Hi everyone and thanks for the great reviews! This has been a hard story to write and it really helps when I get a lot of reviews. (HINT! HINT!) So if you are reading and enjoying the story (or even if you hate the story), take a second and let me know. It helps me to know what you like and don't like about the story. Here's chapter 6. Please, please, please give me feedback.

Chapter 6

Roger and Vernon set off through the woods. Within ten minutes they could see the lean-to and Roger indicated to Vernon to turn off his flashlight and slow down his pace. Roger didn't want to take any chance of waking one of the children. Vernon stayed behind Roger as the smaller man drew his knife and moved stealthily toward the crude shelter. He stopped and stood behind a tree for a moment steeling himself for the task at hand. He finally nodded at Vernon and stepped around the tree to the side of the lean-to. Again he took a breath and, in a single motion, swung around the makeshift wall and into the shelter of the structure. He dropped to his knees in preparation to grab the first child before he realized that there was no one there. He blinked, thinking that his eyes were just not adjusted to the darkness, and looked again, but there was still no one there. The blankets that Peggy had given them were in a jumble on the ground, but the children were gone. Roger spun around and scanned the immediate area as he grabbed the flashlight from Vernon. In its beam they could see nothing. No sleeping children, no movement, nothing.

"Peggy!" Roger spat as he pointed a finger in Vernon's face. "This is Peggy's doing! She warned those kids! I knew it! I knew I couldn't trust that bitch!"

With that Roger started off through the woods at a pace that Vernon could barely match. He reached the campsite and strode into the tent where Peggy sat bound and gagged. Without warning he reared back with a steel-toed boot and kicked her in the ribs. A muffled scream came from her throat. She attempted to curl up and protect herself but the way she was tied up made it impossible. She was able to turn slightly and the second kick hit her back at the level of her kidney. Again, a muffled scream and now sobbing came up from her throat.

"Where are they, Peggy?" Roger roared as he yanked the duct tape from her face and pulled the rag out of her mouth. "Where the hell are they?"

"Where is who?" Peggy sobbed.

Roger kicked her again. "The kids, that's who! Don't play stupid with me, you bitch. I know you hid them somewhere. That's why you were gone for so long. Where did you hide them?"

"Roger, please stop," she begged. "I didn't hide 'em. They was in the lean-to when I left 'em."

This time Roger punched her hard in the stomach. "Well they're not there now and you were missing for a long time when you said you were going to the stream."

Peggy was crying and gasping for breath. "I left 'em in the lean-to. Okay, okay, I took 'em some food. I couldn't let 'em starve, but they were there when I left 'em. I didn't even know you was plannin' on killin' 'em, Roger. Please don't hit me again, please."

"So you want me to believe that you fed them but you left them there in the shelter?"

"That's the Gods-honest truth, Roger. I swear it. They was there when I left," she cried.

"So where are they now?"

"They wanted ta go home real bad. Maybe they just decided to take off once they're bellies was full," Peggy speculated.

"They couldn't have gone far. It's too dark for them to move very fast without any light."

Peggy stayed silent on the subject of light knowing that Roger would continue to beat her if he knew that she gave the children a flashlight.

"We need to find them and we've got to do it soon. If we don't leave for the city by early afternoon, we won't make it to meet our contact." Roger reached down to cut the ropes from Peggy's hands and feet. "Come on," he said as he pulled her up by one arm. "You're coming with us this time."

"How're we ever gonna find 'em in the dark?" Peggy asked. She stood partially doubled over from the pain. "They gotta head start on us and we don't even know which direction they took. Why don't we just head inta Seattle and leave the kids out here? We'll be long gone before anybody finds 'em."

"If it starts getting into the afternoon, that's what we'll have to do, but in the meantime, I intend to do everything I can to find those kids. They're a loose end that I need to tie up. I've been in this business far too long without arousing the suspicion of the authorities to have that ruined by a little slip up like this," Roger informed her. "It's 2:30 now. We've got about 10 hours to find them. Get moving!" Roger grabbed two lanterns and handed one to Vernon and one to Peggy.

The threesome headed into the woods for what they all suspected would be a long night of looking for the children. At the same time, the children were rather peacefully nestled in a bed of pine needles barely a mile and a half from the campsite. For the first couple of hours after settling in, Rico and Mason took turns staying awake, but the extreme quiet of the night and their level of fatigue got the best of them and they decided that it was okay for both of them to sleep.

