Disclaimer: I don't own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.
Ilsa frowned as she rode the elevator up to the office. She could hear something, but she wasn't exactly sure what. Not gunshots or explosions, she would have recognized those.
Practice...
Voices maybe?
But to hear voices in the elevator, with the thing rattling and swooshing the way it did lately – she really had to call a technician again, after Ames' earthquake experience those sounds were a bit unsettling – they had to be quite loud.
Well…
"We've only been target practicing! In Tommy's backyard! With Tommy's own weapon! His dad knew what we were doing and he said it was okay!" Ash was fiercely determined not to accept punishment this time. After weeks of apologizing and dancing around Tiffany, he had finally managed to charm her into a new date. No way he'd cancel that again.
"Guns are dangerous! They are not for playing around!" Chance was outraged.
The kitchen had been too small for the two's shouting match, so now they were yelling at each other in the lobby.
"We didn't play around! We practiced! You do it all the time! You even have your own firing range on the fourth floor!" The boy's stance made it very clear that he would not back down. The car thing, that had definitely been stupid and his bad, but this time he had thought everything through and he really didn't see where the harm was. Aside from that…
"And what about all those weapons stashed everywhere?" Ash puffed his chest in glorious teenage righteousness.
"That's a totally different thing! Weapons are not toys, not for entertainment, they need to be handled with care!" Chance couldn't believe it – where had he gone wrong? Where had he failed that his son was making one idiotic decision after another?
"Do you think I'm a baby? Too stupid to watch out for myself?" This was so typical, his father just didn't take him seriously. "And what do you want to do now? Handcuff me again? Why don't you lock me into my room, so I can do…" he hesitated, trying to find the most striking metaphor "… a jigsaw without hurting myself!"
A minute later Ash found himself exactly there, in his room, door lock clicking shut, just without the jigsaw.
"Not sure that was the best decision, dude", Guerrero remarked as Chance came stomping down the stairs again.
"He fired a gun! He and his buddies! You're the one studying actuary tables – how many times does this kind of thing go wrong?"
Ames walked past Guerrero's back to greet Ilsa at the elevator and inform her about the situation.
"What the hell would you do if your kid pulled off that kind of shit?", Chance hurled angrily at his friend.
"Ash needs to understand what weapons mean to you. You must make him see that they're your tools, necessary instruments to do your job", Winston spoke up.
"Says the man gibbering about wanting to fire a grenade launcher."
Winston decided to ignore that statement. "At the moment all you do is telling him what an idiot he is – you don't even give him a chance to grasp the gravity of the situation."
"Sit him down and talk to him, dude."
"You know what? You two agreeing, that really sucks." Chance felt the urge to kick something. To run ten miles. To fight someone. Good Lord, what was he supposed to do now? He needed to stop his son somehow, prevent him from screwing things up like that all the time… heavens, he knew so well where this kind of shit could lead… where it had led himself, when he had been only two years older than Ash…
"Chance, I think you should calm down, call Philippa, inform her about what happened and find a concerted solution", Ilsa tried the reasonable approach.
It fell on deaf ears.
"I can really do without your ten principles of human resources management, Ilsa."
Just then the security system alerted them to a visitor.
A man in his fifties, grayish hair, huge bald spot he unsuccessfully tried to cover with a couple of overlong strands, slightly overweight, in a shapeless gray coat from being washed too often, asked to see them. He introduced himself as Hans Meierle, insurance investigator from Austria.
"What can we do for you, Mr. Meierle?", Ilsa asked him, all business and professional, as they sat him down in the conference room.
Chance hoped he had somehow managed to piss off half of the Austrian mafia (if they had that kind of thing down there) or something else in that direction. Something that involved a thorough confrontation.
"My employer was asked to pay out the insurance sum for a necklace, stolen not long ago from one of our clients", Meierle began. "Ruby jewelry originally designed for Empress Elisabeth of Austria, more commonly known as Sissi. 2.2 million Euro."
Chance noticed that his crew members all reacted to this information more intensely than usual. Ames being all ears, that didn't surprise him, she was always interested in expensive jewelry, little magpie that she was. And Ilsa loved fine things, too, for different reasons, but still, so no surprise there either. On the other hand Winston and Guerrero starting to shift… well, not exactly uncomfortably… but definitely a little uneasily… There was something he wasn't quite getting yet.
Hang on a sec, the detective had said he was from Austria and Vienna was the capital of Austria… the job where they had left him alone… the violin thing they had been so suspiciously quiet about…
"The necklace was composed of rubies, gold and pearls. The masterpiece of a famous Hungarian goldsmith. Its foundation was black velvet. Flower pattern. They don't make this kind of filigree things anymore nowadays…" Meierle patted his coat, apparently looking for something, probably a photo. He dug into a couple of pockets, came up empty. Sighing, he gave up.
"Does the description sound familiar to you, Mrs. Pucci?"