Hey guys! Someone informed me that it was illegal to post review replies in the actual chapter, so I replied to your reviews directly for the second chapter. I'm sorry if you submitted an unsigned review and I wasn't able to reply. Thank you for reviewing!
And to those who don't watch Lost: long parts in italics equal flashbacks. Every lostaway has them, which now includes Jack and Lisa. Enjoy, and don't forget to review!
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Chapter Three
Lisa jumped back as if burned as Jackson's gaze fell on her. Leaving her suit jacket laying on his forehead, she scooted a little farther away from his body.
Jackson held her eyes with his for a few long moments, an undecipherable look hidden in them. Then he looked away, glancing down at that blood on his stomach.
"Where are we?" he asked hoarsely, bringing a hand up to the wound on his head and wincing as he sat up.
Lisa looked out on the beach, wondering the exact same thing herself.
"I don't know," she replied honestly. "The plane crashed on a beach; well, the midsection did, at least. I don't see the ends of the plane."
Jackson surveyed his surroundings, watching a few people run through the wreckage. "How many other survivors?"
"About forty or fifty. I'm guessing most of us were thrown out of the plane before it crashed."
"And no one's come?"
Lisa shook her head. "Not yet. It's only been a couple of hours." She glued her eyes to the ground as Jackson's sharpening stare returned to her, his hand automatically reaching to his side for the knife sheath he always carried with him. It was empty.
Lisa smiled bitterly as she played with the glinting KA-BAR in her hands.
"Going to kill me, Jack?" she asked softly. "Here, in front of everyone?"
Jackson's jaw tightened at the use of the nickname. "No one would notice, and you have a lot to answer for, Leese."
Lisa tucked the knife into her waistband and stood up, towering over him. "I don't think you would."
Amusement twisted Jackson's face. "Do you really?"
Lisa openly stared him in the eye, challenging him. "I saved your life, you know."
His eyes narrowed. "You did what?"
She lowered her voice, her head descending closer to his. "You were stuck in that," she pointed to the smoldering fuselage, "dying. I pulled you out."
Lisa leaned closer to him, unable to resist giving her voice a taunting edge.
"You owe me, Jack."
As soon as the words left her mouth, Lisa knew they were foolish.
Jackson was on his feet in a flash, one hand wrapped around her throat, crushing her windpipe and leaning over her in a towering pillar of rage.
"I" he hissed, "do not owe you anything."
"You owe us quite a lot, Rippner."
Jackson slowly eased into awareness, a journey accompanied by no small amount of pain. The last thing he remembered was being tended to in the ICU of some county hospital.
Looking through a world of unfocused eyes, Jackson could only see three dark blue walls and a silver-haired man standing at the side of what he guessed was a hospital bed.
As the picture focused, he realized the man was none other than Peter King, the head of the Tampa Corporation, and his boss.
King was a tall, imposing man who dressed to kill and was armed to do worse. Today, in his navy blue pinstriped suit coupled with a light blue tie, King could have been taken as a wealthy lawyer or stockbroker. It was his eyes that gave away his profession. They were a silver matching to his hair and hard as flit, speaking of a life of hardship and cruelty. He had built the Tampa Corporation himself, naming it after the city of his birth, though it's headquarters were now much further north.
All in all, he was not a man to be messed with. The fact that he, personally, was in Jackson's room boded an ill fate for someone. Most likely him. Jackson swallowed hard against the throbbing pain in his throat and attempted to speak, his voice coming out a rasp.
"Where am I?"
King clasped his hands behind his back and turned to the window. "You were taken from the Florida county hospital after being moved out of the ICU. You're in our Georgia headquarters."
Pulling the shades shut, King whipped around to Jackson, standing at the foot of his bed. and pinning him to the mattress with his glare.
"Rippner, what the hell happened? I know your work, I know you could've done a job like this in your sleep. Now Keefe and his family are alive, and you look like Swiss Cheese."
Jackson braced himself up, trying to maintain some control over the situation. "It was the girl."
King snapped open a folder in his hand and skimmed over a sheet. "The hotel manager? Lisa Riesert? It says here in your report that she would be a piece of cake."
Jackson shook his head. "She was more than I bargained for."
King's eyes narrowed. "You're not telling me you got involved with a pawn, did you Rippner?"
Jackson went rigid "I'm a professional." he snapped.
King smile was feral. "You better be. Start healing, because in two weeks I have a target for you. And if you mess up this one, I swear to God Rippner, we'll tear you apart"
Jackson tried not to look too relived. "Good. Who is it?"
King threw the file down on his bed, deliberately landing it where Lisa had punctured his thigh with a shoe. Jackson winced and grabbed the file, a photo of a woman entering a building falling out into his lap.
He picked it up and studied it, frowning. "There must be some mistake. This is Lisa Riesert."
King nodded, smirking. "She knows too much about you, Jackson. Make it messy-we want the press to catch it."
Jackson glared coldly as Lisa's mouth opened and closed like a beached fish, gasping for air and swinging her arms into whatever part of Jackson she could reach.
Halfway across the beach, a man with slicked-back blonde hair and a toughened face leaned against a piece of wreckage, smoking a cigarette and watching everything that transpired through slitted blue eyes.
Movement caught his eye, and he saw two struggling figures, a man and a woman. His interest peaking, he raised his hand up to block the sun from his eyes, and then realized that the man had his hand around the woman's throat.
Jumping to his feet, he stalked towards the man, his face set in a scowl, stopping only when he saw that another guy had reached them first.
