Table of Contents
Title PageCopyright Page
Dedication
PART ONE
ONETWO
THREE
PART TWO
FOURFIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
EPILOGUE
PRAISE FOR HUNTER’S SALVATION
“One of the best tales in a series that always achieves high marks ... an excellent thriller.” —Midwest Book Review
HUNTERS: HEART AND SOUL
“Some of the best erotic romantic fantasies on the market. Walker’s world is vibrantly alive with this pair.” —The Best Reviews
HUNTING THE HUNTER
“Action, sex, savvy writing, and characters with larger-than-life personalities that you will not soon forget are where Ms. Walker’s talents lie, and she delivered all that and more . . . This is a flawless five-rose paranormal novel and one that every lover of things that go bump in the night will be howling about after they read it . . . Do not walk! Run to get your copy today!” —A Romance Review
“An exhilarating romantic fantasy filled with suspense and . . . star-crossed love . . . Action-packed.” —Midwest Book Review
“Fast-paced and very readable . . . titillating.” —The Romance Reader
“Action-packed, with intriguing characters and a very erotic punch, Hunting the Hunter had me from page one. Thoroughly enjoyable with a great hero and a story line you can sink your teeth into, this book is a winner. A very good read!” —Fresh Fiction
“Another promising voice is joining the paranormal genre by bringing her own take on the ever-evolving vampire myth. Walker has set up the bones of an interesting world and populated it with some intriguing characters. Hopefully, there will be a sequel that ties together more threads and divulges more details.” —Romantic Times
Books by Shiloh Walker
HUNTING THE HUNTER
HUNTERS: HEART AND SOUL
HUNTER’S SALVATION
THROUGH THE VEIL
THE MISSING
Anthologies
HOT SPELL
(with Emma Holly, Lora Leigh, and Meljean Brook)
PRIVATE PLACES
(with Robin Schone, Claudia Dain, and Allyson James)
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
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This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2008 by Shiloh Walker, Inc.
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PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Sensation trade paperback edition / November 2008
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Walker, Shiloh.
The missing / Shiloh Walker.—Berkley Sensation trade pbk. ed.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-440-60827-8
1. Kidnapping—Fiction. 2. Women—Psychic ability—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3623. A35958M57 2008
813′ .6—dc22 2008030845
http://us.penguingroup.com
To my husband and kids . . . always. I love you.
To my readers, with all my thanks.
And to Sherry-Sherry, it’s not exactly blue.
Do you remember?
PART ONE
ONE
Summer 1992
“SHE’S a local.”
Cullen Morgan glanced toward Kip Wallace. Kip—who in the hell wanted to be called Kip? Then he shifted his attention back to her. Damn. She was something else. He’d seen her from a distance over the past three days, and she looked every bit as perfect up close as she did from far off. Her skin gleamed a warm, mellow gold, but judging by the thick curls and the exotic slant of her eyes, Cullen had a feeling the glowing color didn’t come from days spent on a beach slathering her skin with suntan oil. Although that was a picture.
She passed by him, and he smiled at her, but she never once looked in his direction. He continued to watch her as she walked down the beach. Her butt looked just about perfect in the cutoffs she wore. She wore a swimsuit, faded and serviceable, and Cullen decided that plain tank suit looked better on her than the bikinis he’d seen on more than half of the girls since he’d arrived at the Dunes.
The resort was nestled on a pristine stretch of white sand just a little west of the Florida-Alabama state line. Half of his friends were spending the summer in Cancun or in Europe, but Cullen’s parents were on a “togetherness” kick. They wanted a nice family vacation, so for the next two months they were staying in a little condo on the beach.
