slight resemblance to a polite fish.

The pink binoculars sticking out of his backpack also played a role.

Were Buzzfeed to compose an article titled “15 people least likely to be mercenaries (number 4 is so true)”, Orson would have been number 4. Prior to becoming a mercenary, he had dabbled in photography, candle-making, baby-sitting, and professional dog-walking. None of these careers lasted long enough to at least be included as a bullet point on his CV.

The idea to become a mercenary has appeared to him in a lager-induced dream after an afternoon binge-read of Deadpool comics. Since Orson’s understanding of a mercenary’s job was mostly based on said comics, he had assumed that his day would consist predominantly of tracking down his targets and flirting with superheroes, sometimes in an elegant DIY-ed dress. This was satisfactory for Orson.

So far, he had succeeded in tracking down his target, which took him ten days of vigorous tracking down. After all, billionaires were not typically keen to share the location of their 42-room big mansions - at least not further than a general area. Luckily, Orson was nice and polite, and so were various local villagers (or their security guards). It only took him 17 pleasant conversations, including three invites for coffee and one invite for lunch, to triangulate down to Kevin’s house.

This week he had spent simply watching the house from a distance. His next step required getting an arm length close to Kevin, and he hadn’t yet devised a plan of how he could achieve that. Therefore, he resorted to taking it slow and gathering some intel first.

Back on the 5 PM bus, an elderly woman was preparing to climb inside, unsure of how to balance a walking cane with a heavy bag of groceries. Having noticed this out of the corner of his eye, Orson was immediately on his feet and helping the old lady in. She thanked him profusely - twice - first when he supported her climb, and second when he gave up his seat for her.

The bus took off at last. Orson now stood next to a window, leaning to his left, one hand swiping absent-mindedly through his instagram feed. (This was another way of gathering intel). Tomorrow, he would return to the village on the 9AM bus, and the watch would resume.

*

Unfortunately, the thorough search of the house and the premises did nothing to calm Kevin’s nerves. Though the pressing sensation of being watched had since subsided, it was but a brief respite from his ever-present fears. Was he delusional? Paranoid? All of his security guards were certainly of that opinion, even if none were willing to point it out to his face.

Kevin sat on his backyard veranda, watching the ducks in the artificial pond dart underwater for food (and, possibly, entertainment… Kevin did not know much about ducks). He was running out of ways to satisfy his need for murder prevention. Three days ago, when the feeling first appeared, he had contacted local police and was turned down, no matter how big of a bribe he waved in front of their noses. It’s not that police had any issues with bribes; it’s just that none of the officers could come up with a course of action that Kevin found reasonable.

He had also contacted numerous security specialists, private detectives, army officials, and even an FBI agent. All were either unhelpful or obvious liars. With the amount of money that Kevin had, being able to tell at once when he was being bullshited for pay was an essential skill. He even considered hiring his own assassin, but ultimately decided against it.

Still, a need remained, and his hands trembled, and extra motion sensors were not enough. With a heavy sigh, Kevin extracted his second iPhone from the pocket of his jeans and began once more to look through the list of private detectives. Three pages through, and he had found the only number he hadn’t called yet.

“Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency: Cases Solved with Arguable Efficiency”.

It was 5:01 PM when Kevin dialed the number. The line was busy. Kevin almost growled in exasperation and dialed the other number (he was not used to waiting for someone to reply to his phone call - this was what other people did, not him). A minute of high-pitched beeps lingered…

…And the call was answered at last.