Disclaimer: I don't own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.

Of course Chance stopped shooting the second the girl appeared. Same went for Guerrero, he froze on the spot. Neither gave up aiming at Walter, though, who, just as predictably, grabbed the kid and used it as a human shield.

"What do you want from me?", he cried. "What the hell do you want from me?"

Reasonable question.

Walter had figured out by now that the woman he had killed in the bank had somehow been connected to Guerrero. Closely enough connected to send him on a killing spree, that is.

While Walter had no trouble getting his head around the concept of revenge - there was a body buried on the cemetery of his hometown that no gravestone would ever account for - nobody messed with his family, nobody - it was the torture part that completely puzzled him. Guerrero was incredibly dangerous, but not a single story he had heard about him ever spoke of sadism. He didn't enjoy causing people pain. His methods, be it the fish hook, the car battery or the knee cap thing, were always designed to reach one specific goal: getting information.

But, literally, for the life of his, Walter could not imagine what information Guerrero expected from him. Judging from B. Brax' sudden demise a couple of weeks ago (heart attack, yeah, sure) Guerrero and his cronies had already found out that Brax had ordered the killing in the bank in the context of his attempt to blackmail the city. What additional information could they possibly want from him?

The little girl's heart was fluttering against the palm of his hand like a panicky bird trapped in a net.

Chance locked eyes with Guerrero - could he get to Walter without endangering the girl?

The child's choked whimpering threatened to completely set his professionalism off balance. Ever since Ash had become part of his life, children, more than ever before, were his Achilles' heel. The urge to protect them tended to outweigh all rational thought. If he had been alone, he'd have probably dropped his weapon by now. Luckily Guerrero was present to keep him in check.

A slight, single wink from his friend let him know that Guerrero, too, saw no opportunity to deflate Walter without putting the girl at risk.

So stalling for time it would have to be.

"Why the boy?", Chance shouted. "Why did you want to kill the boy?"

So they knew the woman's death had been accidental. And it was the boy they were really interested in. Walter's stomach turned to ice. This was bad news of the catastrophic kind. He had always hoped that, should he ever end up in Guerrero's clutches, the information that he hadn't wanted to terminate the woman would cut him some slack. Apparently it was the other way around - it was the boy, the goddamn boy, that had brought all this shit on him!

He tightened his grip on the violently shaking girl. The stench of fresh urine emitting from the region around her feet barely registered with him.

"I don't know!", he yelled. "Brax' mood changed during the robbery. At first everything was normal, but then his voice became... more determined... it was as if he was showing off to somebody. I heard he had a visitor before he ordered shooting the kid, but that's all I know - I have no idea who it was. Now let me go and nothing will happen to her."

Guerrero and Chance exchanged a quick glance and a barely perceptible nod, then they simultaneously lowered their guns to the ground. Walter, fighting the urge to release a big sigh of relief, dragged the girl to the front door. He was obviously planning to step backwards out of the door and at the same time let go of the girl.

Nice maneuver that would have provided him with an elegant escape... if, unbeknownst to Walter, Winston hadn't been waiting right outside the building, listening in to everything that was happening in the hallway. They hadn't taken the earpieces with them, in this heat and humidity they would have never survived the journey to Guayaquil, especially not while being hidden in a guitar. Well, sometimes an open window was enough.

The street outside was deserted. Winston was the only pedestrian. He had already checked for surveillance cams - of course there were none. And the residents of the surrounding buildings were either still asleep at this unholy hour of the day or way too used to ruckus to look out of the window. In this city the rule of thumb was the less you saw the better your chances to keep on living in peace. Mind your own business was pretty much Guayaquil's unofficial motto.

Winston's heart was racing and his clothes were soaked with sweat as he waited for Walter to exit the building. Neither had anything to do with Ecuador's infamous climate. Hearing Walter's statement Winston realized that if this was all he had to say, there was no reason to keep him alive anymore. He couldn't tell them why Brax had tried killing Ash. He couldn't give them any details on the mysterious visitor's identity. Maybe they should have questioned Brax before eliminating him, but at that point in time they hadn't known yet that Ash had been no random target but been picked specifically.