Wasn’t too bad. He had to do something with his parents two or three nights a week, and once a week his dad insisted he go fishing with him, but there were worse ways to spend the summer. Although if he didn’t have to deal with guys like Kip, he’d enjoy it more. Cullen’s parents had money, but it was a fairly recent thing. His dad was an accountant who’d made a couple of smart buys in the stock market, and he had a knack for turning ten dollars into a hundred. By the time Cullen was twelve, his parents had taken him out of public schools and sent him to private ones. Their summer vacations went from long weekends in Gatlinburg to month-long trips to England or an Alaskan cruise. Now his parents were talking about buying one of the condos going up along the beach.
“—to her first.”
Kip nudged him in the side, distracting Cullen from his study of the girl’s very nice ass. Scowling, Cullen glanced over at Kip. “What are you talking about?” Kip, with his perfectly cut blond hair, looked like he belonged on the beach. He looked like half of a whole, made to go with any one of the bleach blonde Barbies who strolled around. Cullen wished he’d go find one of the little Barbie dolls and leave him alone, so he could watch the babe in peace and quiet.
“I was asking you if you thought that I could get her phone number before you do.”
Cullen laughed. “You’re ki
dding, right?”
Kip grinned. “Hell, no. Come on. Who can get her number first? You or me? Loser has to rummage up a six-pack for the bonfire Friday.”
Shaking his head, Cullen stood up and dusted the sand off the back of his swim trunks. “I don’t bet on girls. My mom would kill me. And I’m not going to try scoring some beer, either. My dad would kill me.”
Kip’s sneer had Cullen itching to knock it off his tanned, perfect face. “You always worry about what your parents would think?”
“No more than you always wonder what your friends think,” Cullen replied. He looked down the beach and wondered if he’d look like a loser if he went chasing her down the beach. But before he could make up his mind, he heard a familiar voice calling his name. Glancing back, he saw his dad standing on the boardwalk, tackle box and fishing reels in hand.
He looked back at the mystery girl, but she was nearly out of sight now. Shit.
TAIGE Branch could feel the weight of the boy’s eyes drilling into her back. Normally, she paid about as much attention to the tourists as she paid to the sand that got in her shoes. Something that was everywhere, something that was annoying, but nothing she was going to think about beyond that.
In turn, they could be obnoxious, rude, or friendly as could be. None of those traits appealed to Taige. She didn’t want friends, and she didn’t want some rich frat boy trying to cop a feel. But if she had to take her choice, she’d take the frat boy. Some boy feeling her up was a lot easier to deal with than friendliness. She had very little experience with friends. Wandering eyes and hands, she’d been dealing with those since she was fourteen. She handled it now in the same manner she’d used then, a quick stomp on the foot, a knee to his balls, or a jab in the throat.
The bleach blond was the typical kind she’d dealt with before, a privileged little brat with loaded parents, the kind of jerk who thought he could have anything he wanted, including some hot and heavy action with a local girl. He’d made a few passes at her since he’d arrived on the beach with his parents two weeks earlier, and she’d done what she always did: ignore him.
But the guy on the left, the one she had felt staring at her, she hadn’t quite been able to dismiss in the same way. She’d seen him around, out fishing with his dad a few times, in the wildlife refuge a few miles down the road, and in a couple of the oyster houses in town. This was the first time she’d seen him up close, though.
Taige had passed within a few feet of him, close enough to see the faint tan line on his shoulders and neck where he’d been wearing a tank top like the one he’d worn the other night while he was out fishing with his dad. Close enough to see that his hair wasn’t black like she’d thought but a deep, rich brown. The sun had brought out some gold highlights, and she imagined if he was down here long enough, his hair would lighten even more.
And she’d been close enough to see his eyes.
His eyes were the most amazing color, nearly the same shade of turquoise as the Gulf. She loved that color. Taige could spend hours out on the water, staring at the ever-changing waves, and she had the unsettling feeling that she could spend hours staring into his eyes, too.
Those sorts of mushy feelings were the kind she was unfamiliar with. Warm, soft feelings had little place in Taige’s life since her mom and dad had died, leaving her alone. Her uncle had taken her in, but Taige wished they hadn’t been able to find Leon Carson. She would have ended up in foster care, because they hadn’t been able to find any of her father’s people. But it would have been better than where she had ended up.
