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

Why don't you just go ahead and kill me? Keeping me chained in this hole for days is torture!

Kill you? Of course not! Not yet, at least. Right now you're way too valuable. In a ridiculous pre-mortem need to confess Kitty let you in on all her little secrets. Trust me, we can't wait to hear all about them.

Then why don't you let me spill them out? I wanted to tell you everything, right from the beginning!

Patience, my dear, patience. We're all going to get together, including the Basil, and then you're going to tell us everything. If you tell me now, I'll become a target. Judging from Kitty's violent demise, it's pretty safe to say whoever wanted to take out the Basil is quite determined to keep his involvement under wraps. Stashing you away in a safe cellar is a piece of cake, but I've got a business to keep going. Don't want to end up with a bullet in my brain, somewhere between looking at livestock and introducing them to their new job. You're going to stay mum till we all get together.

Two weeks of confinement in a dimly lit cellar room with nothing in it but a bucket of water, a makeshift toilet, a mattress on the floor and a heavy metal chain that allowed her a very limited range of movement between the three had significantly sharpened Michele's senses. Just like a blind person she had had no choice but to concentrate on sounds, smells, sensations to maintain at least some sense of orientation.

And to keep her sane.

What was driving her crazy, though, was that she had lost track of time. The first few days she had been too shocked, too paralyzed, to count the meals and, try as she might, she hadn't been able to establish in hindsight how many they had fed her. Thus Michele was not aware of the fact that she was already in custody for fourteen days.

Maybe it was better this way.

What Michele had been able to figure out, though, was the house's layout, at least roughly. She was pretty sure it was a three-story building, judging from the three different degrees of loudness when it came to footsteps and shouts.

There was an elevator, very slow, always rattling between the second and the third story, but either it was reserved for the higher-ranking men or it was too small to transport many people, since usually visitors seemed to take the staircase that seemed to connect all floors.

It sounded like their feet were pounding concrete. Occasionally there was also metal clanging, maybe when someone fell and hit the banister. Michele guessed this was not an apartment building, those would at least have had carpets, but some sort of former factory or office. She pictured a non-descript gray square thing, built some time in the seventies.

Good, that meant a flat roof and rather big windows, unless they had boarded them up. But even in that case... with a well-measured dose of explosives… Winston liked blowing things up. The Fourth of July had been like Christmas to him.

With all the unnoticed coming and going of people, the house probably still looked like a working factory or office from the outside, with a rather high wall surrounding the premises. They delivered and collected whatever they were stashing here – drugs? – with what had to be huge trucks. Their roaring engines sent vibrations so strong, Michele could feel them down in her cell.

Walls could be climbed. And trucks could be hijacked and used like a Trojan horse.

More than a week had passed and no sign of Winston, but Michele was sure, the moment he knew where she was he and his friends would come and rescue her. Winston could be like a bloodhound on a trail, not letting go till he had what he wanted. She had seen him getting obsessed over many a case. He would go through hell and back to bring her home.

Home to Hank.

Thinking of Hank made Michele tremble with worry, despite her own, rather dire situation. The poor man was probably going up the walls in despair. Yes, Winston too, but Winston was a man used to violence, he knew what to do, he surely was in the process of turning every stone right now, unless she got killed first, he would find her. As terrifying this whole race-against-the-clock thing was, he could deal with it. Hank on the other hand…

Michele woke with a start, switched on the bare light bulb dangling above her mattress. At least she had control over that. The building was very quiet. Combined with the fact that her last meal had consisted of sandwiches and milk a sign that it had to be either late in the night or very early in the morning. What had woken her?

Rat-tat-tat-tat.

Oh. Was that really…? Or was she imagining…?

RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT.

Machine guns?

Kaboom.

Explosions!

RAT-TAT-KABOOM-TAT-TAT.

Yes! They were coming to rescue her!

Judging from the sounds of battle growing louder, they had infiltrated the building from the roof and were now shooting their path free all the way down to the cellar.

KABOOM!

Another explosion, closer, but from the other end of the building. So they were coming at them two-ways, from the roof and through the main entrance. Hm, didn't Winston's team only consist of three people, the handsome blond one and the rat like small one Winston was always squabbling with? Michele had only seen him once, hardly more than a bespectacled shadow behind a steering wheel. He had picked Winston up from a restaurant where she had met him to have dinner together when some kind of emergency had come up, thus thwarting another of her attempts to tell him what a dying woman had confessed to her…

She definitely should have told him, but she had feared his reaction, had worried he'd laugh and tell her she was interpreting too much into the words of a seriously injured, already half-way gone prostitute. Looking at it now, chained to a dirty cellar floor, with wrists raw from the cuffs, serious stomach problems and in utter danger of getting killed once she had served her purpose, it seemed so laughable, being afraid of his reaction and him not taking her seriously. But he had done that so many during their marriage…

Anyway, they were now coming to rescue her, and successfully so, as it sounded.

Michele decided that once she was out of this hell hole, the first thing she'd do was tell Winston that she would never ever distrust him again.

The door to her cell burst open.

The battle sounds in the house subsided.

A huge man stepped into the room.

"Good morning", he said.

Michele started screaming.