Note: I'm simply stunned. And that's putting it mildly. I expected, what, five reviews for this strange obscure fic about kidnapping, and I got fifteen. Frickin' fifteen. Guys, I don't know what I did to deserve that, but I owe you all a huge thank-you—including you silent readers! I can only hope I fulfill your expectations to the best of my humble abilities.

Chapter Two: Haste

There were no words in the English language that could comprehend the pain that echoed through Claire's single, horrified scream as the dawn crept in through the farm's windows. Her husband watched her silently, let her crumple into his arms as she shook her head and wiped her nose on her sleeve. "I—I don't believe it," Claire gasped, pleading. "Why would anyone steal a baby girl? What kind of son of a bitch would do this to my baby?"

In the beginning, the doctor's wife had been calm, numb, incredulous. She'd asked if her husband had taken the baby out for a walk. If someone had let her out of the crib. If Trent had simply changed her diaper and then let her down without thinking in the middle of the night.

No, no, no were her only answers. So they'd searched.

The field. The shed. The storage room. The newly-built kitchen. Claire tore them all apart in her desperation, repeating her baby's name over and over. "Willow? Willow?! Baby?!" Trent methodically kept on looking, reassuring her that they hadn't looked outside of the farm yet, that she was probably napping somewhere, just waiting. That, at least, was easier than falling prey to the same terror that had roped itself about his wife's throat like a noose.

"Everyone in town will be looking," Mayor Thomas announced, bringing word to all the other citizens of the valley. "She'll be back by nightfall, we promise."

It was long before moonrise that Claire learned the situation lay entirely out of her hands. Too late did she find the note tacked upon her door: "Fair maiden, I shall steal your heart this very night."

The first time, she had heeded his warning. This time, as that sob broke free from her throat, she knew she was far, far too late.

Babies, Skye decided, needed to steal as much as anyone.

Before, when he'd traveled alone, Skye had learned to go hours in silence, days in stealth, weeks in solitude. Yet barely five hours had passed before Claire's baby girl opened her mouth and screamed, hands flailing as her face burned red in hunger.

"Quiet, my sweet," the thief hissed into her ear. "Don't speak, please, not now. Wait until morning, please."

But she would not wait, and Skye paused to glance about his surroundings, hoping and praying for some miracle. Grassy land was all the eye could see in this place: green upon green, occasionally broken up by a ribbon of blue water. If he hadn't this child to carry, Skye knew he could just climb to the top of a nearby tree and survey the land. Perhaps there would be the friendly roof of a nearby Inn, or a convenience store, or a train station in sight.

Damn, he was never good at improvisation.

He jammed his hand into his pocket and pulled out a crinkled page of yellowed paper; it had been a map, once. The baby kept reaching for it, and Skye kept fighting to keep her tiny fingers at bay, all the while contemplating the ethics of using his hypnotic abilities on such a small child.

"Okay," Skye sighed, Claire's baby staring up at him with wide eager eyes, "if we go north, then turn a left here, we should get to a new town. Isn't that fitting, Princess? A land far, far away for a pretty little princess like you. Like a fairy tale." She smiled at him with all the sincerity of the world, sucking on his finger gently to ease her stomach's groans. It took all Skye's willpower to convince himself to pull it away from her mouth.

She'd cried, and cried, and cried, but eventually the child's fragile body gave out as she collapsed in his arms, taxed by her emotion. "Wish I could sleep, too, beautiful," Skye chuckled to himself softly. Had he ever truly studied a baby's eyelashes before, he wondered as the baby's eyes fluttered ever so slightly in his escape. The baby, he kept calling her. He didn't even know her name. Claire hadn't even given him that much, had she?

Now she owed him nothing. Now they were even.

By the time the rain had fallen, Skye had found his objective: Jamie Ranch. According to his faded map, it lay at the foot of a mountain: a well-kept little plot of land with a reputation as squeaky clean as Claire's wedding dress had been. Skye scoffed as the image danced in his mind, and shook his head.

Her fault. This stupid adventure was her fault.

Skye's charge began to whine more, the raindrops pelting her pale white face. He snuggled her close to his bosom and cautiously lifted one leg over the fence, then the other, before entering the tiny farmhouse door.

Yet another fool, Skye smiled to himself, leaving a door unlocked.

It wouldn't be the first time he'd tempted fate.

"No, his eyes are colder, Cody. A sharper blue, not so soft."

