The Missing

by Shiloh Walker

  The air reeked of violence, and she knew bad, bad things had happened here. Awful things, and it was her responsibility to protect that girl. The girl lay on the bed, shivering and huddled in on herself as though she could warm herself. Her face was smudged and dirty, with pale streaks where tears had washed it clean. She looked absolutely terrified.

  It’s okay, sweetie. I’m going to bring you home. I promise you that.

  Shock arced through her when Jilly opened her eyes, staring upward. Taige had the most disconcerting feeling that Jilly knew she was there. Somebody had gagged the child, tying a pristine white cloth around her mouth so tightly, it seemed to dig into her skin. The little girl sighed, her shoulders rising and falling. Taige started to pull back, but as the gray started to guide her back to her physical body, she heard something that shocked the hell out of her: the little girl’s voice. Echoing inside of Taige.

  I know.

  IT was full daylight by the time she came hurtling back to herself, and judging by the way the light came slanting in through her windows, she figured it was midmorning. Cullen sat on the bed, elbows braced on his knees, staring at the floor.

  He looked utterly dejected and completely hopeless. Taige lay there for a minute, taking stock before she went to sit up. At some point, Cullen must have tried to wake her or something. She lay on the bed instead of the floor, and she knew she hadn’t made it all the way across the room before she collapsed.

  The second she moved, Cullen rolled off the bed and came around the foot of it so he could crouch by her side. He stared at her, his gaze stark. “What in the hell happened? I came in here and found you on the floor. It’s been four hours.”

  Four hours—damn. That was a long time to go under. She licked her lips and shook her head. Couldn’t talk yet. Her mouth was like the desert. “Get me some water?” she croaked.

  He shoved to his feet but didn’t look too happy. His entire body vibrated with impatience, and she could understand that. He left the room, and Taige closed her eyes and rocked forward, folding her arms across her middle. She felt vaguely sick. Something about this whole mess was leaving her with a bad taste in her mouth—very bad. Cullen showing up on her doorstep, seeing the picture of a girl she’d been dreaming about since before the girl was even born. Her head pounded, and everything in her was braced for some oncoming storm.

  There was heartbreak looming when she thought about that daughter—and her unknown mother wasn’t even part of the equation. Taige deliberately wouldn’t let herself think about that yet.

  She heard the familiar little jingle of the phone coming closer, and when Cullen came into the room, he had her cell in his hand. He tossed it on the bed beside her and handed her a tall glass of ice water. She guzzled down half of it without pausing to take a breath. “Your phone’s been ringing like that for the past three and half hours,” Cullen said. “Says it’s a Washington, D.C., call, same number. Over and over.”

  Taige glanced at the phone, disinterested. “It’s my boss.”

  “Your boss.”

  The phone stopped ringing, and she picked it up, pushing a button and scowling as the list of missed calls came up. Jones must have been calling every fifteen minutes. “Yeah. He’s the impatient type.”

  “Calling three or four times an hour is a little more than impatient.” His features were tense, and he glanced at the phone, then at her face, troubled. “I need your help right now, Taige. Jilly needs you.”

  She drained the rest of the water, and feeling steadier, pushed herself to her feet. “Don’t look at me like that, Cullen. I said I’d help, and I will.”

  “And if that’s your boss calling about some other kid?”

  Taige narrowed her eyes, staring at Cullen. Some other kid. Then she scowled. He knew about her work with the feds. For some unknown reason, that made her damn uncomfortable. “I pick and choose the jobs I take, Cullen—or, rather, the job picks me. It’s not up to him who I’m going to be able to help.” She went to move past him, shifting her body so she could edge by without making contact, and when he reached out to touch her, Taige jerked away.

  He closed his hand into a fist, and it fell to his side. “Taige . . .” She shook her head. “Don’t, Cullen.” She didn’t know what he had been about to say, and she didn’t care. She didn’t need to hear it, didn’t want to hear it. It was hard enough seeing him like this after twelve years. The sight of him hit her on a deep, visceral level, and she hated that he could still affect her like this. Even after all this time.

  Taige knew she hadn’t ever gotten over him, and truth be told, she had little interest in trying. It wasn’t that she was pining after him. She was just protecting herself, keeping her heart closed off because she didn’t want any man to ever have the power to hurt her again.

  He was here because he needed her help, and that was more than enough for Taige to deal with. She didn’t need any more complications piled on top of it.

  She held his eyes for a long moment and then turned away from him, heading to her closet and digging out some clean clothes and her boots. She studied the boots with their intricate lacing and scowled. The boots reminded her that she still couldn’t fasten her bra, either. A sports bra wasn’t much better, just because the damn things were so tight, she couldn’t work it into place one-handed.