Hell would have been better.
Hell . . .
Like an insidious whisper, Leon’s voice echoed inside her head: “You got the devil inside you, girl. You going to hell, and there’s nothing you can do to change it.”
How many times had she heard him tell her that? Hundreds. Thousands. Almost every day, sometimes more, for the past eight years. Ever since the social worker had brought her to the church were Leon had been preparing his sermon for the coming Sunday. She’d left Taige alone with the man, and Taige had stared at him, into the gray eyes that looked so much like her own, like her mother’s. He had pale blond hair like Taige’s mama, and he had a beautiful voice. She had thought he sounded like an angel when he sang.
But he was no angel. And though he often walked around the house singing hymns in a rich baritone, his voice sounded more and more like a Hollywood monster than a minister from Gulf Shores, Alabama. He was as close to the devil as anything walking on the world, and Taige had the scars to prove it. Most of them were faint, and almost all of them were a couple of years old or more. The last time he had hit her had been nearly a year ago, and she had hit back. Then he’d slapped her with an open hand, knocking her to the floor, and when Taige had climbed to her feet, she had grabbed a dirty knife from the sink and brandished it at him.
“You’re evil, just like your mama was evil. Just like your daddy was evil—lying with that whore and making another demon child,” Leon had said.
“Touch me ever again, and this demon child will send you straight to hell where you belong.” And she had meant every last word. Apparently Leon figured it out, because he didn’t ever touch her again. Days passed when they never even saw each other, although Taige wasn’t stupid enough to think he had actually realized the error of his ways.
He’d go inside her room when she wasn’t there. She could sense his presence and knew that he spent hours going through her things, as though he hoped to find some sort of proof that she was the demon he accused her of being. There wasn’t much for him to find. Anything important, like the few pictures she had of her parents and her books, she’d long since started hiding outside of the small house. Those things she kept tucked away in the storeroom at Ernie’s.
The little oyster house just outside of town was the closest thing to a home that Taige knew. She spent hours and hours there in the small office helping the owner with paperwork, reading, or listening to music. The cool air of the office was like a glimpse into paradise. Leon didn’t believe in a lot of modern conveniences like air-conditioning.
It was little wonder she was more comfortable there than at her home. Ernie, whoever he was, had long since gone on to bigger and better things, and the little restaurant was owned by Rose Henderson and her son, Dante.
Rose had known Taige’s mother and her father; Taige could spend hours just listening to the stories about her parents. Dante had taught her how to swim and how to fish. Taige worked for the two of them, either helping out in the kitchen, or with the paperwork, or on rare occasions in the dining room. Sometimes she went out with Dante on the boat, and they’d stay out on the water until they had caught enough fish to feed thousands. Or at least it seemed that way, but food didn’t last long at Ernie’s. It was one of the best places to eat in the area, but it was set back from the road and was unpretentious, at best. An honest person would probably call it a dive, and Taige had to admit the place wasn’t much to look at.
But the food was good and fresh, the people were friendly, and Taige felt safe there. Safe and accepted, or about as accepted as she’d ever be.
By the time she got to Ernie’s, the lunch crowd was thinning out. It was the middle of the week, and for the next couple of hours, there would be only a few stragglers here and there. Mostly quiet this time of day, unlike what happened around five o’clock, when the place would be hopping until midnight or later. She entered the kitchen, the familiar scents of seafood cooking filling the air. Rose stood by the stove, and if Taige was right, then Rose was making jambalaya.
She glanced back at Taige and smiled. “There you are, baby. Where you been?”
Taige shrugged. “What are you making over there, Rose?”
Rose grinned, her smile gleaming white against the darkness of her skin. “You know what I’m making. I can tell by the drool all over your chin.”
“I’m not drooling.” Yet. Her belly rumbled demandingly, and she dug a bowl out of the industria
l dishwasher. Rose laughed and ladled out a heaping serving for Taige.
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