They had discussed this time and time again, with Guerrero being the most opinionated and Chance reluctantly agreeing: Letting Walter live provided a constant threat to Ash's further development. Ash was, despite all their attempts to get him on his feet again, deeply grieving the loss of his mother and his grief was taking on the form of fierce wrath. His obsessive exercises in the gym, the endless jogging rounds, the hours in the office's shooting range… he was driven by hatred, Winston could see it in his eyes. In his days as a cop he had encountered that dark cold gleam that spoke of thirst for revenge and lashing out more than once and usually in the context of a gruesome murder case.

At the moment Ash's hatred was directionless. He could put no names to the men behind the masks, he had no means to go after them. But the older he got, the more refined his skills would grow – and one day he would be able to track them down. He would become a killer to take vengeance for Philippa's death.

Unless the persons responsible for Philippa's death were already dead by then.

So far Guerrero had thoroughly seen to that. B. Brax was no more, neither were the hamster men. The only person left that could tempt Ash into choosing the dark path was the raccoon man.

Walter Lewis, who had pulled the trigger.

The big catch in this game.

In a way all the others, even Brax with all his power, were nothing but extras, supporting actors in this Ancient Greek style drama.

And now he was about to walk right into Winston's line of fire. He could end it all. With one well-aimed shot.

It was not that Winston disagreed with Guerrero. As much as he hated to admit it, the man had a point. The trauma of witnessing his mother's death had the potential to turn Ash into a murderer and their only option to prevent that was to take out his potential targets before he had a chance to get to them.

On the other hand: They were talking cold-blooded murder here and while Winston on the horror trip to godforsaken Guayaquil had barely managed to get his head around the fact that he was helping Chance and Guerrero committing homicide this situation now had taken things one step further – HE, Laverne Winston, ex-detective of San Francisco's finest, retired after twenty years of service, was holding the gun that could put an end to everything.

Right now.

If he pulled the trigger, Ash would be safe. He could go on with his life without the nagging, ever present, eventually inescapable knowledge that somewhere out there his mother's murderers enjoyed eating, breathing, loving, while his mother had all that snatched away from her. He could become a happy young man, go to college, find a girl, found a family… granted, given his fatherly genes he'd probably choose a career path that would regularly put him in some sort of danger, maybe he'd join the army or become a cop – but he would be fighting the good fight.

If Winston only pulled the trigger now.

But this was different than eliminating someone who threatened to harm Chance, Ilsa, Ames, Guerrero… this was not a shootout with thugs invading the office or trying to get to a client. This was taking out an unsuspecting target on the run.

Like an assassin.

But he couldn't just sit back and expect Guerrero and Chance to do all the dirty work, could he? Winston didn't simply think of Chance and, yeah, Guerrero, as friends – they were brothers. The first time this had become painfully clear to him had been back at that bank, during the ordeal with the Old Man's book, when Chance had defused the bomb and then left…

So, were they really brothers? Then he couldn't leave the killing to them, making himself the morally better person by refusing to commit the final act that would turn them into equals.

The building's front door was pushed wide open, out came Walter Lewis, stumbling backwards, pointing his gun in the direction of the hallway.

Now. NOW.

Winston aimed. His weapon shook in his hand. His finger tightened around the trigger.

Out of nowhere a limousine, slick, black, shiny and most definitely armored, came dashing down the street and halted right next to Walter with screeching brakes. Its back passenger's door flew open, strong arms grabbed him and pulled him into the car. Even before the door was slammed shut again the limousine raced off.

It had come and gone in less than ten seconds.

Chance and Guerrero came storming out of the building, rained bullets on the vehicle, but it was no use – Walter was out of reach.

"I… I'm sorry, I…" Winston was lost for words. There was no way to excuse his failure… he had let his friends down, he had… shoulders slumped he kept standing where he was, rooted to the spot on the sidewalk, not knowing where to look, to turn, to go.

"It's okay… Winston, it's okay…" Finally lowering his gun, Chance put a hand on his shoulder and lightly squeezed it. "It's okay."

Winston sought Guerrero's gaze. Guerrero nodded, calmly and collected. "We're cool, dude."

Inside the fleeing limousine, a relieved but also very confused Walter finally managed to sit upright and get a look at his savior. What he saw made the blood in his veins freeze.

It was Innokentij Krektovic. Горизонт's mastermind.

"Доброе утро, Mr. Lewis", he said.

Good morning, Mr. Lewis.

Walter couldn't help but think that so far it had been everything but a good morning. And things were not looking up.

