Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.
Ames' house, bedroom, approx. ten minutes earlier.
Ames woke with a start, glanced at the clock on her nightstand, sighed and curled up in the sheets again. She always slept badly when Alejandro was away on one of his business trips. The house seemed so empty without him.
She felt tired, but somehow sleep didn't want to come back to her. She kicked at the blanket and turned her pillow, looking for a cool spot, but it was all to no avail.
Damn, her ankle hurt. She hadn't paid the injury much attention at first, but now, after a day had gone by and several hours of not moving much, the injured part felt stiff and swollen.
Drowsily she decided to look for some ointment in the bathroom. Guerrero's present when they had moved in had been a very sophisticatedly equipped first aid box. It surely contained some sort of cooling gel.
She didn't turn on the lights when she padded down the corridor. What for? This was her home. She knew her way around here.
Maybe if she had turned on the lights…
But that's useless. Let's not waste our time with what could have been if. She didn't turn on the lights. Period.
And because she didn't turn on the lights, she saw a tiny, brief yellow-white flicker downstairs. A flashlight.
Others would have put it down to an overactive imagination, but Ames was too well-trained. Her survival had too often depended on perceiving her surroundings precisely.
She knew what she had seen.
And she knew something else: She hadn't been exactly quiet when she had gotten out of bed. In fact she had cursed the goddamn ankle loudly. So whoever was downstairs knew she was up and about. And knew also that she most likely had seen something because she had suddenly halted and grown very silent.
This didn't leave her many options. She could hope for whoever was downstairs to get scared and slink away, or…
Ames dashed back to the bedroom, as fast as her ankle allowed. Her mobile was in the bedroom, and the gun the boys had given her. She was not planning to use it, she wanted to call the cops, but just in case – footsteps on the stairs! Running footsteps! The intruder had decided to not quietly disappear but seek confrontation instead.
She tried to slam the bedroom door shut behind her, but whoever it was, he was fast and powerful. He threw himself against it, forced it open, stumbled into the room and tried to grab her. Ames kicked out madly, crashed to the floor, he got hold of her left leg but she managed to reach the gun hidden underneath the bed.
"Hold it!", she cried and aimed vaguely in the direction of the attacker, but instead of freezing he tried to wrest the gun from her hand.
She fired blindly, heard a cry, but obviously not from her attacker who was still trying to pin her down. She flipped him over, trying to get hold of his windpipe and in all that panic and struggling she fired again, twice.
He rammed his knee into her stomach, she lashed out at his mask-covered face, they both rolled over, bumped into the bed, the lamp on her nightstand crashed to the floor, everything turned pitch-black, Ames fired once more… he slumped down and something wet and warm oozed through the t-shirt she used as a nightgown.
Shaking all over, she pushed the attacker's lifeless body away, stumbled to her feet, almost tripped over him and switched on the ceiling light.
Momentarily blinded, she closed her eyes and leaned against the doorframe to catch her breath. Only when her own ragged panting subsided and her breathing reached a normal rhythm again her ears noticed another sound, only a few steps away. Labored gasping, gurgling. Was the attacker alive after all?
Slowly Ames opened her eyes. And started screaming.
Later she couldn't say why she didn't call an ambulance immediately. Be it habit or instinct, whatever, fact is, the first she did when she had finally found her phone that had slid underneath the bed during the fight was call Chance.
"I've shot Alejandro!", she cried into the phone, staring helplessly at her husband who was lying on the carpet, one hand pressed against an ugly looking stomach wound. "Someone broke into the house and we struggled and I shot him and suddenly there's Alejandro, on the floor! I didn't even see him, I shot him, I…"
"Calm down! Listen to me – you've got to calm down."
His voice got through to her, like it always did. No matter what trouble she had found herself in, he had always managed to make things right again, to guide her through. The room stopped spinning. She was still crying desperately, but she didn't feel like fainting anymore.
"He's dying! Chance, he's dying, I've got to call an ambulance!"
"No, no, don't call an ambulance, we'll call an ambulance. They'll be at your house in a minute, they won't ask questions."
"I shot him in the stomach!"
"We'll be with you in a sec, don't worry, just keep breathing, calm down."
He talked to her till he and Winston arrived at her doorstep, two minutes after the ambulance.