"Why don't we ask him?" Walt was tugging on Hurley's sleeve, but Hurley was deep in conversation with Richard, barely noticed and didn't respond. He had just asked Richard if he'd left full notes about the other islands on the computer in his bungalow. Richard was nodding yes, explaining how he and Walt had looked both backward and forward, checking on how events played out on each.
"I know you'll want to look that all over," Richard said, "Before you make any decisions on how to proceed."
Walt was still trying to grasp what he'd heard them all discussing when he got back from walking Vincent. He couldn't believe it, and wondered why they did.
"Why don't we ask him?" Walt gave up on Hurley, dropped back a step and asked Kate. Her arms were folded and her blank stare had been fixed on either the ground or some random point in space since they'd all gotten up and stepped out of Hurley's place.
Kate felt like she was having an out of body experience. She felt more hollow than numb, but a little of both. She wasn't sure if it was about her travels or the realization Sawyer had never been who she thought he was. To do this after everything they'd all been through?
It was like she'd been wearing some sort of special glasses for the last three years but didn't know it and now someone had yanked them off of her head and she saw him for what he really was. But the sad part? He'd told them all along who he was, had never lied about it at all. Well, she thought, he hadn't lied about it- until now.
"What?" She finally heard Walt. "You shouldn't have to worry about this," she said softly.
"That's not fair," Walt looked up at her, nose wrinkled. "I came back to help, and I am helping. And I think we should call Sawyer and ask him what's going on. If we don't, how do we know he's up to anything? Maybe he has some great plan to trick them and not us?"
"I wish that were true, Walt," she said, set a hand on his shoulder. "But if it were he could tell us so anytime and he hasn't. And he's taken a lot of money from them, the kind of money you'd expect to get if you're helping someone win a war."
Walt shook his head, and his expression didn't change.
"I don't think he'd let them hurt us," he said. "Do you?"
"You know what?" Kate said, "I've been thinking the same thing, Walt. Maybe I only believe it because I have to, but I think you, me, Hurley – he's probably made a deal for us to try to protect us. But I wouldn't want to be Richard or Ben if we lose," she said, "Or Hurley's parents, or Penny and Desmond, or even Rose and Bernard," Walt flinched, was silent for a minute.
"What happens to Sawyer if we win?" Walt asked.
"That's up to Hurley," she said, "But Walt, if we are on the losing side, then what happens to all of us—it's up to them."
"We have to go," Hurley said and Kate looked up, saw him looking west, knew he meant to the Weather Vane. "Miles and Ben are supposed to be here in the hour. Will you go get some sleep?"
Kate agreed, but pulled him slightly aside as Richard and Walt started walking.
"Hurley, can I make a phone call from my bungalow?"
"Yes," he smiled, "Dial zero, and new recruits are standing by at the Flame to patch through your call," he squeezed her arm as he headed out. "Isn't that amazing? Say hi to Eloise for me. Don't go anywhere until I'm back, okay? Seriously, get some sleep."
"I will, I promise," she folded her arms again, shivering with exhaustion in the 80 degree sunshine. "I will."
Annie stood in the window of her motel room, her nerves so amped up her ears were ringing. She was fighting the urge to run. The sun was setting on the other side of the building, the sky turning purple in front of her.
It wasn't the room that was fueling the bad feelings. It nice, a whole lot nicer than a lot of the places she'd stayed in her globetrotting years. The carpet was spotless, the bay window in front of her had a comfortable little seat and the furniture was new. But it felt like a cell that was closing in on itself a few inches every minute she didn't open the door and leave.
Tomorrow, she and Sawyer and several D.I. leaders were going to get on a ship that would set out mid-afternoon with the sole task of finding the Searcher and stealing its most valuable asset: Data from its computers that would lead them to the island. If she was right, if Sawyer had fed the D.I. everything he knew, then she was pretty much simply a hostage already - or would be, if she didn't run right now.
Annie looked down at the cell phone in her hands. Had Evan told them about her suspicions? If he had, why hadn't they reached out to her, Hurley, Ben? Did they believe her?
She was still looking down at it when it rang and she nearly flung it at the window in shock. She looked at it, saw the word 'blocked' on the caller ID.
"Hello?" she started pacing, heard silence and then Ben.
"I owe you an apology," he said, and she went from wired and scared to weak with relief. She sat in the window, her nose close to the glass as if she could look out and see him there. "I should have recognized you, Annie, known you for who you are. But old habits die hard and, well, it was easier to doubt you than to face how terrifying it was to actually see you again."
"I know," she said. "I knew that. Where are you?"
"I'm back on the island," He was sitting near the computer bank at the Weather Vane, the lights from the machines and the bunks all that were illuminating the room. "Hurley and the rest are bringing Claire to the barracks. She turned up in L.A. today. She's very out of it but she's alive. We brought her back with us."
"I'm glad for them. I'm sure that's a huge relief," Annie said. "Ben, did you call to say anything else?"
"Yes. I wanted to tell you that if you want to go, if you have the chance to get away tonight and you want to then you should."
"Does Hurley know you're saying that?"
"No," there was something like a smile in his voice. "Hurley is getting more…. Jacobean every day. He's leaving it up to us to do what we know we should. And I know you need to hear that it's okay to go if that's what our instincts are telling you to do."
"But if I leave…"
"If you leave, the whole deck of cards gets thrown up in the air. Right now we know there's something we're missing, but at least we know something, like when you're headed this way, what they're after. If you run they may start over and regroup."
"You'll be even more in the dark," she said, and the walls moved in a touch more. "Do you think they'll kill Sawyer if I go?"
