Staring down the barrel of a gun, Susan Smith pleaded with the carjacker to let her children out of the car.
But the thug sped away Tuesday, taking with him Smith's young sons.
Now, the FBI and police across the nation are searching for the boys, snatched from the tiny textile village of Monarch Mills, S.C.
And a family prays.
"If people would just lift up the names of Michael Daniel Smith and Alexander Tyler Smith to the Lord," says Beverly Russell, 47, the boys' maternal grandfather. "That's what we need the country to do."
Smith spent Wednesday helping an artist craft a drawing of the man who kidnapped her boys. She flipped through pictures of criminals.
But as time passed - and as a dangerous frost swept in with the fall of night - officials grew more fearful of the children's fate. Typically, police say, carjackers leave children within the first few hours.
The fact the boys didn't surface safely soon after the car was taken is "bizarre," says Hugh Munn of the South Carolina police. "It's scary."
Smith was waiting in her burgundy, four-door, 1990 Mazda Protege at a traffic light Tuesday night when a man jumped into the front passenger seat and said, "Drive."
About 6 miles out of town, on a two-lane highway, he told her to stop and forced her out, promising not to hurt the kids.
But as hours passed with the boys still gone, pressure grew.
"It's particularly acute now," says the FBI's Charles Sheppard. He worries that if the boys were abandoned, a fall frost could be too much for the blue-and-red striped coat 14-month-old Alex wore, or the light blue jacket with a teddy bear that Michael, 3, had on.
Under the new federal crime law, the carjacker could face the death penalty if either boy dies. But the FBI is most eager to find the victims first; their abductor later.
"Our primary objective at this point is finding the boys," Sheppard says. Helicopters and planes searched the back roads and woods of northern South Carolina.
The suspect, described as a black man in his late 20s to early 30s, may have driven 40 miles to North Carolina after the carjacking, said Munn, spokesman for the state Law Enforcement Division.
He said investigators had a report that a car like Smith's stopped for gas in Sharon, about halfway between Union and Charlotte, N.C.
Police nationwide have been asked to look for the car with South Carolina tag GBK 167.
Sheriff's Capt. Roger Gregory said there were more than 60 officers searching the roads and towns in Union and adjacent counties. He said it was the first carjacking in his 18 years on the force and the largest manhunt he had seen.
People from all over northern South Carolina have offered to help. A hostage rescue team is standing by.
Authorities said they could do little but wait for the boys' best hope, a watchful public, to break the case.
Meanwhile, the family waits.
"All we can do is pray," says Russell. "This is a nightmare."
