December 8th, 2007
Island Time: 9am L.A. Time: 6pm
The morning after Walt's return to the island
30 hours after Miles officially joined Hurley's security team
Walt dreamed he was going through a car wash, sitting in the passenger's seat with the window opened. Every so often, one of the long fabric wipers flopped in through the window and slapped him gently, lovingly in the face. Then, he remembered that car washes don't generally bark and whimper and paw at you.
"Vincent!" Walt threw his arms around his dog, who gave one more bark and then lay down flat with his head on Walt's shoulder, one paw over his chest. Anyone observing would have a hard time telling which was happier to see the other. Walt was laughing out loud. Vincent's tail was drumming a steady, loud beat on the covers and he was yelping so much it sounded like he was trying to tell Walt a story, which actually, he was.
Walt heard a chuckle, and raised his head enough to see Hurley in the doorway.
"You got in late enough last night," Hurley said, "I figured I'd wait until morning to bring him by."
"I was afraid to ask about him," Walt said. "I was afraid he was gone, too."
The smile in Hurley's eyes dimmed a touch. He realized how quickly Walt had picked up on the fact that only a few familiar faces were left on the island. He didn't say anything back- there'd be time to get into it later.
"Can I take him with me? I mean, on our training?" Walt asked and Hurley nodded.
"We're going to keep it simple today. Richard will be working with you and Kate, and Vincent can go too. Important stuff first, though- time for breakfast."
They left Walt's room in Rose and Bernard's place and walked to the picnic table closest to the gazebo. Annie was just leaving, walking back to The Staff. She gave them both a wave and Hurley a high five on the way by. Kate, Penny and Richard were sitting at the table in various stages of finishing breakfast or starting on coffee. Walt sat next to Kate with a silent smile and she grinned sideways at him and reached over and hugged him so close he started laughing. Vincent curled up at his feet, which was pretty much as far away as he would get from him for a while.
"Kate and I were just talking," Richard said quietly to Hurley, "About whether we should head straight for the Weather Vane or just do some basic training closer to home."
"Maybe better if they walk before they run," Hurley answered, reaching for the Dharma Raisin Bran. "And hey, on another topic entirely – did you and Frank shut down the Dharma food drop site in Guam?"
Richard just nodded.
"Did you take care of those guys who were working there all those years?"
Another nod. "They're financially set. They can do anything they want with their retirement," was all Richard said about that. "The food drops will keep coming, but from another location. We need the Guam site for our work. It's one of the places where the Weather Vane interfaces with all the other worlds it's linked to. Eloise set up a whole new food distribution chain for us. No more Dharma labels on the supplies after this."
"So…" Hurley mused. "You knew Eloise when she was 17, and you knew her when she was 37, and you know her now." He looked at Richard with a bit of a squint. "Is that weird for you? Was she hot when she was younger? I'm thinking she was." Hurley saw that Richard was looking at him like he had two heads. Richard started to say something in reply, stopped, shook his head, opened his mouth to start again and was permanently interrupted.
All at once they heard someone yelling Hurley's name, and Desmond was running in. He'd been at the Flame checking in with the Lamp Post. Hurley saw the look on his face, and was concerned about what he'd hear next.
"Claire," Desmond got the name out, waving one hand in the air as he caught his breath. "She's gone," he said. "And Sawyer… he's hurt. You have to come to the Flame, Miles needs to talk with you immediately."
Hurley realized his formerly peaceable kingdom was under attack from two fronts now, neither of which he felt he had any kind of handle on.
December 8th, 2007
L.A. Time: 4pm Island Time: 7am
-Living room, 42 Panorama Crest
Sawyer tried to sit up, but it felt like three elephants were pinning his chest down while the other two sat on his knees. He settled for lifting his head just a bit, and saw an IV stand to his right, a tube running down from it to his bare arm. He wondered how it was he'd ended up on the living room couch wearing nothing but his pants and barely able to focus his eyes.
