"Sarah"

"I'll report when I can." Sarah turned and hurried away, her slender form almost instantly swallowed up by the shadows of the forest.

Bailey hesitated, but only for an instant, before swearing under her breath and turning to retrace her own steps. She moved swiftly, even carrying the child, and covered at least thirty yards before she heard, from somewhere behind her, a sound that stopped her in her tracks and yanked her around.

The beginning of a scream, cut off with chilling abruptness, its echo bouncing around eerily in the otherwise silent woods.

"Bailey, move." For a big man, Galen himself moved with uncanny silence, but that wasn't the trait she was interested in right now.

"Sarah. Galen, you have to"

"I know. Get to the car. If I'm not there in five minutes, leave." His weapon was in his hand, and he was already moving away, back toward the Compound.

"But"

"Do it."

Bailey wasn't a woman who accepted orders easily, but she obeyed that one without further question. Tightening her arms around the sleeping child and concentrating on intensifying the protective blanket of energy wrapping them both, she hurried through the woods toward the road and the car hidden there.

Galen had long ago perfected the art of moving through any type of terrain without making a sound, but he was all too aware that at least some of those who might hunt him in this forest could listen with more than their ears. Even so, he didn't allow the knowledge to slow him down, and he made good time.

Unfortunately, not good enough.

Then again, he acknowledged grimly, he had probably been too late at the first note of Sarah's scream.

She lay on her back in a small clearing, in a pool of moonlight so bright and stark it was like a spotlight. The agony contorting her features seemed an almost unreal Halloween mask of horror. Her wide eyes gazed directly up at him, terrified and accusing.