Claire's eyes bored into the canvas as the artist hulking before her nodded and brought his brush once again to the palette. The face before her was just a husk of the full-fleshed demon that haunted her daydreams, and Claire's grip tightened about her husband's palm.

This had been Trent's idea, after all—the wanted signs. "It's that thieving bastard," Claire had exclaimed that night. "Oh, God, I'll kill him. If he so much as touches one hair on her head, I'll…I'll…!"

She'd cried. Of course she'd cried; Doctor Trent didn't expect anything different. She'd remained in his embrace all night long, his arms the perfect mold for her grief-racked body. "Twenty-four hours," Claire had moaned. "It's been twenty-four hours and they're still searching around here, when I know he's taken her! Dammit, why doesn't someone do something? Anything?"

So he, being a man of medicine and not of words, had simply nodded and let her cry until there were no more tears, murmuring only, "We'll find her. We'll search this entire world if we have to, Claire. We'll find her." He didn't know if he meant those words. He didn't know if the world could be that small. He just wanted, valiantly, to save some remnant of the woman he'd held the night before.

That morning, he'd called Cody.

"His smile is all wrong," Claire critiqued once more, brow furrowing. "See, you've made him look too innocent, too childlike. It's a mocking grin, you know? The kind of smile you give someone in Poker when you're about to win it all. Selfish."

The man grunted in reply, and Doctor Trent looked at the portrait of Skye the Phantom Thief dully. Claire kept on pointing, kept on arguing about miniscule details, but Trent cocked his head once more in thought. "He looks the same," he accidentally said aloud, and his wife swerved towards him, livid.

"What do you know, Trent? How can you say that—just look, look at him! That's not a kidnapper. That's a boy. Do you want our Willow back or not?" Claire hissed. He nodded slowly, her nails now daggers in his palm. "Good. Then don't settle for anything less than perfect." Her eyes remained fixed upon Cody's work, as she announced, "There! Finally."

She stood up, letting her hand slip from Trent's grasp as she raised a finger to levitate over Skye's painted neck. It looked so pale, so vulnerable, on this portrait—so easily reached. Claire closed her eyes and remembered the warm pulse in the shadow of his neck, how her arms had once wrapped themselves there so roughly, so unnaturally. He'd been in her fingers, and she'd thought nothing of it but her body's desire.

"Oh, God," Claire whispered to herself, the memory dangling before her tauntingly. "If I could only see you now, Skye, you would not be so lucky. If I had my way, you son of a bitch, I'd strangle you until you had an inkling of how it feels to lose your very life. Because that's what you've done to me, you bastard. You bastard!"

Choking on tears—was she sad? No, no, Claire could have sworn she was furious just moments ago—she bit her lip to bottle this tidal wave of emotion: a cauldron bubbling with fury, sorrow, guilt, agony, terror. Too much for her mortal body to bear, far too much, as it bent her, twisting her face into a silent scream. With the world so confused, the colors so blended by grief, the man grinning at her in acrylic appeared almost real, almost alive. A child's laughter echoed in her ears, and Claire bit down harder, tasting blood: the wine of misery mixed with tears. "Oh, God. Oh, God, my baby. Oh, God."

A pair of arms cautiously caught her, an awkward offering of compassion. "Dearest?" Trent whispered. "Maybe…maybe we should take you home. The paint, it has to dry."

Her hands—they trembled, her fists slowly unraveling into empty, needing palms. "I—I know," Claire insisted, her voice softer. "Of course. I know. The paint."

His arms released her, but no force in the world could've moved Claire now, as she murmured, "So…we'll be painting Willow, now?"

With that reassuring nod, Claire took her leave, and let her husband describe a face she knew all too well.

"I'm not sure if I'm doing this right, love," Skye warned. Claire's baby watched him from the hay as his hands clumsily reached for the cows' utters, yanking them so that milk would squirt into the metal bottle below. Claire had always made it look so easy; of course Skye could do this. He was the Phantom Thief. Of course he could.

The first blow made him cry, the heifer's hoof slamming into his chest with an angry moo. "For Goddess's sake!" Skye snarled. "What are you, an animal or a murderer?"

And what am I, a thief or a kidnapper?

Why was it, now, that those terms seemed mutually exclusive?

Skye the Phantom Kidnapper. The thief bristled at the thought; no, there was no flair in this name, no honor. Those who injured children were at the lowest of the crime ladder, weren't they? He'd heard stories—jarring, bloodcurdling stories—of the treatment of molesters in prison, of child killers. Claire's baby let out a whine again, and Skye flinched involuntarily.

