Disclaimer: I don't own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.
Eight cranial bones... frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital, sphenoid, ethmoid...
Grace forced herself to keep her eyes closed.
Fourteen facial bones... mandible, maxilla, palatine, zygomatic, nasal... nasal...
No, she would not waste what precious little energy and will to live she had left on trying to figure out if her nasal bone was really broken or just felt as if the bastard had shattered it into a thousand pieces.
Lacrimal, inferior nasal conchae, vomer.
Years had passed since she had last recited all 206 bones of the adult human body. Back then she had been in the preparation stage for her final oral exam. Gosh, so many years ago... Long before that stalker had shown up and turned her life into a living hell, following her everywhere, ruining her career, relationship, nerves...
Also long before she had helped a bleeding stranger in an impulsive spur of the moment decision and ended up getting kidnapped by a sociopath named Guerrero and his more polite but just as ruthless friend Junior because they couldn't bring their buddy Baptiste to a hospital with his suspicious gunshot wound.
Grace managed to save Baptiste's life. When she curled up on the sofa in the lobby of what she quite correctly guessed was the headquarters of a company that provided professional assassinations she knew she couldn't be sure to wake up again in the morning. She could identify them... Nevertheless she slept more soundly and peacefully than she had in a very, very long time, knowing that she was at least safe from the stalker that had promised her a slow, painful death. These people looked like professionals. If they killed her they'd make sure she wouldn't see it coming.
Come the morning she was still alive. Her peaceful slumber in the presence of four of the most dangerous assassins in the world had gotten Guerrero thinking and he had dug around a little. From that moment onwards her stalker was already dead. He just hadn't known it yet.
Of course Guerrero made sure that if she ever felt like sharing what she knew about Victor Joubert and his company, it would look as if she had paid them to get rid of her stalker for good. Clever. It kept her firmly in their clutches and whenever a medical emergency arose in the years to come, they expected her to drop everything and handle it. And whenever Guerrero felt she needed a little reminder of who was calling the shots here, he did so, sine ira et studio, but with the help of a knife.
Well, given her current situation, they'd have to find themselves a new medical contact. The bastard had come back. He had kidnapped her right in front of her door, with the help of a tazer. No chance to cry for help, much less defend herself. Why her? Maybe because she was blond and of the right age group. Not that there weren't a million other women in this city appealing to his taste. Sometimes she wondered if she had some sort of built in magnet for psychos and thugs. Anyway - she read the newspaper, the moment she saw the green rabbit mask she knew what fate awaited her. Four butchered women so far. She was going to be number five. The two fingers were only the beginning.
Speaking of: proximal phalanges, intermediate phalanges, distal phalanges. The digits of the hand.
A single tear crept down her face.
The bastard was now standing over her firmly tied up body again. A chain saw was dangling lazily from his hand. She couldn't see, but he was probably smiling behind that green rabbit mask.
A smile that probably froze the moment the tazer from behind made contact with his skin. Thoroughly immobilized, he collapsed over her, the chain saw crashing to the floor right next to her.
"Careful with that, dude. We still need it tonight." Guerrero picked up the heavy machine and cautiously put it aside, obviously for later use.
"We've got everything we need?" Baptiste gave the fallen man an injection. "Or shall we stop by the local walmart?" Just enough ketamine to get him to a more private place without a fuss.
"If you followed the shopping list everything's cool... The pros of extensive media coverage, dude..." Guerrero adressed the captive. "We know exactly how you operate. Sometimes work can be fun." He helped Baptiste cuffing the whimpering man, then they unceremoniously carried him out of his makeshift do-it-yourself dungeon. He'd learn a thing or two about professional torture chamber design soon.
"Hospital?", a soft voice right by Grace's side asked. Junior was crouching next to her. She hadn't noticed him coming in. A gentle hand rested on her back.
She shook her head.
"Are you sure?" He didn't need to explicitly state how bad she looked. She could tell from his voice.
"Who's the doctor here?", she croaked.
He wrapped his strong arms around her and picked her up as if she weighed nothing. She pressed her face against his chest, closed her eyes and deeply inhaled Junior's characteristic smell of barely perceptible aftershave, a whiff of bleach and gun powder. No more bone counting. She'd keep hers a while longer.
"You'll need help with that", he said a little later, as she sat down on her own examination table at her office at Joubert's headquarters. She didn't protest as he cautiously removed her blouse, cleansed the gashes on her back, stitched up the cut along her upper arm.
Grace didn't want to let him see the hand with the missing fingers. With a featherlight touch he opened her clenched fist. "You've seen me in much worse shape."
This was when the barrier finally broke. She started crying. Junior pulled her in a tight embrace and held her as she relived the pain and horror of the past twenty-four hours. When her sobs finally started dying down he picked her up again and tucked her in on the infamous sofa. "Are you sure you don't want another pain killer? The first one must have worn off ages ago. Or some ketamine?"
Grace, thinking that if she had been dealing with Guerrero instead of Junior he wouldn't have wasted time asking, distinctively shook her head.
"But maybe Scotch then." Joubert came sitting by her side, pouring all of them a stiff drink. "Guerrero just called. They decided to call it a day and finish things for good."
Grace decided it was time to do the unthinkable. "Thank you", she whispered hoarsely.
"Couldn't afford to lose our medical contact", Joubert chuckled. "And aside from that you're mine. If anyone ever tortures and kills you, it'll be me."
Grace sank back into the cushions of her makeshift bed and thought to herself that she should have accepted the ketamine after all.