Hi everybody and thanks for the great reviews! Special thanks to Katmeister who gave me a geography lesson (Sorry, Kat, I live on the east coast! You know us east-coasters, we think the country stops at the Mississippi River!). Mount St. Helen's is in Washington not Oregon. I'll go back and edit chapter 1.

Chapter 2

"Rico! Mason! Wait up!" called an out of breath Lucy Almeida. "We need a drink."

The two older boys turned around to see that Ryan and Lucy had stopped about 15 yards behind them. They had both removed their backpacks and were pulling out bottles of water. Lucy sat down on a large rock and Ryan leaned against a tree. Both were clearly exhausted from trying to keep up with their older brothers.

"This is like taking Carmen on a walk," Rico complained. "She has to stop every five minutes."

Rico and Mason stopped walking. The two stood together, a study in contrasts. Rico had dark curly hair and large brown eyes. He was clearly his father's son, looking almost exactly as Tony had at the same age. Like his father, he wasn't overly tall for his age, but had a square, sturdy build. Mason, on the other hand, was as blond as Rico was dark. He had fair skin and blue eyes to go with straight blond hair that he kept cut short like his father's. Mason was more of a mix of his parents than Rico was. He had Jack's eyes and nose, but his smile definitely belonged to the Warner side of the family. In fact, his smile put most people in the mind of his grandfather, Bob Warner.

"Give me a break, Rico!" Lucy said angrily. "We've been walking for a long time. This is the first time we've stopped." Lucy opened the water bottle and glared at her brother. She was a pretty girl with her father's dark coloring and her mother's heart shaped face. She had inherited an innate athletic ability from both of them that made her a natural at most sports.

"It hasn't been that long," he snapped back.

"Check your watch, Mr. Know-it-all. We left around 2 o'clock. I bet we've been gone at least two hours."

"No way!" Mason and Rico hooted in unison.

"It just seems later here because all of the trees make it darker," Rico told her.

"So what time is it?" Lucy asked.

Rico relented and looked at his watch. "Wow! It's after 5."

"Get out," Mason said in disbelief. He reached for Rico's wrist and pulled it up so he could see the watch. "It's almost 5:30. I guess we lost track of time."

Indeed the four children had lost track of time. They were so engrossed in their spy adventure that they hadn't realized how much time had passed.

"We've gotta get back, Rico. Mom said she'd pick us up around 5," Lucy reminded him.

Rico agreed and they all turned around and started back over the tree covered hill that they had just climbed. They backtracked over the hill and around a big tree that they all remembered then started across what appeared to be a familiar flat area. They walked quickly for about 15 minutes knowing that they were going to be very late getting home and their parents were not going to be happy.

Ryan was the first to speak. "Mason, are you sure this is the way home?"

"I think so," he assured his younger brother. "I remember that bush over there. How about you, Ric?"

Rico was less sure of himself. "I'm not sure. You and Ryan play back here more than we do. I thought you knew the way."

"I thought I did, too," Mason admitted as they continued to walk.

"Wait a minute," said the always cautious Ryan, "are you telling me that we just walked for the last 3 hours and we don't know where we are?"

"In other words, we're lost," Lucy said succinctly.

"I don't think we're exactly 'lost'," Rico said trying to sound unconcerned about their present situation.

"Then what are we?" Lucy asked sharply.

"Relax, Lucy. If we just keep going in this direction, I'm sure we'll find our way back."

Lucy was unconvinced and trying hard not to be scared as they continued to walk through the woods.

Kate met Jack and Michelle on the path leading back to the house from the clearing. She leaned over and stole a quick kiss from Jack and said hello to Michelle and Carmen. "Where are the kids?" she asked.

"They weren't in the clearing," Jack told her. "We need to call all of the neighbors and see if they're playing at someone's house."

"That's probably it, Jack," Kate said. "I bet they went to the Willis'. They have a new puppy and the boys were playing with him yesterday. I bet they wanted to show Lucy and Rico."

Kate and Jack proceeded to call every family that lived on their cul-de-sac and several more on the main road about a half mile away and no one had seen any of the children that day. After hanging up from calling the last house of the street, Jack looked at Kate and Michelle. His deep blue eyes were filled with concern. "We need to call the police," Jack told them in what Michelle recognized immediately as his command voice at CTU. She hadn't heard that voice in 10 years, but it came back immediately and caused chills to run down her spine. She shivered involuntarily.

"Jack, do you really think that's necessary?" Kate asked.

