Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.
Emma Barnes' apartment, late in the evening.
Totally spent after the events of the day, Emma unlocked the door to her apartment. She wouldn't have thought it possible, but in the dim glow of the bare light bulb dangling from the ceiling it looked even shabbier than in daylight.
Aiming at positive thinking, she tried to tell herself that once the moving boxes would be gone and the pieces of furniture would have found a permanent position, this would be a cozy little retreat.
Let's say it all together: Cozy. Little. Retreat.
Positive thinking, Emma, positive thinking…
Oh come on, whom was she kidding?
Here and there (read: everywhere) wallpaper was coming off the walls, the mouse had left some tiny little round brown gifts on the worn carpet and as Emma made her way to what masqueraded as her kitchen, the flush of a toilet in the next apartment, a crying baby and a fighting couple in Spanish (Russian?) could be heard.
Without looking, she threw her keys in the direction of the kitchen table cluttered with old take-out cartons, dirty glasses and unopened envelopes.
She walked over to the fridge.
Wait, something was wrong.
The keys had made no clanging sound from hitting the table.
Emma spun around.
Chance was standing next to the table, keys in his hand.
"So you've moved…"
… … …
"Everything is perfectly fine", Emma insisted. "And just for the record, I didn't need a knight in shining armor back at the airport this morning. Everything was going according to plan."
"Unless your plan was getting transferred to Siberia for blatant incompetence, I'm not buying any of this." Chance took in Emma's appearance with concern. Maybe the poor lighting was adding to it, but she did look bad: Her hair needed to be cut, her skin was pale, she had lost weight, the way she dressed was unbecoming…
Her face took on a look of defiance. "I've got everything under control."
Last time he had heard that sentence it had come from Guerrero.
In a federal prison.
While he was being charged with murder in the first degree.
"You infect an unsuspecting marine with a deadly virus in an attempt to transport it to the USA…"
"Best way to avoid attention! This virus is of immeasurable importance in the war against terrorism."
"…not only that you grossly disrespected a war veteran, you also let him slip through your fingers in one of the worst planned operations ever. What would you have done if you hadn't got hold of him before the end of the incubation period?"
"It was a calculated risk", Emma hissed through clenched teeth.
"It that's the government's idea of a calculated risk, I should start relying on sleeping pills for getting rest at night…" Winston rounded the corner and nodded at her. "Long time no see."
"I can only repeat myself", Emma snarled. "Everything is fine. I really don't know what got into me when I called you, but there's nothing…."
A muffled clomp sound could be heard from the corridor.
"Three months ago you sold your old place and moved in here. Before that you sold your car. And before that you emptied your bank accounts." Guerrero rounded the corner, holding a dead mouse by its tail. "Looks to me like you're getting blackmailed. Question is, why." He tried to pass the mouse to Winston, who, concentrating on Emma and fooled by the casualty with which he was handling the tiny corpse, almost took it.
"Emma, sit down", Chance told her. "Let's talk this over."
To his great surprise, she didn't merely sit down but pretty much collapse on her kitchen chair instead, all composure suddenly evaporating.
"You've killed the mouse!"
… … …
If there's one thing that hard-boiled ex-assassins/-cops have trouble dealing with, it's crying women.
Especially if the crying woman in question is someone they totally didn't expect this from.
The three men exchanged unsure glances. Chance's usual response would have been kissing the tears away. Guerrero at this stage normally pointed out to his victim that there was more pain to come, shouldn't he get the respective information now and Winston most likely would have fled, but neither reaction seemed appropriate right now.
"What shall we do, a Black Sail?", Chance volunteered.
"Finless Shark?", Guerrero suggested.
"X-File Option Two?" Winston was just as clueless as the other two.
"Or maybe you just let me talk to her." They all turned around. Ilsa was standing in the doorway, accompanied by Ames who was still busy putting her picklocks away. She looked at the guys with a "What can I say? She's the boss." – expression.
"Weren't you supposed to stay in San Francisco?" Chance wasn't exactly happy about her appearance. "We're doing fine here."
Ilsa threw him a meaningful look.
"I can see that."