  And there was no way she was going to spend the next day or two in Cullen’s company without a bra. She grimaced, realizing what she was going to have to do. She tossed her boots on the floor and shot him a look over her shoulder and said, “Wait here.” On the way into the bathroom, she gave her casted wrist a dirty look. She’d fractured one of the bones in her hand when she hit a guy last week after she’d caught him trying to slip out of town with his girlfriend’s daughter stowed in his trunk.

  It hadn’t been a federal case. Taige had been watching TV when the AMBER Alert was activated. The girlfriend was in the hospital recovering from the beating he’d given her after she tried to leave him. As though Taige had been in the car with the man, she’d seen him sitting behind the steering wheel, unfazed about the woman he’d tried to kill and the girl crying in the trunk.

  He was a cold piece of work, that was for damn sure, and Taige didn’t regret hitting him, not one bit. But she was completely disgusted about her busted hand and the fact that she was going to have to ask Cullen, of all the people in the world, for help. When she came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, Cullen was standing exactly where she’d left him, his hands shoved deep in his pockets and his legs spread wide. His hair, that same, dark shade of near black, was tousled and standing up on end. As she watched, he pulled a hand from his pocket and shoved it through his hair for what was probably the hundredth time.

  He caught sight of her and went still. Taige had her bra on, hanging unfastened over her back, and her T-shirt tucked against her breasts. A dull flush rushed up her cheeks, but she kept her voice empty as she presented him with her back. “I can’t fasten this.”

  Blood drained out of his head as Cullen stared down at Taige, her long, slender, back bare from her neck to the base of her spine where a pair of stark black cargo pants molded her round ass. His mouth went dry as he recalled a thousand dreams where he’d cupped that plump, perfect butt in his hands as he pulled her close against him. Dreams . . . they weren’t dreams at all. How it was possible, he didn’t know, because Cullen wasn’t any more gifted than he was blind. That weird connection between him and Taige was something she must have brought on, consciously or not. Otherwise, there was no way he’d know about her broken hand or her battered face—or the round, puckered scar low on her back.

  A bullet wound. Somebody had shot her. He wished something besides Jilly had brought him here, wished he had the right to sink to his knees and kiss the mark some senseless act of violence had left on her. But he was here because of Jilly, and once Taige found his daughter, he was going to disappear from her life, and no doubt, that was exactly what she wanted.

  Whenever she l
ooked at him, it was with empty eyes as though she didn’t give a damn about him. He lifted his hands and watched, unable to stop himself, as he stroked one hand across her smooth, rounded shoulders. She stiffened, and Cullen cursed himself, reaching for the straps of her bra. She dropped her shirt on the floor, and Cullen quickly averted his eyes, but it was too late. He’d already seen the satiny slopes of her breasts as she adjusted the lace cups around them. Jaw clenched, he fastened the back strap, and the second his hands fell away, they both pulled away from the other as though they’d been burned.

  Taige bent and grabbed her shirt from the floor, and Cullen groaned softly as the fabric of her pants stretched taut across her ass. Turning away from her, he stared out the window. “I’m going to need your help with my boots,” Taige said.

  He looked back to see her sitting on the edge of the bed, sliding her feet into a pair of boots that looked like something that belonged on a soldier, not the woman whose face haunted his dreams. He hunkered down in front of her and started drawing the laces tight, concentrating on that task as though it required all of his attention. Better to focus on it than Taige—or worse, Jillian.

  “You going to tell me why I found you on the floor?”

  She shrugged. “Works like that sometimes.”

  “I don’t remember it ever working like that before.”

  He stole a glance at her, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was staring somewhere over his head. “That’s because back then every time this . . . thing . . . occurred, it was passive. Seeking it out hits me harder.” She shrugged.

  Harder how? He wanted to ask, but in all honesty, he was afraid to. He really didn’t want to know, because even if it was some kind of agonizing hell that she went through, he’d ask it of her a thousand times over if it saved Jillian.

  As he went to work on the other boot, the phone started to ring again. She grabbed it and turned it on, held it to her ear. “Yeah?”

  Faintly, Cullen heard a voice, and he knew who it was. Taylor Jones.

  Taige averted her head, and the voice faded to an indistinct buzz. He started to look back down, and then Taige glanced at him, frowning. “Yeah, actually, I have heard from him. He’s here right now.”

  Shit.

  Listening to Jones on the other end of the line, Taige shook her head. “He showed up this morning. We’re getting ready to head out now.”

  “What do you mean, we, Taige? That’s a civilian you have with you, and the victim’s father. This goes against Bureau policy.”

  She smirked. “Well, I didn’t take the case from the Bureau. I took it from him.”

  “You can’t mean to take the girl’s father with you, Taige. It isn’t safe.”