"Kate, do you have any ideas of where they might be?" Jack said more sharply than he intended. "I'm willing to entertain any ideas you've got, but right now I'm fresh out of ideas and I think we need to report them as missing."

Tears immediately filled Kate's eyes and Michelle put her arm around Kate's shoulders. "Jack's right, Kate. It's almost 6:15 and it's going to start getting dark soon. The police need to initiate a search."

Jack drew Kate into his arms and kissed her forehead. "I'm sorry I snapped at you. I'm as upset about this as you are, but we have to be realistic. We need to call the police. If the kids come waltzing through the door at some point, we can call off the search, but as of right now we have no idea where the kids are and we owe it to them to do everything possible to find them."

Kate knew Jack was right but at the same time, the thought that her children would be at the heart of a police search scared her to death. The police arrived within ten minutes of Jack's call and Kate watched as Jack and Michelle, now both in CTU mode, methodically detailed the events of the day. Descriptions of the children, complete with heights and weights and the clothes they were last seen wearing, were all provided. Kate finally felt useful when Jack asked her to find a recent picture of the four children. She ran numbly to the computer where she printed several pictures that had been taken a few weeks earlier at a Fourth of July picnic at her father's weekend getaway "cottage" on Puget Sound.

Soon the police were searching the neighborhood and the woods behind the house with dogs and helicopters. Michelle called Tony in San Francisco to tell him. He was understandably upset and promised her that he would be on the next flight back to Seattle. While he was waiting for his flight, he called CTU Los Angeles and asked to speak with Chloe.

"Chloe, I need a favor," Tony told her. "Two of my kids and Jack's two boys are missing in a wooded area behind Jack's house. I need you to redirect a satellite and monitor the infrared images of the area."

"Are you crazy, Tony?" Chloe asked in an incredulous voice. The line was so typically Chloe that Tony would have found it funny had the situation not been so serious. "I don't have the authority to redirect a satellite over that area. And, on top of that, even if I could get those images, infrared is going to light up like a Christmas tree with all of the wildlife out there. The satellite can't tell the difference between a person and a bear!"

That last word was the one Tony most wanted to ignore. Bears, bobcats and coyotes all lived in the area. They generally avoided humans, but if taken by surprise or if it felt threatened by the youngsters invading its territory, any of those animals would attack and could easily kill especially the smaller children.

"Come on, Chloe, it's worth a try. Talk to Hammond. He might be sympathetic and let you do it."

"Oh yeah, Tony, because he's one of your biggest fans. And as I recall, Jack isn't on his list of favorite people either."

"Look, Hammond and I aren't exactly friends, but he isn't such an ogre that he wants something bad to happen to my kids."

"Alright, Tony, I'll do it. But I'm telling you upfront that this is pointless. I'll call you back in about 20 minutes," Chloe said and she hung up.

Tony filled the 20 minutes by pacing and was grateful when his phone rang. "What have you got?" he asked without waiting for Chloe to say anything.

"Pretty much what I suspected, Tony," Chloe told him in a gentler tone than she had used before. "I've enhanced this four different ways. There're a lot of hot spots, but none that I can identify as your kids. I wish I could have been more help, Tony. I really do," Chloe said sympathetically. "If there is anything else CTU can do to help, Hammond said just to call. I'll be leaving soon, but he already authorized the next shift to help in any way they can. Good luck."

Tony thanked her and hung up. His flight wasn't leaving for another hour and he was afraid that he would pace a hole in his shoes by then.

"Rico, it's getting dark," Lucy said trying not to sound scared.

"No it isn't, Lucy. It's only 7 o'clock. It only seems dark because of all the trees. It won't be dark until around 8:30," Rico told her trying to sound upbeat.

"Yeah," Mason agreed, "that's plenty of time for us to get home." Mason and Rico exchanged glances. They were trying to reassure Ryan and Lucy but neither one of them felt as sure as they wanted to sound.

They walked for a while longer picking their way through a particularly dense stand of trees.

"Wait a minute," Ryan said as he stopped and looked at a strangely shaped tree. The trunk was straight for the first five or six feet and then took a sharp turn in an apparent attempt to find some sun between the other trees. "We passed this tree a little while ago. I remember it because it's crooked."

"There are lots of cooked trees," Mason told him.

"No, look at this. Right where the trunk bends there are some shelf mushrooms growing. It's the same tree. I know it is. We've been walking in a circle, Mason!"