The sun began peeking through the pine branches and that, combined with an uncomfortable position from his sister leaning against him, caused Rico to begin to stir. "Lucy, move over," he whispered as he tried to stretch and change position.

Lucy was sound asleep and not moving anywhere, so Rico decided that he was the one who would have to move. He moved carefully several inches to the left trying not to disturb Lucy. The movement was enough to wake Mason, who like his father, was a feather-light sleeper.

"Everything okay?" Mason asked in a quiet voice.

"Yeah, I'm just trying to move over," Rico said softly.

"Are Ryan and Lucy both sleeping?"

"Yeah, I thought we could let them sleep for a while. Is that okay with you?"

"Fine with me, I've got no place to go," Mason said with a hint of sarcasm in his voice. "What time is it?"

Rico checked his watch. "About 6:15."

Mason nodded his thanks and lay back taking in the intense pine smell and the sounds of the forest. Some movement in the brush caught Mason's attention. He turned toward Rico who had also heard the noise and was propped on his elbows in order to peak under the pine branches. They continued to listen. Mason heard it first and Rico thought he could actually see the color drain from his friend's face as he, too, heard the voices.

"Roger, we been out here all night. Those kids is long gone. Let's just pack up camp and git the hell outta here," an exhausted Peggy pleaded.

Rico and Mason exchanged nervous glances.

"We need to find those kids, Peggy and we're going to keep looking," Roger said.

"There's a stream down there. I'm gonna get some water," Peggy informed Roger.

Mason and Rico watched from their hiding place as Peggy's feet passed just a yard or so from them.

"Bring some fer me, Peg," Vernon called after her.

"Like hell," she shouted back. "You want water, you git your own!"

Vernon sighed loudly and again Mason and Rico watched as a pair of feet, this time in work boots, made their way down the hill past them. Roger must have decided to join them because seconds later his feet followed. All of the movement so near to them caused Ryan and Lucy to begin to wake up. Their older brothers quickly silenced them.

"Shhh," Rico said almost inaudibly into Lucy's ear.

Lucy nodded and huddled close to her brother as if that somehow made her more invisible. They all lay motionless and listened as Roger, Peggy and Vernon made their way down to the stream. They only spent a couple of minutes there when, from their hiding place, they could see Roger come back up the hill. He stopped a few feet from them and called down to Peggy and Vernon to hurry. The four children lay just feet away praying that Roger would move. None of them even dared to breathe. They watched Roger's feet and willed them to walk away. But instead, Roger stood there waiting for the others.

"Finish drinking and get up here!" Roger ordered them. His booming voice made all four children jump. "You're wasting time. We need to find those kids!"

Roger crouched down to retie his shoe and the children's heart rates went up another 20 beats per minute. They were sure he was about to see them when he stood up abruptly and stomped his foot in front of him. "Get away from me!" he said in an annoyed tone as his feet danced to get away from something the children couldn't see. "That's right, get out of here."

A second later a snake slithered from near Roger's feet and under the branches of the tree to share a hiding place with the children. The boys recognized it immediately as harmless and, frankly, more frightened of them than they were of it. Lucy, on the other hand, was terrified of snakes, harmless or otherwise. Rico knew it and tried to press her face against his chest to prevent her from seeing the snake, but he was too late. Fearing that she might scream, he clamped a hand over her mouth before she had the chance.

"It won't hurt you," he whispered into her ear. "Calm down! You're okay."

Lucy's entire body shook as the snake sped past Mason and Ryan and straight toward her. Rico tightened his grip on her to keep her from moving while Mason tried to nudge the snake with his foot to get it to change direction. The already agitated snake didn't need much more provocation. It took a defensive position coiling up, hissing and flattening its head to look menacing. Mason eased slightly away from snake whose mouth was now open to show a row of tiny but sharp teeth. A bite from the creature would be harmless, but Mason knew that it would hurt and doubted whether any of them could remain quiet should the snake strike. The three boys both watched the snake and tried to keep an eye on Roger, Vernon and Peggy while Lucy lay trembling against Rico.

Peggy's voice broke the silence. "So, what's your plan now that the sun's up?"

"We keep looking. Finding them in the daytime should be easy," Roger told her. "Let's go this way. If I was looking for the easiest escape route, I'd go downhill. They're kids; they're not going to think this out. They're going to do what comes naturally."

