Chapter 14: The Hunt

Kate stumbled across the uneven sand, her heart beating out of control. It was her attacker. She knew it. The trees weren't thrashing, so she knew it wasn't the monster. The attacker must have discovered what she was trying to do. He must have known they were trying to trap him and been smart enough to avoid the trap.

She reached the knot of people clustered together at the edge of the trees and stopped so abruptly she almost fell to the ground. She regained her balance and demanded through gasps for breath, "What's going on?"

Boone, standing near her, glanced over and said, "Some guy came out of the trees and grabbed her."

"Grabbed who?" she asked, immediately thinking of his sister. But she saw Shannon standing on the other side of him. She looked around, trying to see who she recognized amongst the crowd and who could be missing. She breathed a tiny sigh of relief when she spotted Claire, but in the dark and with the confusion surrounding her it was impossible to identify everybody.

"Someone said her name was Christine," Boone said. "Do you think this is the same guy who attacked you?"

"You mean there could be two of these freaks out there?" Shannon asked, grabbing Boone's arm and glaring.

Kate ignored both of them, fighting her way through the growing crowd. Jack stood in front, near the trees, trying to calm everyone down. "Kate, are you all right?" he asked when he saw her.

She nodded shortly. "Which way did they go?"

Jack looked into the jungle, then thought better of answering and looked back at her. But Kate had followed the direction of his eyes and didn't need the words. She knew where they'd gone. She was going to find them, and she was going to make the man pay for what he'd done.

She stalked toward the trees, but a rough hand grabbed her arm and spun her around. "What the hell are you doing, Freckles?" Sawyer asked, his eyes flashing with anger and something else she couldn't define. Maybe it was worry, maybe something else.

"I'm going to stop him this time," she hissed, low enough so that he was the only one who heard.

"He's armed, and he has a hostage. You gonna stop him with a flashlight?"

She jerked her arm away from him. "You think I don't know any of that?"

"Okay, everybody calm down," Jack called out. "Calm down. We're going to find her. We'll go in with small groups and fan out. We don't know where he went, but we know he has a knife, so be careful. Stay together, and watch out for each other..."

His voice faded out of focus. Kate glanced over as Locke walked up to Jack with some kind of metal suitcase. Sawyer looked too, and she took advantage while she could. None of them would understand. She couldn't live with any more guilt. So while everyone's attention was on Jack and Locke, she slipped away and ran into the trees.

Sawyer looked over in time to see Kate disappear into the trees. "Shit," he said, warily accepting a large hunting knife from Locke. He'd take the time to think about his suspicions later though. Right now he had bigger concerns. He hitched his backpack up on his shoulders and took off for the trees, not waiting for the doc to tell him which direction he should go. The doc was trying to organize a search effort, but he wasn't waiting around for an assignment. He had to find Kate before she got too far.

When he was far enough into the trees that the doc's voice had faded, he stopped and listened. He could hear Kate crashing through the trees not far ahead of him. He had to stop her. She wasn't thinking straight, and she was putting more than herself in danger by charging through the jungle like this.

He caught a flash of her up ahead and quickened his pace. He didn't call out, not wanting to alert the attacker in case he was near. Kate was making enough noise for both of them; he didn't need to start shouting as well.

He called out quietly when he was close enough, but she ignored him. He knew she heard him, because he caught the hitch in her step. He shook his head, muttering, "Damn, stubborn..." under his breath as he sprinted after her.

He caught her arm, but she jerked it loose and kept moving. He knew all about this kind of single-minded determination. He'd been consumed by it more than once. Which is why he knew it was going to take something a little more dramatic to make her snap out of it and see reason.

He grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back against a nearby tree. Her back hit with a satisfying thud, her breath whooshing out of her. He crushed his lips against hers, lingering only long enough for the haze to clear from her mind.

"What the hell are you doing?" she murmured furiously, struggling against his grip.

"Tryin' to make you see reason, Freckles," he said, crowding her against the tree.

"I can see reason just fine, thank you."

"Is that why you're stomping through the jungle like a damn elephant?"

"Excuse me?"

"I could hear you from a mile away. Which means that that asshole can too."

"I'm trying to find them before it's too late."

"That's what everyone's trying to do, Sweetheart," he murmured. "What makes you think you're gonna be the one to stop him?"

"Because this is my fault, and I'm going to make it right."

"I'm the one who took the damn pictures."

"And I've had two chances to stop him and didn't. I could have checked to see if he was dead at the cockpit, but I didn't. I ran away. And when he attacked me on the beach, I got his knife away from him. But I didn't stop him. I ran away," she finished bitterly.