He got a sense of several people in the room, some of them tending him, some standing near Miles a few feet away. Miles was pacing, talking on a landline with, he figured, Eloise.
"She is GONE," Miles was yelling, "I just got back…. I was only away for an hour. There was blood all over the driveway, I just washed it down the gutter. They shot Sawyer, too. Not with bullets- they pumped him full of something not good. He's okay, I think, your goons brought some EMTs by and they got him stable. I don't know… I don't know about Claire, I really don't think drug darts would leave that much blood on the ground. It's gotta be bad, Eloise…."
Sawyer put all his energy into focusing on what Miles would say next, but there wasn't enough left in him even to listen, and he watched the room go grey and then black.
December 8th, 2007
Island Time: 6am L.A. time: 3pm
-Driveway, 42 Panorama Crest
"Claire, no… don't! C'mon, stop it!" Sawyer tried to get his hands on one of her shoulders or the other, or even an arm around her waist but she kept wrestling away from him like a person possessed. He couldn't believe such a little girl could be so hard to get a grip on. He grabbed again for the keys in her hand but she threw that arm and then her whole self around in a circle, and made it, stumbling to Kate's car, opening the driver's side door and screaming at him to let her alone.
"I have had ENOUGH," she pointed at him, at the house, waved her arm around as if pointing out the whole block. "I'm going to the police."
"And tell them what, exactly?" Sawyer asked plainly, in an even tone. Claire calmed down, then, leaned against the open car door and sobbed lightly, shaking her head.
Two minutes before, Sawyer had broken the news that her mother Carole and her son Aaron had gone out yesterday morning for a two hour shopping trip, and that he couldn't get them on the phone. He explained that while he hoped it was all a big misunderstanding, he had come to the conclusion it was time to tell her they were pretty much probably missing.
"Claire, let Miles and me handle this," Sawyer tried to reason with her one more time. "We'll find them. If you go to anyone now… it's only going to raise a ton of questions none of us can answer."
He almost had her. Claire stood there crying silently, shaking her head, the upper half of her folding down just a touch toward the open car door she was leaning on. Sawyer started to walk toward her but that broke the spell. Claire stepped back as if to get in the car, but she never got a chance.
It all happened in five seconds that felt like two minutes. Sawyer heard several familiar popping sounds and saw Claire look up at him abruptly, her eyes horrified blue circles. In the split second between when she was shot and when she fell, he got a picture in his head of her in the days after the crash, heavily pregnant, smiling moodily, walking along the surf. The images of her then and her now overlapped in his brain and in his eyes as he watched her fall to the ground with a muffled shriek.
He never heard the darts that hit him a second and a half later. He felt a pinging sensation on the right side of his neck and dead center in his chest, one after the other. He pulled the second dart out, looked at it, and fell, too.
Sawyer wasn't out cold, and rallied enough to get his hands under himself, get up and lunge toward the door of Kate's house. He knew this was a race he was in, and that whoever was behind those darts was already running in his direction. He caught a glimpse of them as he bolted inside and fell into the hallway, slamming the door shut. He punched in the code for the home security system. It was the last thing he remembered before he collapsed.
December 8th, 2007
Island Time: 5am L.A. time: 2pm
-Driveway, 42 Panorama Crest
Miles left Kate's, on his way to lock up his business and tie up some loose ends. He hoped he'd convinced Sawyer to wait until he got back to talk with Claire.
Miles was distracted with all that had been going on, and it was only his second time at Kate's house. That's the only way to explain why an experienced PI didn't notice the dark blue van parked across the street and two houses down.
Miles got in his car and drove away, never catching that there were three people in the van. Two of them were listening intently to the conversations going on inside Kate's house. The other was on the phone, suggesting to the California Parole Board that they might want to send Ms. Austen's counselor around to see if his client was actually sticking to the rules of her probation and staying put. And on the dashboard of the van, he might have seen one of several old-school binders full of rules and regulations – each with an eight-sided logo on the front, a perfect circle of broken and solid lines, and in the middle of those lines an icon shaped like a Weather Vane.