Disclaimer: I don't own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.

"We finally got word from Ireland." Lt. Peale produced a thick green folder from his briefcase and carefully placed it on the conference table. "Grace O'Malley was part of Dublin's Serious Crime Review Team. It's a task force, brought into being to review unresolved homicides and other serious crimes. They sent us a copy of the last file she's been working on."

"Cold case unit…", Winston nodded.

Peale pushed the folder towards Chance. "Of course this copy doesn't exist." It was hard to say in what mood he was in. He looked serious, but not as austere as last time he'd visited them because of the Irish cop.

"Ironically, her last case doesn't seem to be related to her assassination at all." Peale took the cup of coffee Ilsa had offered him, turned it in his hands, put it down again without drinking. "All this waiting for her file was useless – prior to her stint with the review team, O'Malley worked organized crime. Managed to seriously interfere with the Triad's business in Ireland. As far as it looks now, the Triads put a hit out on her and it was coincidentally carried out while she was working on her case with the review team. All traces point to a notorious Triad hitman."

"So Guerrero is off the hook?" Chance kept his voice level, but on his team the hopeful note wasn't lost.

"He's cleared of being a murder suspect in the O'Malley case, yes…"

They all sensed a "but" coming. A big "but".

Peale sighed. "I would have never thought that I would find anything regarding that man sad, except the fact that we have never managed to nail him for anything so far…"

Now the silence in the room was palpable. What the hell was Peale hinting at?

"O'Malley's last case was about a serial killer who committed murders both sides of the ocean more than forty years ago. We haven't been able to reconstruct from the file yet how exactly she managed to pull it off, but she zoomed in on one suspect, this man…" Peale reached over to the file he had pushed away from him, opened it and indicated a grainy black and white picture of a man in a US police uniform.

Chance saw the name underneath the picture and had to stifle a gasp. Peale looked up and locked eyes with him. Silence stretched between the two men while the rest of the team tried to figure out what in the world was going on. Finally Ames had enough.

"I don't understand", she said.

Peale chuckled humorlessly. "Believe me, you're not alone. We haven't figured out yet why in the world O'Malley took an unpaid leave to investigate the case instead of going the official way, and that's only one of the many question marks this file raises… but we do know that O'Malley had managed to identify a serial killer who, very silently, over the course of several years, had killed dozens of men and women, all ages, all races, back in the late sixties. A rather high ranking police officer, decorated several times, travelled a lot… and used his travelling to get to his victims, apparently."

Silently Ames hoped Chance wouldn't think her stupid for asking all these questions, but this still made no sense to her. "In the sixties Guerrero must have been a small child. What did she want from him?"

"Well", Peale shrugged, "maybe she thought he knew something about his father's whereabouts."

A hand grenade, thrown into the conference room, couldn't have had more impact.

"His father?", Winston blurted out. Somewhere in the back of his head, Leonard started laughing maniacally.

"Are you really surprised by this?" Peale shook his head in disbelief. "Even if only half of what is attributed to Guerrero is actually true, he's definitely a chip off the old block, the only difference being that what his father pursued as an obsession he turned into a business. Talk about killing two birds with one stone…"

"Why…" Ilsa took a deep breath. This was shocking news. "Why did you say this makes you sad? You said you feel sadness, why?"

"We did some research on the family. Looks like the father left his wife when his son was only three years old. Didn't come back from a trip to Florida he did for his department. No note of resignation, nothing. Wife took it badly, started drinking… but that's just a side note. Look what became of his son, although he was hardly in contact with his father … he took on that name, Guerrero, and became a notorious criminal. The king of torture. For me this points to hereditary factors. Ever heard of the murder gene?"

"XYY syndrome…", Winston mumbled.

"There's no scientific evidence that an extra Y-chromosome causes aggressive or sociopathic behavior", Chance said sharply.

"Well, should we ever get our hands on Guerrero and his father, that might change. For now, it's indeed just a theory of mine." Peale got up and ready to leave. "But I'd advise Mr. Guerrero not to have children, just to be on the safe side. Unless he wants someone to follow in his footsteps."

Peale made his way to the elevator alone. The team remained in the conference room, sitting in stunned silence. The thick folder with a picture of Guerrero's father in it and probably even more importantly, Guerrero's father's name, was sitting on the table like a fat, poisonous toad.

A green lantern from outer space couldn't have been more surreal.

Ilsa looked at Chance: "Do you think he knew that?"

Chance firmly shook his head. "No."

Footsteps coming down the metal stairs from Chance's living quarters. Of course Guerrero had, just like last time, listened in to what Peale had had to say.

Neither his face nor his gait gave away what he felt, but the fact that he walked past the conference room without even slowing down spoke volumes. He wasn't walking fast, but he was definitely running away from them.

"Guerrero!", Chance called out, getting up and going after him.

"Dude…"

Guerrero's face was still a stony mask, but his voice… Chance stopped dead in his tracks. Guerrero turned away and left through the side door by the elevator.

"You cannot let him leave like that!" Ilsa exited the conference room and joined Chance in the lobby. "If I understood Peale correctly and you are right with your assumption of him not knowing, Guerrero hasn't heard from his father ever since he was three. His mother was an alcoholic… The father's absence apparently destroyed his family and now, after all these years, that kind of information, on top of everything else? You've got to go and talk to him."

"He probably needs a minute, Ilsa."

"Yes, maybe a minute to pack and disappear! It's what you would do, isn't it?"

Chance wanted to object, but Ilsa didn't let him.

"Where would he go, Chance? To his dungeon? Or elsewhere? Where would he go?"