"Alright," Vernon said dully. "How 'bout if Peg and me goes that way," he pointed to the left, "and you go that way." This time he pointed right.

"Yeah, we can cover more ground that way," Peggy agreed. "We can meet back at camp. Tell us what time."

Roger made a dismissive sound. "Yeah right, you think I trust you two to go off on your own. I'll never see you again. Nice try. I'm impressed, Vernon. I didn't think you were smart enough to think of that. No, we can cover plenty of ground together. You just stay with me."

The children watched as the three pairs of shoes disappeared in an eastbound direction. They lay still for several minutes waiting for all sounds of the three adults to fade away. By that time, the snake had decided that the children were not a threat and it continued its journey out from under the tree and on the lookout for a sunny spot to spend the day.

"Lucy, it's gone," Rico finally said. "It went out from under the trees. I can't even see it anymore."

"How far did it go?" Lucy asked still unwilling to move her face from her brother's chest. "Could you tell where it went? I don't want to go in that direction."

"It's okay. We'll go in a different direction. For crying out loud, Lucy!" Rico said, exasperation clear in his voice. "That snake won't hurt you. You need to be more worried about Roger than that stupid little snake."

Lucy sat up and willed herself to stop shaking. Rico was right. She had to get a hold of herself. She had never seen her mother this upset and in everything she did, she tried to be just like her mother. Nobody was as cool under pressure as her mom. Lucy remembered when Rico fell at the playground and got a bloody nose and split his lip. There was blood every where and all of the other kids were screaming and all of the other mothers were upset and offering advice, but her mother calmly helped Rico up and took care of him. She never seemed a bit upset even though Carmen was pulling at her arm and crying the whole time.

Rico and Mason turned their attention away from Lucy. "That was really close," Mason said stating the obvious.

"Tell me about it," Rico retorted. "Where do we go now?"

"Well, one thing's for sure, we're not going down hill."

"You've got that right," Rico agreed. "Maybe we should just stay here for a while."

"No way!" Lucy interjected. "I'm not staying here with that snake close by."

"Lucy, it won't hurt you!" Rico told her again.

"I don't care. I'm still not staying here. Besides, if the police are looking for us, they're not going to find us under these trees."

"She's probably right," Mason said. "We should give Roger a good head start and then get out of here."

"How long do you want to wait?" Rico asked.

"I don't know; a half hour, maybe." It was more of a question than a statement.

"Sounds good," Rico agreed while not being any surer of himself than Mason.

The four sat silently while they listened for any sign of their pursuers. All four were hungry and after their interrupted sleep, were still tired. They missed their parents and their beds and good hot food and if all of that wasn't enough, the danger that they were in was now clearer than it had ever been before. None of them was sure just how much longer they could do this.

Rico sat with his eyes closed, deep in thought. He finally opened them and looked for a moment at everyone. His gaze eventually rested on Mason. "Mase, they almost caught us a little while ago."

"Yeah, Ric, I was there. I remember. Tell me something I don't know."

"If they found us, they were going to kill us."

"What's your point? We all know that."

"If they find all four of us together, they're going to kill all four of us. Our best chance to get away is to split up. They can't go in two directions. It gives at least two of us a better chance to come out of this alive. What do you think?" Rico asked sincerely hoping that Mason could shoot holes in his theory. He didn't want to separate from Mason. He wasn't sure if he could cope with Lucy by himself.

"You want to split up?" Mason asked incredulously.

"No, I don't want to. I think we have to." Rico answered. Lucy and Ryan remained silent while their older brothers discussed the issue.

Mason looked away and then down at the ground. Deep down he knew Rico was right, but that didn't make him like the idea. "You're right. We need to split up."

"Okay, which way do you and Ryan want to go?" Rico asked giving Mason his choice.

Mason shook his head. "No, we can't split into families. You need to take Ryan and I need to take Lucy."

The others looked at Mason like he had three heads. "I don't understand, Mase," Rico admitted.

Mason sighed and explained. "If they catch up with two of us and kill us, we don't want it to be two from the same family."

Ryan and Lucy looked back and forth between the older boys wondering what they were going to decide. "I guess you're right. I never thought about it that way. Ryan and I will go that way," Rico said pointing west.

Mason nodded. "Okay," he said tentatively. "Lucy and I will go that way." Mason pointed a little east of north. "Let's go."

