Alright, this chapter is kind of short, but I felt that the point I stopped at was the right place, and I'm working on the next chapter, now anyway. My updates may be a little worse soon, as school starts on Thursday (the 7th) for me, so I'll have less writing time. But there's no way I'm stopping htis story until it is finished, so don't worry about that. And once I get comfortable with my new classes, I'll go back to writing rough drafts in classes where I don't need to pay attention. ;)

Kate stared at the scene before her. Sawyer had Lisa pinned against a tree and was whispering in her ear. In a flash, he was bent over cursing, and Lisa was running into the mess of trees surrounding them. Kate had no idea what Sawyer had said to Lisa, but that was irrelevant, as the woman was already hidden by green, and probably still running.

Jack had interrupted her instigation of Lisa before she could say anything more about Jackson than him being the one to kidnap her, but Kate knew there had to be more than that by the look on Lisa's face as Sawyer had her pinned.

In a split second decision, Kate took off after Lisa, running as fast as possible in order to catch up with the woman. Kate had been running her whole life, in every sense of the word, from running on her high school track team to running from the law. With this on her side, she managed to close some distance between Lisa and herself.

Before she could decide on a plan of action, she saw Lisa a few hundred yards ahead, starting to slow down. Lisa reached a small river, and looked around frantically before jumping through it and continuing to run. If Kate hadn't been sprinting faster than she had ever moved in her life, she would have sighed at Lisa for making her run like this. As it was, she had no breath to sigh with at the moment.

Surprising Kate once again, Lisa crumpled to the ground suddenly, after five straight minutes of running. Kate saw sobs wracking her body, and realized that she had no idea what to do. Years of being a fugitive has dulled her natural instincts for a situation like this. She stood there in shock for a while, just watching Lisa break down in front of her, oblivious to her presence. Shaking out of her trance, Kate took off her jacket and dipped it in the small lake near them. In a rare display of affection, she knelt down next to Lisa and pulled her head onto her lap. Lisa tensed up unconsciously, but seemed to have lost all knowledge of where she was and who was with her. She relaxed slightly and kept her eyes closed when Kate put the damp fabric to her forehead. The two women stayed there for a long time, neither speaking, until Lisa's crying subsided.

Without warning, Lisa's eyes shot open as she realized what she was doing. Scrambling away from Kate, her breathing started to quicken along with her pulse as she looked around for an escape.

Kate was sympathetic to Lisa's plight, knowing how it felt to be trapped by another person. She decided to try and calm Lisa down, no matter how much she might regret the moment of softness later.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Lisa," Kate said slowly, her hand raised slightly in a gesture of innocence.

Lisa snorted, her fright momentarily forgotten as she scoffed Kate.

"Like you didn't hurt me already?" She retorted.

Kate held back a sigh and tried to think of something to calm Lisa down. She had forgotten how much she sucked at heart-to-hearts.

"Look, I'm sorry about that. But we've been attacked before, and I was…scared."

"Of me?"

"You never know these days."

"Yeah…" Lisa murmured, her eyes glazed over. Kate assumed she was lost in a memory.

All of a sudden, a thought hit Kate with the force of a train wreck.

"Shit. We have to leave. Now," she whispered, glancing around.

"Why?" Lisa frowned, shaken out of her memory.

"We can't be here. We're not supposed to be here." Kate said distractedly. She stood up, eyes scanning the trees around them. She grabbed Lisa's arm and pulled her up, walking quickly back where they came from.

Lisa couldn't jerk her arm out of Kate's grip, and stumbled after her. Suddenly, she heard whispers again. Digging her feet into the ground, Lisa stopped herself and Kate.

"Do you hear that?"

Kate listened for a moment, and then her eyes widened in fear. She stumbled backwards, looking for the source of the voices. Grabbing Lisa again, she ran as fast as she could away from the sounds.

gethemnohernotaustentheothergirlcomeonhurryusethatnotimeshesnewbeforetheygetaway

Lisa stumbled over a tree root and fell to the ground. Looking up, she saw Kate stop and turn back to help her. An instant after she saw Kate gasp, she felt a blinding pain in the back of her head, and her world went dark.

xxx

Lisa opened her eyes, and for a few heart-stopping seconds, she thought she was blind. Shaking her head to orient herself, she realized there was some sort of sack over her head. She was sitting down, her back against what she assumed was a tree, her hands were tied behind her and a rough piece of fabric was in her mouth. She struggled to get to her feet, and when she lost her balance, a strong pair of hands grabbed her shoulders to steady her. Yelping in surprise through the gag, she resisted the mysterious person, before she felt cold metal pressing against the soft underside of her jaw. It was a gun, she determined, not a knife.

Lisa squeaked and the metal was pulled away, replaced by being roughly pushed along towards an unknown destination. After what Lisa gauged as roughly thirty minutes of walking, she was pushed to her knees onto the soft grass. The rope around her wrists was taken off, and Lisa used this as a means for more resistance. She soon realized that this was not a good idea when she was swiftly punched in the stomach. As she was preoccupied bending over in pain, she was pushed down against a pole, and her hands were tied again behind it.

When the sack was taken off of her head, she desperately wished for it back. She had flinched, anticipating bright lights to assault her vision, but the light never came. Instead, she found she was in the middle of a crude, dim, straw hut, with a figure blocking the sun coming in through the doorway. A figure with messy brown hair, a self assured smirk, and intense blue eyes.

Okay, this chapter is fin. Hopefully I can get the next one up in less than a week, and I'm thinking of imposing a schedual after I get used to school, like updating every week on Thursdays, or Sundays or something. But no garuntees. (Yes, I know, I totally spelled that word wrong.) Anyway, hit that little blue/purple/"whatever color it is on your screen" button please and thank you!