Lucy's eyes filled with tears. "We're never going to get home! I'm scared, Rico," she said as she started to cry.

"Aw, come on, Lucy," Rico said. He wasn't sure what to do next but he had watched his father comfort little Carmen a million times. It seemed like she was always crying about something or other. He put his arms around Lucy like his father did to Carmen. "It's going to be alright. We'll find our way back."

Lucy crying was unnerving to the three boys. Lucy may have been a girl, but she didn't act like a girl and she never cried. If she felt a need to cry, maybe they really did have something to worry about.

"Let's keep walking," Rico suggested.

"No! I'm hungry and I'm tired of walking," Lucy cried. "I just want to be home with Mom and Daddy."

"Okay," he tried to reason with her. "You're right. It's late and we haven't eaten since lunch. Let's sit down and eat something. That will give us some time to figure out how to get back."

The children found a comfortable spot to sit down. They opened their backpacks and took stock of the food they had. They were suddenly happy that Loretta had packed such a big lunch. They had plenty for dinner and maybe, if they were careful, enough for breakfast tomorrow if it came to that.

"Do you think our parents are worried about us yet?" Ryan asked tentatively. Ryan both looked and acted like Kate. He was quiet and sensitive and mature for his age. In many ways more mature than his older brother who had his father's sense of adventure and impetuous streak. Ryan hated to think that he had caused his parents to worry.

"If I know Dad, he has the National Guard out searching by now," Mason said ruefully. "Man! We are going to be in so much trouble when we get home."

"I was thinking grounded for life," Rico said shaking his head.

"So what do we do next?" Lucy asked. She was feeling better now that she had eaten. "Do we just stay here and hope they find us or do we keep walking and hope we find them?"

The three boys all agreed that they didn't know the best course of action and all fell silent for a few minutes. Mason decided that as the oldest of the group, if only by a few months, he needed to be strong and provide guidance even if he wasn't feeling very strong right now.

"I think we have to face the possibility that we are going to spend the night out here. So maybe the best thing for us to do while it's still light is to find someplace comfortable to sleep. If we look we might even be able to find an old silver miner's shack. At least it would be some shelter."

"I think Mason's right," Rico agreed. "Let's do that. It's going to get dark soon and any search team that's looking for us is going to stop when it gets dark. Let's find a place to spend the night."

Ryan and Lucy looked less sure of themselves, but since they didn't have a better solution to offer, they went along with their older brothers. They all hauled their backpacks onto their backs and resumed their trek through the dense forest.

Just a few miles away, the Bauer's house had virtually been turned into a command post. Several police officers worked out of the house as they looked for clues and canvassed the neighborhood. Other Seattle police officers and agents of the natural resources police had already begun to search the woods. Teams of dogs were brought in but seemed to have lost the scent within a mile or two but they had followed it far enough to convince the searchers that the children had hiked into the woods. Teams divided the area into a grid and began their methodical search.

Kate's father, Bob Warner, and his wife Grace had arrived shortly after the police. Bob, who had been widowed back when Kate was in college, found Los Angeles a sad and lonely place once Kate and Jack moved to Seattle. Kate was his only living child since her younger sister Marie had been executed for her role in the terrorist plot to detonate a nuclear bomb in LA. So he decided to move the headquarters of Warner Enterprises to Seattle to be with his family. Bob had another motivation for moving to Seattle: Grace.

Grace was Kate's secretary who had become both a friend and a mother-figure to Kate soon after she moved to Seattle. Their mother-daughter type relationship was further solidified when, hours after Kate and Jack's wedding, Grace helped as Kate unexpectedly delivered her first son in a bedroom at Bob's house. Grace was the perfect name for this elegant woman. She had worked for Warner Enterprises in Seattle for many years, ever since her husband was killed in a car accident leaving her to raise three small sons alone. Bob met Grace at Kate and Jack's wedding and found himself falling in love with her almost instantly. The gentle manner with which she cared for Kate while she was in labor had further endeared her to him. They married a year later.

Bob had retired as CEO of Warner Enterprises when he turned seventy. Kate, who had been his right hand for years, replaced him at the helm of the company, making it one of the largest companies in the country run by a woman. Kate still depended on Bob for help at times, but more and more he and Grace preferred to enjoy their retirement by traveling and spending time with their grandchildren. On the weekends, Kate's family along with Grace's children and their families often went to Bob and Grace's "cottage" on Puget Sound. "Cottage" was a bit of an understatement. By most standards, it was a mansion with plenty of room for everyone. They had also become quite close to the Almeida family. Since Tony and Michelle didn't have any family in the area, they had virtually adopted the Almeida children as another set of grandchildren.