The four crawled out from under the trees and, once again, stowed their backpacks onto their backs. The two sets of siblings said goodbye to one another. Even at their young ages, they had a sense that they may never see one another again. Ryan and Lucy both started to cry. The older boys could feel themselves welling up but both concentrated hard on emulating their fathers. Spies don't cry, they told themselves. Neither could imagine his father crying. Mason and Rico looked at each other for a long moment and then shook hands. That seemed the appropriate thing to do at the moment. Then they paired off and made their separate ways through the forest.

Jack and Tony had been awake since long before dawn. The second the sun rose over the horizon, the two of them anxiously resumed their search. The early morning brought a significant amount of chatter over the radio. The officers in the field discussed the strategy for today's search with their operation's base at the Bauer house. They needed to make a major revision in their strategy. The fact that they had covered the amount of ground that they had and still weren't able to locate the children made them suspect that the children had continued to move rather than wait in one location to be rescued as the search teams hoped they would. Additional men were being brought in by helicopter and dropped off in clearings. To make matters worse, the weather forecast called for rain beginning in the afternoon. That and the fact that the children had now been missing over 36 hours raised everyone's sense of urgency.

Jack and Tony continued along their search grid. The sun had risen, but the sky was a steely gray and the temperature had dropped considerably since yesterday. The air was heavy around them as if trying to hold as much water in as possible before the inevitable downpour. Neither of them spoke except when necessary. Both were bothered by the fact that their children were going to be wet and cold once it started to rain. They hoped that they were at least able to find some shelter under a heavy cover of trees. That would make it a bit more bearable.

Wes Grimes called the teams over the radio to check their positions. Tony radioed their coordinates back. As he listened to the other teams, he knew that he and Jack we no longer covering as much ground as the others. Jack's always noticeable limp had become pronounced since late yesterday. Tony knew Jack was in pain but didn't bother to ask him how he felt knowing that he would simply say that he was "fine". Wes reassigned two of the teams to make their section of grid overlap with Tony and Jack's.

With no one on the radio, silence fell between Jack and Tony again. Jack spoke first. "I'm slowing you down. The next time we find a clearing big enough, I'll radio the coordinates to Wes and have him send in a chopper to extract me. You can go with one of the other teams." His quiet voice sounded crestfallen.

"Jack, you don't have to do that. You and I are still covering a lot of ground. If you can make it, keep going. If not, then have Grimes send in a chopper."

Jack said nothing but kept walking. It was nearly 10 o'clock and again there was no sign of the children. He wasn't sure if he was more physically drained or emotionally drained. He had let everyone down: Tony and Michelle, Kate, the kids themselves. He was supposed to be watching the kids and now here they were lost in miles and miles of the densest pine forest imaginable. Not that this is the first time I've let everyone down, he thought. Teri. I should have never let myself love anyone after Teri. I wouldn't be here right now if I had never fallen in love with Kate. The guilt and self loathing that he had experienced for years after Teri's death, that had driven him to a heroin addiction, had been creeping back over the last two days and at the moment, was threatening to overtake him entirely.

"What's up there?" Tony's voice interrupted Jack's thoughts.

"What do you see?" Jack asked trying to follow Tony's gaze.

"There," Tony pointed. "It looks like a camp site."

Tony's pace quickened and he stepped into a small clearing. In front of him were two tents and the remnants of a fire. "Hello," he called. "Hello. Is anyone here? Hello."

By now Jack had reached the clearing as well. He too shouted greetings hoping to get someone's attention. "Strange place to be camping," he commented to Tony.

"Yeah," Tony agreed, "unless you're just trying to get away from civilization."

"Or you're trying to hide something," Jack added.

Tony had already started toward one of the tents and Jack made his way toward the other. He had just shouted "hello" a couple more times and lifted back the flap to the tent when Tony shouted to him.

"Jack! Come here," Tony's voice was excited but Jack recognized that it wasn't a happy sort of excited.

Jack moved as fast as he could. Tony knelt in the middle of the tent holding a piece of rope in his hands. He showed the knot in the rope to Jack. "Special Forces?"

Jack took the rope and examined the knot. "Yeah, someone with Special Forces training made this knot."

"Look at the end," Tony directed. "It was cut with a very sharp knife."

Jack nodded in agreement.

"There's more rope over there and some duct tape. Someone was bound and gagged here," Tony said, his tone now sounding more than a little worried.

Jack pulled out their radio. "Base, this is Bauer; come in. Base, come in, please," Jack said urgently.