"Maybe," Ben's voice went cold. "He's given them most everything he can and he's not nearly as useful a hostage as you are after what he's done. Let's put it this way: He needs you right now a whole lot more than you need him. There's no way to know what will happen if you run, Annie. But there's no knowing what will happen if you don't, either. So if you do we'll understand."
"Okay," she stood, started pacing again, but more slowly now. "Okay."
"And Annie," he said. "In case we don't see each other again for some reason, I have to say something else. You grew up to be exactly the person I always imagined you would. Exactly."
She stopped, her free hand on the back of her head, her eyes squeezing back tears and her nose burning with them.
"Ben," she said, "I loved you. You know that, don't you? When we were kids?"
"Yes," he said, sounding suddenly weary. "But that kid has been gone a very long time."
"I know who you were back then and I know who you are now," she said. "The rest we can talk about when this is all over. Okay?"
"Okay," he said, "Be careful, Annie, whatever you do."
She had stood staring at the phone for nearly a minute after she hung up. Then she went and found her purse, picked up the two or three things she needed most and stuffed them in a bag and walked out the door.
She had gotten eight steps away when she heard him.
"Flying the coop?"
She turned and saw Sawyer walking back from the general direction of the little strip mall to the left of the motel. He had a bottle of bourbon in one hand and a grocery bag full of snacks in the other.
"I was going to the car to look for my cell phone, I think it fell on the floor," she said. "Doing some shopping?"
"I thought we'd have a little party," he waved the bottle slightly, and even though he was yards away she could practically feel his hand around her arm, or maybe her neck, pulling her back. "Celebrate today's victory and the con job ahead."
The nerve of him, to say that to her, to keep up the charade: She had to look down to hide her expression.
"No mixers?" she asked, and realized her acting skills had improved a little in the course of their trip. Her voice hadn't shaken at all.
"What are you, a girl or something?" He grinned.
"Fine," she said, "At least get us some ice."
She went to the car, pretended to look for her phone, waited until he was out of sight and walked back to the room.
She turned the key and the deadbolt slid open but she swore it sounded more like it was slamming shut. She walked back in her room, realizing there was no way out now.
Kate lay on the sofa in her bungalow waiting for the guys at the Flame to connect her call. The empty misery of this afternoon was gone and she felt calm and at home again. Even the baby seemed happy, doing little floppy-kicky things that made her smile.
It definitely wasn't her conversation with Eloise that had gotten her to this better place. That had been about as stressful as she'd expected. But Eloise had at least taken her call and answered her questions.
What to expect when she went back to the other island? Anything: Especially Course Correction, since she'd tried to help them but without letting them fully in on how to help themselves.
"Oh yes," Eloise had said, drawing out the 'oh' quite a lot. "Benjamin told me you're trying to take them through their time on their island step by step – trying not to change the things that will help them grow, only the ones that will kill them."
"And?" Kate asked when she heard nothing more coming.
"And have you forgotten," Eloise asked, "How hard it was for us to get a handful of you on an airplane? How close that seemingly simple thing came to not happening?"
"No," Kate had acknowledged. "I haven't."
"My advice, dear is this: If you want to save them, if you feel you'll get some cosmic retribution that way then you need to cut to the freaking chase or your work is doomed."
"How?" It wasn't what she'd called her for, but Kate knew in that moment that it might be the most important thing Eloise would ever tell her.
"When you go back, bring scuba gear, directions to the Looking Glass and Penny's cell phone number," Eloise said. "Get them all off that island fast and I mean all of them. Because if they leave anyone behind, well that's what keeps drawing you all back, isn't it," she said, "each other?"
Now Kate was waiting for call number two to go through, heard the click, click, click of it connecting.
"Hellllooooo?" It was the most drawn out, sleep-soaked, still-in-a-dream voice she'd ever heard and Kate both felt bad and had to restrain a laugh at the same time.
"Desmond? Oh, I am so sorry, I woke you up. That's what I get for having them dial your cell. What time is it there?"
"Time?" She could hear he was only starting to surface, to even know he actually had the phone in his hand. "It's not so late. We went to sleep before dark, we'll be traveling overnight some of us. Kate? Is it you?"
"Yes, and again, I'm so sorry, but I need your help. I need to know every detail of what happened when you swam down to meet Charlie in the Looking Glass. Can you tell me that?"
There was a pause and she almost wondered if he'd drifted back off.
"There's not so much to tell you beyond what I'm sure you've already heard," Desmond said, sounding sleepy still, but more like himself. "Mikhail shot those women and then we shot him. Then one of them-Bonnie, she told Charlie the passcode to shut down the jammer."
"That's it," Kate said. "I need that. What code did Charlie hit to shut it off?"
"Notes. They were notes, on a keypad like a phone keypad. From a song. Not the Beatles, who was it? An American band –the Beach Boys. It was the first notes of Good Vibrations."
"You're sure," Kate said, "The first notes, how many?"
"Yes," Desmond said, his voice a little heavier now with the recollection of what came after. "Yes, I'm sure. Let me think..."
There was another pause.
"Thirteen. It was the first thirteen notes. I can hear them."
"Thank you," she said, "so much."
"You're welcome. And can you do me a favor," Desmond said. "Can you call me back tomorrow? Because I'm gonna want to hear why the hell you wanted to know. But not now, 'cause I'll never remember."
"I will. I'll call you back as soon as I can, Des, and I'll let you know how you helped save a bunch of us all over again," she said.
She wasn't sure if he was even awake as she hung up, hit the light behind her, and set a hand on her stomach right where the flippity-flops were currently happening.
"Time to chill, baby," she said. "Big day tomorrow and tougher ones ahead of that. Let's sleep while we can."