She looked up at him, her eyes fiery, and he stepped back when his body started to respond to her nearness. At the moment there was nothing he'd like more than to take her up against the tree and relieve some of the tension that had been building up in him for days. But unfortunately, they had more immediate concerns.

He looked down at her, and even in the dark he could see tension radiating through the tight lines of her body. The weight of her guilt hung on her shoulders, but she didn't have the market cornered, he thought. After all, she wasn't the one who'd spent the whole damn day in the jungle and not found a single sign of him. She wasn't the one who'd taken the pictures out of the briefcase in the first place. If he'd left well enough alone, none of this would be happening. But he'd tried to do the honorable thing, not leaving the grisly photos as all that remained of that woman, and once again it had bitten him in the ass.

The bruises on Kate's face were his fault. He hadn't put them there, but he'd given the attacker all the motivation he needed. The bastard had seen them together in the jungle, and when he found his briefcase and discovered the pictures missing, he had sought them out and found Kate.

He pushed the dark thoughts out of his mind. He could curse himself all he wanted to later. Or maybe he'd simply down a dozen bottles of airline booze and go numb. He shook his head, filing the thought away for later and said, "We need to figure out which way they went."

"They went this way," Kate said without hesitation, pointing ahead of her.

"And how in the hell do you know that?"

"Because these footprints are fresh," she said, flicking her flashlight on and gesturing toward the ground. "If these tracks were old, they either would have been washed away by the rain or covered with debris."

He looked at her for a moment, then shrugged and followed her down the narrow path. If she wanted to pretend that she knew what she was doing, that was fine with him. It wasn't like he had any better ideas.

Kate used her flashlight sparingly, going mostly by the moonlight that splashed down through the trees. She wasn't about to admit it, but she was glad Sawyer had found her. She hadn't paid attention to how much noise she was making as she charged through the jungle after the attacker and his hostage. Her mind had been consumed by anger and guilt, clouding everything else out, leaving room only for the knowledge that she couldn't let him do this. She had to get to him. She had to stop him.

How she'd stop him with only a flashlight, she had no idea. But she'd been determined. Whatever the cost to herself, she was going to fix this.

She should have known Sawyer would find her and stop her. In that usual arrogant, smartass way of his, he'd snapped her out of the haze and made her reexamine the risks she was taking. Not that he'd done anything to distract her from what she had to do, or change her mind. Rather, he'd made her step back and examine just how foolishly she was going about it. She realized he'd been right. She'd been running heedlessly through the brush, not thinking that the attacker could hear her coming.

But now she was focused and clear-headed. Or at least as focused as she could be with him beside her. It was hard to ignore his heat, ignore the way he pulled at her without saying or doing anything. Anytime he was near her she felt drawn to him, and it scared her to death. She had feelings for him, yes. She cared for him, yes. But she wasn't ready for this all-consuming need to be near him. It was almost obsession, and obsession scared her.

She did her best to push him as far to the back of her mind as she could. Once they stopped the attacker, there would be time to contemplate her relationship with him. If she could call it a relationship. Right now, she had to concentrate. Turn her confusion about Sawyer into anger toward the attacker and focus on finding him.

She heard a small noise up ahead and froze so suddenly Sawyer almost ran right into her. He cursed under his breath as he righted himself, but she ignored him. She clenched her fingers around the flashlight and took a deep breath. It could just be a rabbit, she told herself, or a mouse or any other creature scurrying through the brush up ahead. But instinct told her it was something else, and she wasn't going to ignore her instincts.

She motioned Sawyer to be silent and crept forward, carefully picking her way through the brush, making scarcely more noise than a breeze. For a moment she closed her eyes and listened. There was something moving in the brush. A fleeting image of the pilot flashed through her mind, a snapshot of his body caught up in the trees. But she heard none of the strange wails she'd come to associate with the monster, and no trees were being knocked down. More like pushed aside and batted out of the way.

Her heart leapt into her throat. He was up there. She could feel it.

She moved ahead slowly, a sense of caution warring with her urge to rush up and stop him now. She took a deep breath and told herself they had to be careful now. He was armed, he'd already attacked both of them, and he had an innocent hostage. She couldn't do anything rash and risk the other woman's life.

Sawyer suddenly grabbed her arm and stopped her. She looked up at him in question, then turned and looked around her, dread pooling and expanding in her gut. She didn't hear anything moving in the brush ahead of her. How long ago had it stopped? she wondered. In fact, the entire jungle seemed unnaturally silent, as if all of the creatures sensed a hunt, sensed the impending doom of the hunter's prey.

She unconsciously backed toward Sawyer, the solid bulk of his chest a trifling reassurance when the cold voice spilled over them.

"If either of you move an inch, she dies along with you."