… … …

The finding of the gun had put Ash into browser mode. Trailed by Isamu he searched the other furniture and came up with more weapons – guns and knives of different sizes, hidden under chairs, sofa covers, tabletops… even a hand grenade had come up… his old home must have been just as stashed with hidden arms as the warehouse – how the hell was it possible that he had never noticed?

Vaguely, very vaguely an old memory came creeping back into his consciousness. He must have been about five… back then they had lived in Austria, if he remembered correctly… in one of the hundreds of rundown motels they had stayed in during the first twelve years of his life.

One night his mother had suddenly woken him, had clasped a hand around his mouth, had shoved him into the closet and told him remain quiet UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. In the darkness of the closet, hidden between clothes, his nose filled with the stench of moth balls and dust, he hadn't seen anything, but he had heard… had heard what he now realized must have been the noises of a struggle… a life and death fight, most likely with a knife… ending with choked cries, painful gurgling and a silence so ear splitting, he had buried his face in his hands.

Hissing at him to keep his eyes shut, his mother had dragged him out of the closet and carried him downstairs to their car, had thrown their things into the boot and driven off into the night.

Only now Ash realized that he must have witnessed his mother killing an intruder. How the hell could he have forgotten that? All those years… all those places where they had lived, always running… she had told him early onwards that his deceased father had had many enemies who were after them and thus they had to be on the move so much and always needed to be careful. Come to think of it, it made sense that his mother not only ran with him but that she had also thought of means to protect them in a more physical way. Why had he never thought of that?

Still, despite all those hidden arms scattered around him on what had once been his mother's bed, he couldn't quite imagine her with a gun.

"What is this?" Not quite sure what to say about all those weapons, Isamu had decided to take another look at the nightstand with which it all had started.

Ash wasn't quite sure if he could take any more revelations, but when Isu showed him a yellowed envelope curiosity got the better of him. "It was taped to the back of the drawer", his friend explained.

The envelope wasn't sealed. In fact it looked as if someone – his mother – had retrieved its content regularly, judging from the creases and tears in the paper. Cautiously, trying not to damage it any further, Ash reached in… and found three photos.

The first one showed two girls, ten or eleven, in front of … a geyser… The girls were hugging each other, it was a typical bff picture… it took Ash a while before he realized that the dark haired, gray eyed girl had to be his mother. Only then he realized he had never seen a picture of her as a child. The other girl, blond and blue-eyed, was completely unknown to him.

"I think I've seen this geyser before", Isu chimed in. "It's quite famous…" He pulled out his mobile and started doing research on the web.

The second picture showed his mother again, and the other girl. On that one they were about fourteen, wearing school uniforms and apparently busy with some sort of art project – both were deeply concentrated, copying what looked like rock drawings on sheets of paper. His mother had long, braided hair on that photo, a copy of the blond girl's braided mane, just less spectacular, thanks to the darker color. Gosh, she looked so young… so carefree…

"That's in New Zealand!", Isamu exclaimed. "We talked about it in Geography! Those rock drawings, they are Maori rock drawings. And the geyser is the Lady Knox Geyser!" He showed Ash the Wikipedia article.

Ash, however, was staring at the third picture. This time it showed the blond girl alone, at the age of maybe nineteen or twenty. She looked… sick… on that photo. Deep shadows under her eyes and prominent cheek bones from weight loss gave her face a haggard look. Her blond hair, so gleaming and flowing on the other pictures, was tied backwards in a strict ponytail.

"Is she pregnant?", Isu asked, looking over Ash's shoulder.

He was right. There was a visible bulge in the woman's stomach region.

Shrugging, Ash put the strange woman's photo aside, concentrating on the second one again, on which his mother must have been roughly the age he was now. He could see the familiar expression of concentration on her face, the light gleam in her eyes that indicated she was enjoying herself…

New Zealand? His mother had grown up in New Zealand? She had never said a word about her childhood, not a word about her family, her friends…

Suddenly, out of nowhere, the knowledge of having lost her forever hit Ash like a whiplash, tore through his chest and grabbed his heart with an iron fist. He gasped in an onslaught of pain so terrible, he couldn't stand looking at her picture anymore. Throwing it away, his hands accidentally brushed past the collection of knives on the bed and he jumped to his feet as if a snake had bitten him.

She was gone.

She was GONE.

And now he was starting to feel he had never really known her.