Taking another position in the shade, Sawyer lit up another cigarette and simply watched.
Just as the corners of her vision started to fuzz with black, Jackson's hand flew off her throat and she collapsed to the ground, coughing and sputtering.
"Hey! What the hell is going on?"
Lisa looked up to see Boone running towards them. Jackson smirked over his shoulder at her. "Friend of yours, Leese?"
Boone reached them, pushing Jackson out from in front of her. "What do you think you were doing?" he panted angrily at him as he stood between the two.
"Nothing." Jackson said nonchalantly. "A misunderstanding. Sorry we disturbed you."
Boone turned from Jackson to help Lisa to her feet. "Are you okay?" he asked, concern written on his face.
Lisa nodded, still coughing lightly.
"She'll be fine." Jackson cut in. "Really. She choked on something-I was just trying to help." He looked at Boone pointedly as if he was intruding. "We're together."
Boone kept his hand on Lisa's arm as he stared at Jackson warily.
"Why don't you come sit with me and my sister?" he asked Lisa, leading her down the beach. "We have water, it could probably help your throat."
Lisa nodded and followed him down, sparing one last look at Jackson over her shoulder before following Boone down to the more populated area of the beach.
Jackson stood, watching the two go with contempt blazing on his features before stalking after them, preparing to give Boone a lesson on both interrupting and stealing.
He had walked halfway up the beach when a glowing cigarette butt was thrown at his feet. Jackson swiveled to see a man hiding in the shadow of the plane, glaring at him.
"Hey, Armani" he called in a heavy southern drawl, menace lacing his worlds.
"I would watch my fucking back if I were you."
Jackson took a step towards him, fully prepared to fillet him like a trout when he remembered that Lisa had his knife. He instead memorized his face; dirty blonde hair, slicked-back, squinted blue eyes and a mouth that seemed eternally twisted in a smirk.
After staring at him long and hard, Jackson turned to continue before pausing.
"What's you name?" he asked, his voice crisp and cold.
The man grinned. "Sawyer."
Jackson tilted his head as if considering this useful bit of information.
"Sawyer, I'm not the only one who should be watching my back."
Feeling the Southern man's eyes burning a hole in his head behind him, Jackson strode toward the beach.
He sat in his car, listening to the brand-new smooth jazz CD bought specifically for this occasion, and watched Lisa's apartment lights until he knew she was asleep.
Opening the door softly, Jackson left his gun in the car. The neighbors shouldn't hear anything. The knife sheathed at his side was the only thing he needed for a job like this.
Lisa had changed her apartment since their encounter, living in a flashier, more upscale building boasting better security. It had taken Jackson all of five minutes to bypass the system, and he was gliding through the building, completely invisible. He even took the elevator, not wanting to strain himself.
As he stood in the metal doors Jackson tried to block out the memories of Lisa. When they first met, and Jackson got to live like the man he could've been for seven minutes and found himself wanting more. When she first fought back, with the Dr. Phil book and mirror, and Jackson realize he had underestimated her. When she stabbed him with the pen-the landmark moment he stopped seeing her as a pawn and strted seeing her as an opponent.
There was no breaking in required for Lisa's apartment door-he had had the key since the minute she moved in.
Sliding through the rooms with finesse, Jackson chuckled silently at the egg skillet still soaking in the sink. It seemed that Lisa hadn't given up all her old habits.
And then he was in her room. By her bedside, finally casting his eyes on the one woman who had managed to captivate him and enrage him at the same time.
He closed his eyes and remembered his job. Time to be a professional. Remember Professional Jackson, who quartered anyone who managed to get in the way of his job? Drawing a shaky breath, Jackson drew his knife silently, hating his shaking hands as he brought it within a hair of Lisa's jugular, where he would make the first cut.
Just as he was steeling himself, Lisa's eyelids fluttered and she sighed in her sleep, a name floating out of her lips like a breath.
"Jackson"
The knife flew back as Jackson wheeled himself to the end of the room, flattening himself against her wall in an attempt to get away from the lovely creature who said her killer's name in her sleep as she was facing death.
As if his body belonged to someone else, Jackson watched with avid interest and horror as he flew out of Lisa's room, through her apartment, out the door, down the stairs and into the night air.
Sliding into his car, Jackson raced down the winding night streets until faced with a nondescript concrete warehouse.
Snatching the file from the passenger's seat, Jackson ran to the door and threw the file down, scattering papers and photographs everywhere before pulling a lighter from his pocket and adding that to the pile.
As the fire flared on the steps, Jackson took his newly sharpened knife and put it to work on the door, writing a message for Mr. King.
As he pulled away, driving to God-knows-where to get drunk and curse his own stupidity, Jackson could see the two words carved into the doorway of the headquarters.
"I QUIT"
Lisa shivered as the sun began to set on the beach, painting the sky a lovely red and orange.
Boone had sat her down next to his sister, Shannon, who was twenty and looked like she had just walked off a runway rather than a plane crash.
"So…" he began, handing her a chocolate bar and a bottle of water. "What's your name and what really just happened back there?"
"Lisa" she offered. "And I'd rather not talk about it, if that's okay."
Boone nodded. "Were you guys really together on the plane?"
Lisa gave him a tight smile and gazed out at the sunset. "It's complicated."
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Sorry if you think Jackson was a little OOC. I'm doing the best I can. I'll put up the links for Sawyer and Shannon pics in my profile ASAP. Thank you for reading-and Please Review!