Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.
Washington, Ilsa and Winston in a rental car.
"We're being followed", Ilsa observed.
Winston made a mental note never to put her on sentry duty. The black Sedan had shown up ten minutes ago.
"What are we going to do now?", she asked, not letting the vehicle out of sight.
"Shake them off", Winston replied curtly, concentrating on the dense traffic.
Ilsa didn't say anything for a moment, obviously waiting. Then: "So, when are you going to start?"
"Start with what?"
"With shaking them off, of course."
Winston rolled his eyes heavenwards. "I'm already on it."
Ilsa looked at him, apparently checking if he was serious.
Had Guerrero been sitting next to him, Winston would have reacted with a thundering WHAT?, but since it was Ilsa, he took a deep breath, reminded himself that she was the one signing the paychecks and asked: "Anything bothering you?"
"When Chance tries to shake somebody off, he accelerates the car's speed violently. He makes a couple of reckless turns that cause other vehicles to bump into each other. He races backwards into one-way-streets and jumps the gap between the spans of opening drawbridges."
Winston reminded himself again that she was the one signing the paychecks. "My style of escape too boring for you, Ilsa?", he asked with strained politeness.
She picked up the irritated note in his voice and quickly backpedalled. "I'm just surprised by the differences, that's all."
"Chance prefers insane while I prefer methodically," he replied while carefully signaling his intention to turn right. "Don't worry. You'll be surprised how far we get with methodically."
Aside from that Chance knew Washington well from his days as Junior. He had once pulled off a highly complicated – um – job there Ilsa better didn't know about. Winston, on the other hand, had to rely on the navigation system – which led him into a narrow side street.
Had someone hacked into the rental's computer system?
On the far end of the street a van pulled up and blocked it. Behind them the black Sedan did the same. "Out!", Winston shouted.
Barely escaping a hail of bullets, they dashed through the backdoor of an Asian restaurant which led to a small backyard from which they could see the restaurant's busy kitchen. Their only route of escape, and the thugs surely knew that.
They were running out of time. Fast.
"I'm going to create a diversion", Winston told Ilsa. "You're going to the meeting."
"What? Alone? But…"
Before she could object any further, he lifted the lid of a green garbage can full of leftover food and motioned her to climb in there. "These garbage cans are picked up by a special company that turns the contents into pig food. They transport the complete cans, sort them out at their factory. I've seen their truck a block away from here, they seem to be collecting today. Hide in here and when they stop at a red light or something, you get out, okay? But make sure you wait long enough so nobody sees you."
He closed the lid above Ilsa's head and there she was, in the semi-darkness of a reeking, stinking garbage can with hardly enough air to breathe, waiting to be picked up by a bin lorry.
… … …
An expensive hotel a little outside of San Francisco.
The man who entered the hotel suite was nervous, sweating, exhausted, upset. His clothes were deranged, he was obviously on the edge of losing it. Pacing around the room like a caged lion, he rubbed his face till it hurt.
This was a nightmare! A complete, utter nightmare! They had been so close… so close… and now it had been snatched away from them, again.
They were running out of time! For heaven's sake, they were running out of time.
He broke down on the bed and started crying.
His sobs were so loud, for the first few seconds or so he didn't even realize that his mobile was ringing. Wiping his face with his sleeve, he finally pulled it out of his jacket, looked at the display and froze.
This was impossible. She was in hospital, under surveillance in a 72-hour hold. They surely didn't let her use her mobile. Or had she somehow sneaked away? He tried not to let his hopes go up, but of course when he answered the call, his voice was hopeful. "Is it you?"
No reply.
"Are you there?"
"If with "you" you mean Ames, I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you", a cold voice from a shadowy corner of the room said. Deliberately slowly, Guerrero stepped into the light. "Dude, we've got to talk."
Before the man even had time to process what was happening, Chance had grabbed him from behind, wrestled him to the ground and immobilized him with a severe choke hold.
… … …
Washington.
Ilsa didn't wait long enough. The air in the can was so stuffy, the food leftovers were so disgusting, she just couldn't stand it anymore. The first stop of the truck, she climbed out.
Only to directly look at their pursuers, or at least menacing thugs who looked like they were pursuing somebody.
She jumped off the truck and ran. At least she had thought of taking off her high heels, but running barefooted on asphalt roads isn't exactly comfortable. Aside from that the thugs were fast.
Ilsa sought cover in a side street, but she knew she wouldn't be able to hide from them for long. They were way too experienced and too many. She needed to disappear from view somehow, but how…? Her hectically searching eyes came to rest on a sewer cover. The sewer system?
The day was getting better.
As soon as her bare feet made contact with the filthy, muddy sewer ground, she realized she might have shaken off the thugs, with a little luck, but that didn't mean she was off the hook, hunted-wise. She was smelling of all sorts of cooked food... In the darkness, only very dimly lit by the light of her mobile, a hundred tiny eyes trained themselves on her.
A hundred hungry tiny eyes.
Rats.
… … …
The hotel suite.
Chance was on the verge of telling Guerrero not to overdo it, they needed the man alive to give them answers, but that would have been like telling a highly skilled surgeon to cut carefully.
Guerrero turned on the shower again to wash the blood off him one more time. The man made gargling noises and Guerrero removed the gag. "Changed your mind about not knowing anything about a certain suicide attempt?"
He spat blood, coughed and heaved. Guerrero drenched him in cold water.
"She's my daughter", the man finally gasped. "She's my daughter." He started crying in long, desperate wails.
A/N: Sorry for the delay, real life is keeping me really busy...