"We copy Jack." It was Michelle's voice on the other end of the radio. Jack was hoping for Wes Grimes. "Did you find something?"

"Yeah, but it's not the kids. I need you to send a crime scene team to these coordinates," Jack checked his GPS and gave Michelle the coordinates.

"What have you got, Jack?" This time it was Grimes' voice.

"Tony and I came across a deserted campsite. Whoever was here left two tents along with food and equipment. We found a couple of lengths of knotted rope and some duct tape on the ground. It appears that someone was bound and gagged at some point. Someone here has Special Forces training based on the knots he made. The ropes were cut with a sharp knife, might be a military style. At any rate, I think we have to consider this person armed and potentially dangerous."

"Jack, do you think he has the kids?" This time it was Kate's panicked voice on the other end of the radio.

"I don't know, Sweetheart," he answered gently not caring who heard his term of endearment. All he wanted to do at that moment was to hold her and tell her again how sorry he was. "Whatever happened here, there's no sign of a struggle. There's no blood in the immediate area. Wes, what's the ETA on the crime scene team."

"That's going to be at least twenty-five minutes, Jack. We have a team on standby. I'm also sending in search and rescue dogs. They lost the kids' scents near the house, but if the kids were at the campsite, maybe they can pick up the scent again."

"Copy that," Jack returned. "Tony and I will search the campsite and see what we can come up with while we wait for the team." He hooked the radio back on his belt and looked at Tony. "I'll go search the other tent," he said as he turned and headed toward the tent flap.

Tony watched Jack go. He looked utterly defeated which was also how Tony felt. Up until now, the two devoted fathers had both been worried, of course, but things had suddenly changed. When they thought the kids were just lost, they were pretty confident that the older boys had the skills to keep the four of them relatively safe and it was just a matter of finding them. Even the wildlife in the area didn't worry them all that much. There was plenty of easy prey for bears and bobcats. As long as the kids didn't bother the animals, and all of them knew better than to do that, it was likely that the animals would simply make some noise to protect their territory and otherwise leave the children alone. Now Jack and Tony had something serious to worry about. Why was some guy with Special Forces training camping in the middle of nowhere? He obviously wasn't alone. There were two tents and enough food for three or four people. What was going on? Had the kids stumbled into the middle of this or were they miles away on the other side of the forest?

The gray sky was certainly doing nothing to lift the dejected spirits of the two pairs of children. They all kept looking up to see if the rain seemed imminent.

"I hope there's no lightening," Ryan commented. "I don't like lightening."

"Yeah," Rico agreed. "Lightening would be bad with all these trees around us." He remembered his parents' warnings never to go under a tree in a lightening storm. He wondered if it started lightening how they could possibly get out from under the trees. "If we find a clearing, maybe we should hide near it. That way, we can go into the clearing if there's any lightening." Rico wasn't really sure that made any sense. They would still be surrounded by trees unless it was a really large clearing.

Ryan seemed unhappy with that idea. "You want to stand out in the lightening storm? I usually hide under my bed when there's lightening," he admitted.

"I know you don't like lightening, Ry, but your bed is miles away and I think it would be safer to be in the middle of a clearing than to hide under a tree that might get struck by lightening."

Ryan hoped Rico was right, but, nonetheless, he didn't like the idea.

Lucy and Mason were similarly considering the possibility of rain, although neither had considered lightening. It was just that neither of them enjoyed the thought of getting soaking wet without a change of clothes and having to spend the night that way. Mason didn't say it out loud, but he wondered if rescuers would stop searching if it started raining.

"We need some place to stay dry when it starts raining," Lucy said.

"You're right," Mason replied. "You know, my dad told me once that silver miners used to build shacks to live in out here. He said some of them are still standing. It would be cool to find one."

Lucy said nothing. Finding an old miner's shack would be almost too good to be true at this point. They were lucky enough to find some bushes with berries on them which seemed like a feast at the time. Now if they could just find a safe place to rest. Last night's nocturnal wanderings had left Lucy tired and wanting desperately to sleep while it appeared to her that Mason wasn't tired in the least. She almost asked him to stop for a while, but knew it was best for them to keep moving. They were safest when they were on the move, so she would keep moving. She focused hard on a mental picture of her mother. She knew her mother wouldn't stop no matter how tired she was and neither would Lucy. She drew a deep breath as if to steel herself and pressed onward.