Disclaimer: I don't own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.
"I'm going to KILL him! If he makes it through that storm, I'm going to kill him!" Ames was beside herself with rage. Her voice easily carried through the closed door of the hotel room.
"Do you hear her?", Guerrero, on the other side of said door, softly asked the man tied to the chair in front of him. "She's mightily pissed."
"Guerrero! For heaven's sake, GUERRERO, unlock those handcuffs or I swear I'll stuff them down your throat!" Winston, whom Guerrero had chained to the heating in the hotel room's bathroom so he could work in peace on the source he had dug out shortly after Chance had left, bellowed madly.
"Hear that angry walrus? He's mightily pissed, too", Guerrero informed the source.
The man's eyes were huge with fear. Well, hardly surprising, considering the collection of knives Guerrero had spread out on the table. Shining metal on a piece of black cloth, accentuating their exquisite sharpness.
Despite what the rest of the world thought, Guerrero had a thing for subtleness in certain situations.
"They're both looking for some sort of outlet, some opportunity to vent their frustration. What do you think will happen when I tell them you're keeping valuable information from us?"
Ten minutes later Guerrero knew exactly in which house Ilsa and Connie were held captive.
… … …
With the roaring storm and the thundering rain Chance almost missed his pager's signal. Luckily he had put it into his innermost pocket and set it to vibrating alert.
Using cell phones or the earpiece was out of question in this weather and with about a million people trying to access the cellular network at once. Pagers, with the very limited amount of data that they could send and receive, worked better under these conditions.
Standing in the entrance of the first building, Chance pulled the device out, squinted at the small display, realized that the message was from Guerrero, expected some sort of expletive, considering how he had parted with his friend, and then saw it only consisted of a single number: Three.
So Ilsa and Connie were at address number three.
… … …
Under normal conditions, Chance would have mastered the distance from his current position to the third address within five minutes, but with the storm it took him more than half an hour. His heart was beating madly against his chest as he struggled against the ever strengthening wind. Halfway through he barely escaped a huge chunk of debris from one of the buildings. It hit the sidewalk right behind him.
The building from which it had fallen off was making strange groaning and crunching noises – Chance had heard sounds like that on sinking ships and crashing airplanes. He hurried away as fast as the lashing rain allowed.
Suddenly the ground underneath his feet began to rumble and move. A huge wave of water washed over his legs as high as his knees and an earsplitting thunder momentarily turned him deaf – the groaning building's façade had fallen off.
Chance, never one to dwell on such things, kept on wading forward and finally rounded the corner to the street where he would find address number three. It was hard to make out any details without the streetlamps and with the clouds obscuring the full moon, but from what it looked like it was a Victorian-era German Renaissance co-op apartment building, a little run-down, but still showing clear signs of the glorious times it surely had once seen: The now crumbling corner pavilions, decorative terra-cotta panels and moldings indicated that people of the higher classes had once been supposed to live there. The main entrance looked wide enough for horse drawn carriages. A steeply pitched, probably leaking slate and copper roof, decorated with ornate railings, lots of stepped dormers, finials and pediments still claimed dominance over the other, smaller buildings.
In a strangely ironic way this was a fitting prison for two such well-to-do women as Ilsa and Connie Pucci.
With its completely black windows, in the blustering wind and driving rain, it looked somehow haunted, though, like an eerie mansion from a horror movie. But again, Chance had never been one to dwell on such things. And even if he had been, he wouldn't have allowed himself to lose focus by thinking about anything else than what it would entail to get Ilsa and Connie out of this storm alive.
He especially didn't allow himself to ponder how much Ilsa meant to him. Once upon a time she had seemed like the safe harbor in his life that in the end Ames had turned out to be. Things just hadn't worked out between them. But nevertheless, she had brought him back from that ashram in Nepal, shehad caused him to reconnect with Winston and Guerrero who, as he knew now, he could never live without. Without Ilsa, he'd probably still be sitting on that mountain, meditating, and there'd be no Ash in his life because Guerrero would have never had the chance to run that DNA sample.
A heavy gust of wind almost blew him off his feet.
He didn't simply do this to protect Guerrero and Ilsa wasn't just a friend in need.
She was family. Like Guerrero. Like Winston. Like Ames.
Like Ash.
Only a few more steps and he'd be at the once impressive arched entrance, now boarded up with wooden panels, but in earlier times surely guarded by a huge wrought iron gate.
A vortex over one of the sewers momentarily caught one of Chance's boot, threatened to tear it off, imbalanced him. Chance pulled it away, and in doing so he turned around, looking back down the street he had just trudged along.
An enormously bright blue flash suddenly illuminated one of the houses he had passed only moments ago. A loud hiss and crackle filled the air, clearly audible despite the hurricane's unceasing onslaught. Chance recognized the sound immediately, had even caused it a couple of times – a transformer or alternator, some sort of electric power source, must have exploded. Better get Ilsa and Connie soon, before the whole block would be on fire.
Oh no. There was a window opening on the fourth floor of the building where the explosion had taken place… maybe it was just an effect of the blast?
No, unfortunately not.
Somebody was still inside.
And he needed help.