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Victoria Randall scrambled desperately through a clump of thick underbrush, lost her balance and fell into water just deep enough to cover her. It strangled her cry of shock, and when she managed to find her footing on the treacherous muck of the Everglades, she did not repeat it. The sound of her ragged breathing was as loud in her ears as the imagined footsteps she knew were right behind her, right behind her, right behind her. She struggled on through the murky water, praying for the mercy of an alligator, a panther, a snake.

Instead she found gravel and sand under her fingers, a slope, the spiny branches of the roadside brush nipping angrily at her bloodied fingers. She sobbed against the incline, quietly, terrified, her breath visible in the night air.

A gunshot echoed over the 'Glades, somewhere far from her, and she squealed as if she'd been on the receiving end, scrambling forward and up, above the embankment, onto the road. She wend down on hands and knees, running her palms over the gravel, weeping in relief as she recognized the unlit road for what it was: a Park access road, open only to Park personnel.

She stood up, then, a short, slender girl, covered in mud and scratches, clad in a flimsy nightie, barefoot and panic-choked. Her feet could feel the indentation left in the unpaved road by the coming and going of passing vehicles, and aligning herself to it, she began to walk, then to jog, and finally broke into a stumbling run.

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The Hummer came to a stop between a muddied Jeep with the sigil of Park services on the flanks, and one of an easy dozen police cruisers, There were flashing lights along a good stretch of road on both directions, but the Hummer's driver fixed his attention immediately on the ambulance surrounded by a whirlpool of uniforms like precious cargo amidst a pack of watchdogs.

Horatio Caine stepped down from the Hummer, eyes taking the measure of his surroundings by the yardstick of the ambulance even as he moved towards it. He saw a familiar figure coming to meet him halfway. "Frank", he greeted Detective Tripp. "So is this good news or bad news?"

"I'm not sure myself." Frank's voice had roughened after trying to maintain some semblance of organization and priorities amidst the many different parties milling about. "Remember the Jane Doe we found a month ago couple of miles down from here, MGW?"

Horatio's expression hardened minutely before falling back into his usual calm, inexpressive lines. He didn't like Jane Does – he didn't like the whole Doe family, particularly when he was the one who had to add to it. Unfortunately, in the case the detective had just brought to mind, there had not been enough for them to go on: it had been a slim season for the natives of the Everglades, and all the MDCSI had been able to determine was that several high-powered bullets, not the 'gators, had killed the girl. "I never forget a case, Frank. Does least of all."

"Well, I'm thinking you can take that case out of the freezer. Park patrol found the girl running along an access road a little over twenty minutes ago. She said she got kidnapped from her bedroom on Saturday, and whoever took her released her a while ago somewhere in the 'Glades with two other girls. They were told to "run and be hunted", or be shot where they stood."

Horatio stopped, and slowly turned to face him. "Are you telling me someone was hunting this girl like game?"

"That's why I thought of the Jane Doe", Frank nodded. "High-speed, hunting ammunition."

Horatio started moving towards the ambulance again, his pace more urgent. "Are the S&R units out yet?"

"All over the place. Chopper's on his way, too."

Horatio felt more than saw the detective fall a couple of steps behind him, allowing him to face the girl alone and positioning his fairly solid frame so as to grant them some measure of separation from the three-ring circus all around them. He took a slow breath, and as the air moved in and out of him he let the sight of the girl do the same, filtering in and out of his mind, leaving burning paths of knowledge and information etched within it.

She was still muddied under the emergency blanket someone had wrapped about her, although there was a damp, dirty towel next to her as she huddled on the back step of the ambulance. Her hair had become plastered to her head under a fine layer of silt and vegetation, and there was not an inch of her that was not covered in scratches and welts, each one a testament to every misstep she'd taken in her desperate flight. She'd identified herself as Victoria Randall, and she was twenty-six years old.

Her nails were broken, he noted, caked with dirt. She'd been doing some digging.

Then he frowned, because she had not turned to face him for all that he was less than three steps away; she simply stood hunched inside her blanket, shivering in either cold or shock. He rather thought the latter. As he moved closer, he saw that her eyes, sunken in red and black pools of exhaustion, were a muddy green, and the pupils were near-invisible pinpricks, useless to her in the moonless night. "Victoria?", he called softly, watched her jump and turn to face in his direction, reacting as only someone for whom sightlessness is not a fact of life can. "Victoria, I'm Horatio Caine. I'm with the Miami Crime Lab –"

"C-can you fix my eyes?" Her voice had a soft burr Horatio couldn't immediately place but the stark terror in it was unmistakable. "They won't tell me - you're with a lab, right? Am I – am I gonna be blind?"

He made his voice as calm and soothing as he could. "Victoria, you're going to be fine."

"B-but my eyes…", she stammered.

"Your eyes, yes, can I have a look?" Slowly, he reached out to cup her chin, felt her start under his touch and made a mental note to himself, wondering how long it'd been since someone other than whoever had found her, and perhaps the EMTs, had touched her. He shone his flashlight into the muddy green of her gaze and saw her pupil stubbornly refuse to react. "Did the people who did this to you inject you with anything, Victoria?"

"No." She was docile under his hands. "I think it was some kind of powder, someone blew something on my face before… It was just, it was really dark where I was, and it felt like someone blew on my face before it started to burn. It burns a little still."

Horatio sighed quietly. He was pretty sure he was looking at the effects of an opiate, but if it had been applied as a powder any trace of it would be long gone after the girl's trek through the 'Glades. "Well, Victoria, I'm sure your eyes are going to be fine, but until we know what it was they used on you, it's safer if we don't do anything that might hurt them, Ok?

She nodded, unhappy but resilient.

"Can you tell me anything th-"

The gunshot, for all that it came to them like a distant, distorted echo over the water and sawgrass, still cut through voices, sirens and night sounds alike. The girl shrieked and flailed blindly, panic-stricken, and in a moment Horatio had her in his arms.

"It's Ok. It's alright. It's Ok, Victoria, you're safe. You're safe." Even as he held her, trying to comfort that trembling heart and the shuddering sobs, part of him noted that even tears were not clearing her eyes. "Frank?"

"On it." The detective, like most everyone around, was either running for the nearest all-terrain vehicle or jogging towards a readily available means of communications.

The EMTs closed in on Horatio; apparently, crime scene or not, they were ready to take their charge somewhere less bullet-prone. But when he tried to let go of Victoria, she clung to him with a panicked, disjointed plea. He took her flailing hands in his. "Victoria. Victoria, listen to me. Listen to my voice, alright? Are you listening?" He focused on the sense she was most heavily relying on at the moment, and waited until she nodded. "We've got to get you out of here. You're going to the hospital, and I'll come see you there, after they've cleared your eyes. You're going to be alright now, you just need to go with the ambulance, Ok?"

"Ok." Her voice was a ragged, tiny whisper. As the EMTs secured her into the ambulance, she fixed her sightless eyes on him. "Please help them."

"I will." He stared at the doors as they closed, at the empty space where Victoria's plea hung in the air after the ambulance had gone, louder than the gunshot. "I will."