Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.

The jet, the next day.

"We could really need your help, Emma", Winston repeated one more time.

"And I'd really like to be of help, but I'm totally caught up in this drug shipping case, I just can't divide my attention at the moment."

Ilsa yanked the cell phone from Winston's hand. "A lot of peoples' lives might be at stake! You're the one who worked in Washington for years, you've got all the contacts with the right people… We don't know who is in this and wh's not, if there's a mole somewhere…" She took a deep breath. "I know we didn't part on the best of terms…"

"Not the best of terms?" Emma's voice was shaking with barely contained anger. "You were pointing a gun at me! You let two dangerous criminals escape, humiliated me and put my career at risk! Whatever mess you've brought onto you now, you sort it out yourself!"

She cut the connection.

Ilsa threw the cell phone all the way across the cabin. "Bloody American b…" Shaking with frustration, she stood in the middle of the aisle between the seats. Chance's words rang in her mind: "Don't disappoint me."

Never before had he said anything like that. It was such a far cry from "Ilsa can't pick locks."… she had longed for trust and confidence in her abilities, had gone crazy every time he had excluded her, left her behind… And now? What if she couldn't pull this off?

As if this wasn't enough, there was also something else. Something that put her even more on edge than any fear of letting down Chance ever could.

A reassuring hand came to rest on her shoulder, just as her thoughts threatened to get caught in that particular doom loop again.

"Nobody said you're in this alone", Winston told her. "We've got other contacts in Washington, from jobs we worked before you took over. There's a general who still owes us a favor… I'll give him a call. We're in this together, Ilsa."

She closed her eyes briefly. "I can't stop thinking about Ames", she confessed.

Winston's face grew serious, just as serious as Chance's voice had been. He placed his other hand on her other shoulder and gently but firmly turned her around so that she had to face him directly.

"We need to concentrate on this job now and trust Guerrero and Chance that they can hold their end of the stick. This is the only way this will work. We need to trust each other's abilities."

Ilsa slowly nodded, a cold shiver of fear running down her spine. She would have never expected things to be like this.

… … …

The office.

Guerrero cut the connection and put down his phone. His face was unreadable.

"Sergej?", Chance asked.

Daisy onboard of the jet was way too dangerous in terms of crashing and emergency landings. Besides that she and Sergej had contributed what they could in the stone plate issue. Now it was up to Winston and Ilsa to run with the ball, so the couple had stayed behind in San Francisco and Sergej was free to help out Chance and Guerrero.

Unfortunately there wasn't much to help.

"License plate is officially a dead end now." Guerrero was very still, statue-like. "Just like the van."

Only someone who knew him very well could make out the slight tremor of his hands.

A sign of fear and despair? Are the tremors around a volcano before an outbreak signs of fear and despair?

"If this was about ransom…", Chance began.

"They would have called by now", Guerrero finished. "No claim for money, no taunting… This is not directed against us. Neither to lure us out nor to torment us."

"A random serial killer?"

Voicing that thought was hard. But it was a possibility. And if yes, they were dealing with a highly organized one. One who had staked out Ames' house, protected her and still followed her around even after getting injured…

Highly organized ones were usually also highly skilled ones when it came to torturing their victims… Guerrero had studied their methods quite thoroughly in his early years. He weighed his head. "There's no one active with that particular MO right now. And for a first strike of a new one it's too professionally planned."

Chance started pacing the room. His concern about Ames was clawing at his composure like a wild cat. She was in danger and they were sitting here, idly. Damnit!

"If it's not about Ilsa's money or revenge on us, if it's about Ames somehow but it's not a serial killer, what remains? You checked her background when she started out with us, didn't you?"

Guerrero shook his head. "Unknown father, drug-abusing mother, a long list of foster homes… There's nothing, dude." Suddenly, with great force, he cleared the desk he was sitting at. The fancy glass thing Ilsa had put there crashed to the ground and shattered into a thousand pieces, together with his cup of tea and the desk lamp.

Carmine, who had watched the men from the other side of the room, jumped up and fled in the direction of Chance's quarters.

For a long moment silence reigned.

"We'll have to...", Chance began, but he never got to finish the sentence.

His cell phone rang, an earsplitting sound in the deafening silence of the office.

An unknown number. The ransom call? Finally? Guerrero immediately started tracking it.

A female voice, polite, professional: "Am I talking to Mr. …" she apparently skipped through a couple of papers "…Christopher Chance? Ms. Sandra Lucknow has listed you as the person to call in a case of emergency."

Sandra Lucknow. One of the aliases Ames had gotten from Guerrero.

"Who's there?", Chance asked, gripping the phone hard.

"St. Francis Memorial. I'm afraid I have some very bad news for you, sir."