  Taige glanced back at Cullen. He wouldn’t let her leave him behind, but truthfully, it hadn’t occurred to her. It was his daughter, and if it were somebody Taige loved who had gone missing, nobody could keep her away. He had a right to be there. She didn’t tell Jones that, though. Instead, she pointed out, “I’m still a little limited here as to what I can do on my own. Only got one good hand.”

  “Then you’ll damn well wait for the team to get there.”

  With a laugh, Taige said, “No. I don’t think so.” Then she disconnected the call. She was tempted to leave the phone behind, but she wasn’t sure what was waiting for them. If she knew Jones, he’d have a team tailing them using the GPS on the phone, and the backup might come in handy.

  But there was no way she was waiting. This wasn’t going to turn into an agency case. She wasn’t going to let them slow her down with policy and procedure, not when it was Cullen’s daughter out there who needed her. She stood up and headed for the door. On the way out, she remembered that soft, strong little voice from her vision.

  The little girl. How Taige had realized, with complete and utter certainty, that Jillian had been aware of Taige’s presence. It’s okay, sweetie. I’m going to bring you home. I promise you that. Taige had been making the promise to herself. But the girl had heard her.

  Pausing by the door, she glanced back at Cullen. “We’re leaving. And on the way, you’re going to tell me more about your daughter.”

  “More what?” he asked warily.

  She cocked a brow. “I think you know what I want to hear.”

  She saw the knowledge glinting in his eyes. “That could get complicated.”

  Taking the steps two at a time, she glanced back over her shoulder at him with a humorless smile. “Not a problem. We got a good three-hour drive ahead of us.”

  SEVEN

  “WHAT happened to her mother?” Taige rested her head against the headrest as she spoke, closing her eyes to block out the blur of the countryside. They’d left behind the flatter areas of southern Alabama, climbing into the heavily forested area north of Birmingham. They weren’t too far from William B. Bankhead National Forest.

  The itching in her gut was getting worse, and she knew it was going to go from an itch to downright nausea before the adrenaline finally cleared everything from her system so she could focus on nothing but finding the girl.

  The girl. No, not the girl; she had a name now. Jillian. Sweet Lord, Cullen’s daughter. It still didn’t seem real. None of this felt real, and she kept expecting to wake up and find herself alone in her empty bed once more, alone and aching for the man who didn’t want her.

  “She died having Jillian. She started hemorrhaging; she never even made it down to surgery.” Cullen’s voice was oddly flat and, unable to help herself, Taige looked at him.

  His face was as expressionless as his voice, and she wondered how much grief he was keeping hidden under that calm mask. For the past three hours, ever since they’d left the house, he’d been remote, almost distant. It was a few minutes after two now, and she would bet that he hadn’t looked at her once since they’d stopped half an hour ago for gas.

  At her house, he’d shown fear and desperation, but now it was as if those moments hadn’t existed. She couldn’t really even pick up on any emotion from him at all. She’d never been able to read him the way she could other people. Over the years, her mental blocks had gotten strong enough that she no longer picked up so much random emotion, but there had only been a few people in her life like Cullen, people she didn’t have to shield so strongly against. Under any other circumstance, it was a welcome respite, but right now, she wished he wasn’t such a closed book.

  Then again, this was a blessing. She didn’t know if she could have dealt with the pain it would cause her if she knew how much Cullen had loved this wife of his. “I’m sorry,” she finally said, looking away from him and closing her eyes again. “That must have been awful for the two of you.”

  “Harder on Jillian than me,” he murmured. “I hate her growing up without her mother.”

  Deep inside, she felt something wrench, almost like some rope was tied around her gut, and it had been jerked, pulling on her until she had no choice but to follow. “We need to head west now,” she said, opening her eyes. They were on a long, empty stretch of the I-65, heading north. There were no major inter-states for a good while, but it didn’t matter. They needed to go west, and they needed to do it now. Up ahead, she caught sight of an exit ramp.

  Highway 940 wasn’t much more than a two-lane highway that would lead them to a town not really big enough to be called such. But that was where they needed to go. She pointed ahead. “Get off there.”

  “What are we looking for?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know yet.”

  A little bit of impatience edged into his voice as he asked, “Then how do you know we need to get off here?”

  Taige bit back the pithy response that came instinctively and kept her voice calm as she said, “I know what I’m doing, Cullen. I’ve been doing it a long time, and I’m good at it. That’s why you came looking for me, right?”

  Cullen blew out a sigh. He cut across the interstate, hitting the exit ramp and not slowing down until the very last second. It was midafternoon, but there wasn
’t a car in sight on the highway as he turned left, punching the gas until the speedometer was edging up over seventy. He took the turns at a speed that would have made Taige nervous if she hadn’t been feeling the same uneasiness.