As the sun slowly set, Michelle stood on the back porch with Carmen scanning the tree line at the edge of the back yard hoping and praying that the children would casually walk out of the woods claiming to have lost track of time. She wished Tony was with her. He would be there soon and she held onto that thought. Carmen stayed close to her suddenly very afraid to allow any distance to come between herself and her mother lest she, too, become lost.

The back door closed behind her and she heard Jack's uneven gait on the wood floor of the porch. He put his hand on her shoulder. "You holding up okay?"

Michelle nodded. Her eyes filled with tears and she knew if she spoke she would begin to cry. The last thing she wanted to do was cry in front of Carmen. The child was upset enough without that.

Jack dropped down on one knee so he was eye level with Carmen. "Sweetie, Miss Loretta said she has a special treat for you. Why don't you go inside and see what she made you."

Loretta had gone home for the evening and was watching the evening news when the report about the missing children was aired. She was so upset that she returned to the Bauer's house to see if she could help. At the moment she was making coffee and feeding everyone in sight.

"It's okay, Carmen. See what Miss Loretta has for you and I'll stay right here on the porch."

"Promise you won't leave," Carmen begged, her thumb threatening to find its way into her mouth.

Michelle reached for Carmen's hand as her thumb got perilously close to her mouth. She lifted her daughter's hand up as she leaned over and kissed it. "I promise, Honey. I'll be right here when you get back." Jack and Michelle watched as Carmen went into the house. She looked back twice to make sure that Michelle was staying put.

"Are they calling off the search for tonight?" Michelle asked. She knew the answer to the question but she felt a need to ask it anyway.

Jack nodded the affirmative. "I spoke with the captain from the natural resources police. He said he was going to call his men back in at 8:30."

Michelle looked away and brushed tears from her face.

"They're going to be fine, Michelle. They have food and water. The sky is clear; it's going to be a pleasant night. Mason and Rico have been camping enough to know to pick out a sheltered spot. We'll find them in the morning."

Michelle knew that Jack was probably right. From what they could tell the kids just wandered off. It didn't appear that they were abducted or were in any way the victims of foul play. It was just a matter of finding them in the densely wooded forest. But as a mother, she couldn't help but worry. Were they cold or scared? Were any of them injured? One of them could have easily fallen and gotten hurt. She couldn't stand to think that any of them was in pain. What about wild animals? For a full grown male bear, any one of the children represented little more than a snack. And an injured child… Michelle couldn't even bear to think about that. That was an opportunity that a bobcat or coyote couldn't pass up. What about Lucy? For as much of a tomboy as she was, she hated spiders and snakes. A large spider web stretched between two trees in the back yard had kept her in the house for a full day earlier in the summer. She wouldn't even walk out the front door, let alone the back. She had never been camping with the boys and the truth was that she wasn't particularly suited to it. How would she ever make it through a night in the woods? Michelle tried in vain to push the thoughts to the back of her mind as Carmen returned to the porch carefully carrying a bowl containing the brownie fudge sundae that Loretta had made for her.

Darkness was just settling over the region when the four children found a nice place to spend the night. It was a small grassy area surrounded by trees. It allowed them to see the moon and the stars. It wasn't much light, but enough to make them all feel better. They each spread out the beach towel that they were carrying in their backpacks from when they played in the stream earlier in the day. Then each of them lay down with their head pillowed on their backpack. It wasn't exactly as comfortable as their beds, but they were all very tired and it would work for now. Lucy and Ryan were exhausted and fell asleep in minutes. Mason and Rico lay awake looking at the stars.

"Ric, what do we do tomorrow morning? I mean, like Lucy said before, should we stay here and hope they find us or should we keep trying to find the way home?"

Rico shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. I wish I had an answer. Let's try and get some sleep. Maybe we'll be able to figure it out better after we get some sleep."

"How much food do we have left?"

"Between us there's enough left for breakfast."

"Any water?"

"No, we've got some juice, but the water's gone. We kept the bottles so we can fill them up the next time we find a spring or a stream. We'll be okay for a while."

Mason nodded his silent agreement. Like his father he internalized many of his feelings. Rico sounded so sure of himself, while Mason was full of lingering doubts. He wondered if Rico was as confident as he sounded or if, deep down, Rico was as scared as he.