This place is too dangerous. You must come back with us now."
"...Okay!"
After a brief moment of daze, Jill, listening to Bob Hayes's serious voice and seeing his equally serious expression, full of 'this is not a joke,' quickly nodded once she came to her senses.
Her father was a prosecutor for the New York District Attorney's Office.
And as a qualified and upright prosecutor, sometimes, death threats were unavoidable.
So...
Although Jill was a little flustered, she wasn't completely panicked. She looked at her boyfriend, John: "Sorry, John, I have to go back now."
"It's fine."
Jill's boyfriend, John, waved his hand.
"Sorry, Hawk."
"..."
Hawk blinked, hearing Gwen's voice from beside him.
Gwen then stepped forward, took Jill's arm, and said: "Detective Hayes, my father should be at Jill Stacy's house, I'll go back with Jill Stacy."
Detective Bob Hayes frowned, then nodded: "Alright."
After all, Gwen was not an outsider.
Gwen then turned to look at Hawk, who was standing still, and smiled apologetically again: "Sorry, Hawk, see you tomorrow?"
Having said that.
Gwen didn't wait for Hawk's reply, and with Detective Bob Hayes's urging, after saying that, she and Jill walked out of the cinema under the escort of three police officers.
Hawk, standing still, frowned as he watched Gwen disappear through the doorway.
The next second.
Hawk also lifted his foot and walked out of the cinema.
Five minutes later.
Hawk arrived at the parking lot, found his car, took out his phone to call his agent, Yekaterina, and then started the car.
Soon.
The call connected!
A somewhat lazy voice came from the phone.
"Hello, who is this?"
"Me."
"..."
Yekaterina, who was enjoying the nourishment of a pure natural facial mask at a high-end beauty salon, opened her eyes: "Hawk, what's wrong?"
After the car started, Hawk slowly left the parking lot and, as he drove towards Brooklyn, asked curiously: "Did you tell anyone about this mission?"
Yekaterina paused slightly, then tore off the mask from her face, waved to the two bikini-clad service ladies in the room, and only after the door closed did she say in a deep voice: "No, you know the rules. What happened?"
Although assassins were also in the service industry, this was, after all, a killing business. Who would go around announcing it to the World for no reason?
Hawk frowned.
"No?"
"No!"
Yekaterina said with great certainty: "From the client finding me to place the order, to accepting the order, no more than four people know about this: the client, me, you, and the Continental Hotel responsible for the insurance. But the Continental Hotel only knows the insured amount; it doesn't know the specific content of the order at all."
Furthermore.
Even if the Continental Hotel knew the specific content of the order, it would not leak it.
In a word.
The Continental Hotel now monopolized ninety percent of the assassin market, but, despite how large the Continental Hotel was, it was also very simple to destroy it.
A crisis of trust would be enough.
Furthermore.
This order was only four hundred thousand U.S. dollars in total. To ruin its reputation for four hundred thousand U.S. dollars?
That was simply impossible.
The Continental Hotel's daily turnover worldwide was probably already over one hundred million.
Yekaterina asked again: "What happened? Was the information leaked?"
Hawk hummed: "Yes, the New York Police Department already knows that an assassin has taken the order."
"What?"
"I didn't leak it, and you didn't either. The Continental Hotel can't be ruled out as a suspect, but it's unlikely. That leaves only one possibility."
Hawk's eyes flickered: "It still caused trouble after all."
The assassin didn't leak it.
The agent didn't leak it.
The insurance company didn't leak it either.
Then the problem arose.
No.
This wasn't a problem at all, but an open-book exam.
Besides the employer themselves, no one else would have leaked this information.
Yekaterina on the other end of the phone was silent for a moment, then said: "Give me five minutes, I'll make a call and ask."
"Okay."
Hawk hung up the phone, stepped on the brake, and watched the congested traffic ahead, his eyes flickering.
Actually...
The leakage of information was no big deal. After all, some assassins even specifically liked to find opportunities to tell the target after taking an order, 'I'm coming to kill you.'
But...
Announcing a killing was the style of other assassins, not his Hawk's. The most important point was that at the beginning, the employer had not said that he would publicize this matter for him.
This was very interesting.
Especially since this matter also involved the New York District Attorney's Office, no, now even the New York Police Department was involved.
Good gracious.
The employer of this urgent order was probably trying to commit insurance fraud, right?
Hawk frowned.
Just then, the phone rang.
It was Yekaterina's.
"Hello."
"I found out."
Yekaterina got up in the room, put on a lace nightgown, walked to the window, and looked at the bustling traffic outside, her face a little grim: "Damn it, this guy also placed an order with the Continental Hotel."
Hawk frowned: "Placed an order with the Continental Hotel? Is he looking for death?"
Let's put it this way.
The Continental Hotel was much like 'Ele.me' (a food delivery platform). As an intermediary platform in the assassin industry, the Continental Hotel also took on business and also kept a group of its own assassins.
But...
The Continental Hotel, which started as a platform, didn't act like Didi (a ride-sharing platform) which, after starting with taxi drivers, established its own Didi Chuxing and then abandoned the taxi drivers. Instead, it established a rule.
Any client who wanted to post an assassin request could either find an agent to place the order or place the order with the Continental Hotel. However, if they chose other assassins, they could not continue to place orders with the Continental Hotel. If discovered, that client would be blacklisted by the Continental Hotel forever.
Blacklisted in a physical sense.
After all, assassins earned their hard-earned money with their own skills, and it wasn't because you had a few stinking coins that you thought you could play assassins for fools.
"He didn't place an order for Arthur Stacy with the Continental Hotel."
"..."
Yekaterina, by the window, had a somewhat strange tone: "The order he placed with the Continental Hotel was a starting price of one hundred thousand U.S. dollars, for three people: Arthur Stacy's wife, Nancy Stacy, and his daughter, Jill Stacy. As for the third one?"
Hawk heard the pause in Yekaterina's words and said directly: "Who is the third one?"
"Your female classmate, Gwen Stacy!"
"..."