She pulled up a chair and sat down. "Miss Barnes? My name is Ilsa Pucci. We haven't been introduced yet."
… … …
"I can't believe she just shooed us out of the kitchen!" Chance was staring daggers at the closed door of the bedroom Ilsa had told them to retreat to.
"Dude, get over it. Maybe a heart-to-heart woman-to-woman talk is exactly what she needs right now." Guerrero nodded at Ames, cueing her to boot up Emma Barnes' computer.
"She's got no business inserting herself in this!"
"She's your partner..." Guerrero directed Ames to the deleted sections of the computer's hard drive.
Winston, who had started opening the various moving boxes, suddenly stopped. "Chance, come here and look at this."
… … …
Emma couldn't quite pinpoint it, but she disliked this Ilsa Pucci immediately. There was something about the way she spoke, the way she carried herself… Her demeanor spoke of money, dinner parties, kisses to the cheek and elaborate small talk while intrigues were spun behind the façade of painted smiles. Emma had collided with this type of women all her life.
No way she was going to confide anything to her.
… … …
"Apparently she collected material about the Blue Ridge Mountain killer", Winston stated as he skipped through the files he had retrieved from one of the boxes.
"She seems to have collected everything she could get hold of", Chance agreed. "Newspaper clippings, crime scene photos…"
"Remember how obsessively she tried to find you? Looks like she found a new object of desire."
"Yeah, but something isn't right…" Chance squinted his eyes, pulled out a folder full of clippings and started spreading them out on the floor.
… … …
"As I told Chance, you're making a mountain out of a molehill. What is your connection to him anyway?" Emma had her composure back. The mere presence of this woman annoyed the hell out of her, and that helped a great deal.
Come to think of it, the whole situation annoyed the hell out of her, this crappy apartment, the operation at the airport almost gone wrong, the fact that there was still no new message from that bastard who was threatening her and, most of all, that she, Emma Barnes, was responsible for the whole mess.
"He's my business partner", Ilsa replied.
The way she said "partner", with that possessive undertone…
"Well then I suggest you take your partner and leave for there is absolutely nothing I've got to tell you."
But Ilsa didn't need to be told anything. She could read the signs.
… … …
"The youngest of those clippings are from six months ago", Chance pointed out.
Winston quickly checked a couple of the documents in the other folders. "Everything is at least six months old."
"So she stopped investigating this guy six months ago. Why? Did she catch him? Did the Blue Ridge Mountain killer get caught?", Chance asked Ames.
She did a quick online check with her smart phone since Guerrero was busy restoring deleted files from Emma's computer.
"Nope. Still no trace of him."
"Then why did she stop looking for him? This all of a sudden breaks off…" Winston rubbed his forehead.
"There's only one explanation, dude…"
Guerrero locked eyes with Chance. Chance shook his head. "No way. She's not like that."
… … …
"I'm terribly sorry", Ilsa said.
"Sorry about what?", Emma all but spat back.
"The skin of your hands and around your neck is raw and most likely itchy, too. That's from washing it too often and using too much soap. You've been trying to scrub something off… You're also wearing several layers of clothes, despite the warm temperatures outside. You're trying to protect your body against something… someone…"
… … …
"I think the computer program has managed to restore the deleted files!", Ames interrupted Guerrero and Chance.
She opened the recovered data and almost immediately let out a sharp hiss.
The men only needed to take one look at them to know what they were dealing with. "I'm going to delete them again", Guerrero told the others.
"Do it thoroughly." Chance's voice was shaking with barely controlled anger.
… … …
Emma jumped up from her chair, ready to physically remove Ilsa Pucci – and company! She could kick herself for calling Chance in a moment of weakness - from her kitchen and her life.
At this very moment, the door to her kitchen opened and Chance walked back in. The rest was hovering in the background.
"We found the photos you deleted", he said hoarsely. "Six months ago you tracked down the Blue Ridge Mountain killer and finished him off. Someone found out and started blackmailing you. First he took all of your money and now he's asking for your body, forced you to send him explicit pictures. How far has that bastard gotten?"
Emma's mobile signaled.
A new text message had arrived.