"This isn't cruelty," he forced out through gritted teeth. "This is equality. This is…justice."

So he braved the cow's hooves once again, all to feed a baby girl the milk he'd stolen her away from all the way back in Forget-Me-Not.

"If you want to ask me how I am, don't." Huddled in a mass of blankets, Claire hardly lifted her head up from her cocoon as her husband entered the bedroom silently. She retreated deeper within herself, closing her eyes and taking in a deep breath to calm her trembling body. "Trent, don't. Please."

"Cody didn't say a word about it," the doctor told her instead as he started towards the kitchen. His hands fumbled about for a bowl of soup, and his wife watched him blankly from her corner. "Chicken noodle or vegetable?" he asked solicitously.

Claire almost laughed. "You think it matters?"

"Vegetable, then."

Methodically he stirred the mixture, and Claire pursed her lips as he chopped up the carrots, sliced the tomatoes, and pulled out some potatoes to cut before tossing them into the brew. The doctor had learned, long ago, that silence could be a stronger force than any words, so when his wife opened her mouth to speak, Trent couldn't say he was surprised to hear her voice.

"I'm sorry, about today." She ducked her head, eyes shrouded by a curtain of gold. "I—I'm not usually like that. Uncontrolled, I mean." The blonde let her finger slide up and down the smooth surface of her pillow, and shook her head. "It was inexcusable, my behavior. It…it wasn't me."

"I know." The knife continued to slap against the cutting board, thump thump thump. A steady heartbeat.

Claire turned away again, nodding. "I'm not that emotional, you know? I'm very organized, Trent, very methodical. People like me don't act like that. People like us. I'm just…just…"

"Overwhelmed," Trent finished, putting the pot to boil. "Of course you are. Who wouldn't be?"

Even after all this, he could still finish her sentences. Somehow that was comforting, and Claire let out a tiny pent-up breath at that small gesture of ordinariness. "Trent…darling…do you think she's alright?"

"Willow?" He paused, ever the doctor, and contemplated his answer before speaking. "Skye wouldn't hurt her, I'm almost certain."

"Almost." Claire smiled weakly. "Yeah. Me, too. It's not good enough, though, is it?"

Dinner simmered, but each preferred the company of each other's arms to the comfort any meal had to give.

To be a thief was to be an observer.

For the past two days, Skye's blue eyes had followed the grumpy farmer's form; his fedora bobbed over the fenceposts, and that shocking shade of purple hair could be seen for miles. Not until the farmer lay sleeping in his bed did Skye dare to leave the baby in the care of cows and sheep, slinking into the shadows of the village until he, too, was nothing but darkness.

If he'd had more options, Skye knew, he'd never dare leave Claire's baby alone—but oh, that farmer lived in his precious routine, and the animals weren't to be seen until morning. Skye had made certain of it. It hadn't been terribly difficult to escape notice, not really. As far as Skye could see, this Jamie's only exclamations had been about how his cows refused to give as much milk, and that the fool had attributed to their food. Not to the two visitors who'd be buried in the hay as he entered, breath held by one and the other taking her morning nap.

He had a couple hours, give or take a few. And Goddess help him, Skye was about to collapse from starvation.

The aroma gave him a path as clear as any map could, his hunger a compass to the tiny building. To be sure, Skye knew this little village—Flowerbud, wasn't it?—had quite a few cozy little cafes, but oh, that smell, that tantalizing scent, could be nothing short of curry.

God, what he wouldn't give for some curry right now.

A hurriedly scrawled CLOSED sign hung on the Inn's doorknob, and Skye couldn't help it; he smiled. Nothing better than an empty kitchen to rob. In his precise way, Skye reached for the window and lifted the pane soundlessly, light from the room pouring towards him. His mouth watered as the smell followed behind it.

Curry. Pure, sweet, untainted curry.

Skye had no time to spare; slinking to the ground, he crawled on all fours like a cat, unwilling to be seen from a chance visitor from behind the counter. Before, he could afford such notice. Now, for all he knew, he could be on every news channel on the continent. Subtlety was a must.

The dish sat there patiently as he lifted a single hand to pull it towards him and stuff his face full—oh, food, food, blessed food—when the impossible happened.

"Drop it."

Skye the Phantom Thief had been caught.

The broom handle lay flat against his neck as the woman's voice snapped again, "Drop the food, and stay right where you are, you thief. Now who are you, and what the hell are you doing in my kitchen?"