Disclaimer: I don't own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.
"Yeah, thank you very much! I felt sore for days and you are making fun of it!" Harry wrapped himself into the bathrobe again.
Both Baptiste and Chance frowned at the same time. Joubert stopped laughing, too. There was something about Harry's word choice. They should have noticed before…
"Say it again", Chance told him.
"You are making fun of me! I don't want to sound like a whiner, but that's totally unfair! Why always me?"
"No, not that part, before that." Chance knitted his brows in concentration. "You said you feel sore. That's not typical for a rash. Let me see it again."
Harry presented his backside to Chance one more time.
"That's not a rash."
He turned to Baptiste and Joubert. "Look at it."
"If that's your idea of payback, Junior…"
But they both knew Chance well enough to see that he was serious. So they looked…
"Punctures…", Baptiste stated. "Barely visible."
"Punctures?" Harry's voice climbed an octave. "Someone injected me with something? Oh God, hopefully not sodium thiopental! There are some secrets, dark secrets that I keep, if they ever came out…"
"I think the world's safe for now, Harry", Chance placated him. "That kind of punctures go together with a freshly done tattoo."
Now Harry turned around and looked at Chance with a "pull the other one, it's got bells on"-expression on his face. "You know me, I don't want to be a wiseass or anything, but isn't the whole point of a tattoo that it's visible?"
Making a curt waving gesture with his hand, Chance motioned the others to follow him into the elevator.
"We're not going down to the loading bay, are we?" Harry wrapped the bathrobe closer around him. "I'm practically nude and although I join into the fertility dance ritual at the farm every now and then…"
"HARRY", the other three all yelled together. "TOO MUCH INFORMATION!"
… … …
Down in the loading bay, where Guerrero kept the less incriminating parts of his equipment, Chance told Harry to remove the bathrobe one more time.
"But it's cold here and I have this hemorrhoids problem…"
"What did we say about too much information?"
Chance switched all lights in the bay off and turned on the black light torch he and Guerrero had needed for that job in Idaho a couple of years ago. Black light lamps emit ultraviolet radiation in the long-wave range. It's invisible, but many substances display a colored glow when they're exposed to it.
Such as Harry's backside now.
Thin lines in fluorescent white light appeared on the skin of his left buttock – a complex geographical map of some place in a desert. Whoever had done this had made an effort to note down all sorts of physical land features.
And an "x" right in the middle of it.
"So what is this now, Treasure Island 2.0?"
Both Chance and Baptiste turned around and looked at Joubert with raised eyebrows.
"What? Half of the job consists of research on the internet nowadays. And I've got a teenage grandson. You think I don't know the lingo?"
"Don't you recognize it?", Baptiste asked.
Joubert frowned and stepped a little closer.
"Uh, guys, I know I complained because nobody wanted to take a look, but you've made up for it now, really."
Completely ignoring Harry, Joubert crouched and squinted his eyes. "The location of the secret research center where the agency sent us a couple of years ago…"
"Guys…the cold is really taking a toll on me… "
Again, Harry was completely ignored.
"Great way to transport classified information out of the country…", Joubert mused.
"You were planning to travel to Asia, Harry, weren't you?" Chance asked. The Old Man, however was already a step further.
"…tattoo it on an idiot's posterior in invisible ink, let him stumble through customs – fortune favors fools…"
"You realize I'm listening, don't you?"
"…kidnap him at the airport and make short work of him. The tattoo can be easily cut out."
Harry turned pale.
"They must have used a tattoo artist from the Bay area, nothing else fits with the timeline. Not many people have the skills to work this precisely with UV ink. It's thinner, the tattoo must be wiped and checked under a black light torch frequently during the session. Should narrow it down." Chance switched the lights in the loading bay on again. As he reached for the switch, he involuntarily flinched. His shoulder….
"We're going to take Harry and check the tattoo studios. You are going to stay here", the Old Man decided.
Naturally, Chance didn't agree. "Do I have no say in the matter?"
"Consider yourself grounded."
"You don't really think you can…"
Baptiste stepped behind Chance with one swift motion in a clearly aggressive manner. Chance's instincts kicked in immediately, but a one hundred percent fit Baptiste against a pretty banged up Chance?
… … …
"Now, how does that feel?", Ash asked his father ten minutes later, as he found him securely chained to the metal ring underneath the couch in the lobby while Joubert and Baptiste were riding downstairs in the elevator with Harry to go and seek out the tattooist. The chain was just long enough so that Chance could lie on the sofa, head resting on a pillow.
"I was just about letting you play on Sunday after all!", Chance yelled at him and rolled onto his side, sulking.
"Very grown-up, dad!", Ash yelled back and stomped up the stairs.
Just then the telephone rang. Baptiste had made sure Chance would reach it. He had placed it underneath the pillow.
"Ilsa…"
Chance's mood perked up. Maybe she would tell him they needed him to come to Vienna after all…
"Less than two hours ago you asked for instructions on how to build a homemade bomb and now you're telling me you're already on your way home? You found the violin? This fast?"
"It's called teamwork, Chance. A well-concerted group effort. And no silly stunts." Unconsciously, Ilsa played with a lock of her hair, still moist from the Danube. Ames, who had helped hauling Ilsa onto the excursion ship's deck, threw her an amused glance.
It wasn't a silly stunt, Ilsa's facial expression replied.
In San Francisco, Chance cut the connection. Jeez, what a day. Nothing but good news. Still sulking, he curled into a ball and fell asleep.
When he woke up again, it was in the middle of the night and the damn phone was ringing again. With his kind of luck today, it was Ilsa once more, informing him that they had solved another case between getting out of the jet and into a taxi.
It wasn't Ilsa.
"Hey matey. Consider this a collect call."
The second Chance hung up the phone he called his son. "ASH!"
It was in the middle of the night, but Ash had a light sleep and he had already been woken by the phone's ringing.
"Baptiste gave you the keys to the chain's lock, didn't he?"
Ash, although safely out of Chance's reach, took a step back.
"They're all in grave danger, Ash. The tattooist that made the tattoo on Harry's buttock… they found him but he is dead… and the people who made him do the tattoo were waiting for someone to come looking for him... Harry and the others got away, but barely. I need to…"
"YOU'RE HURT!"
"I have to go!" Chance hesitated for a moment, then: "It's your grandfather's life on the line, doesn't that mean anything to you?"
Ash opened his mouth to yell back, something along the line of "in this state you won't be of help to anyone", but stopped before uttering anything. Chance could see he was having an idea.
Scary moment, considering what solutions the boy had come up with lately.
"Your grandfather and Baptiste need help themselves now. You can't call them", he pointed out.
"I'm not going to call anyone. You're going to call." Ash punched in a number and handed the phone to his father. All he needed to do was activate it.
"Ilsa's number? You can't be serious!"