The Missing

by Shiloh Walker

  Tears blinded her, and she had to wrench herself out of the vision. Her skin crawled as she shoved herself to her feet and stared at the room. The stink of vomit permeated the air. Staring at the narrow cot, she saw them. Children, ranging from mere toddlers to teenagers: black, white, Hispanic, male and female.

  Slowly, she turned her head and stared at Cullen. He held Jillian in his arms, patting her face and talking to her in a voice thick with tears and terror as the little girl continued to lie there, unresponsive. “She needs a doctor,” Taige said, her voice barely above a whisper.

  Lying in this close, confined heat, the girl was dehydrated. At least. Taige closed the distance between them, and although part of her didn’t want to touch the girl at all, she reached out and laid a hand on Jillian’s narrow chest. The girl was breathing far too quickly, and her heartbeat was weak and erratic.

  But the girl’s soul was powerful. Taige felt it wrap around her like a blanket warm from the sun. Relief rushed through her, and she almost sagged to her knees. Thank God. Then she pulled her hand back and turned to stare at the room. There was a cabinet under the sink, and Taige crossed to it, opening it up and finding white washcloths, as brilliantly white as the tiles. Grabbing a stack, she turned on the tap water and soaked them through, carrying them back to Cullen and the girl.

  She laid one the girl’s forehead. Jillian whimpered but didn’t open her eyes. “You got water in the truck?” she asked, draping the other rags over his shoulder.

  He lifted his head and stared her, his eyes practically sight-less. “Yeah,” he murmured. Then he looked down at Jillian. A sense of hopelessness wrapped around him like a shroud.

  She ached for him and wished she could do something, anything, to take this from him. Taige wanted to wrap her arms around him and promise that everything would be okay, but she didn’t make promises she couldn’t keep. Instead of trying to comfort him, she made her voice hard and flat as she said, “Cullen, she’s just dehydrated. Get her to the hospital. There was a county hospital two exits back on the highway.” Digging in her pocket, she pulled out one of the cards that Taylor constantly nagged her to carry. She shoved it into Cullen’s pocket. “Taylor’s number is on it. Call him after you get Jillian some medical care.”

  His voice was rusty. “Aren’t you coming?”

  She looked away from him and crossed her arms over her chest, automatically cradling her splinted hand. “No. I’m not done here. Not yet.” Then she softened, unable to help it as she reached up and laid a hand on his cheek. His flesh seemed as chilled as she was: shock. “Cullen, she’s going to be okay. Just pull it together and get her some medical care.”

  Finally, his eyes focused, and when he looked at her again, she knew he saw her. Cullen nodded grimly, and he turned away, cradling his daughter against his chest as he left, walking away with long, quick strides.

  She held herself still until she heard Cullen’s engine turn over, and then she looked back at the bathroom. “Where are you?” she asked softly. She could feel them pushing at her, screaming to her, but if she opened herself up to them again, she wasn’t sure she could pull herself out on her own, and it was too dangerous to do it now.

  Taylor, damn him, knew how to handle her if she slid too deep inside the visions. Until he was here, she had to keep herself centered. But she couldn’t remain still, either. The phone at her hip buzzed again. This time, she answered it.

  “Jillian’s alive. Her father has her. Taking her to the emergency room.”

  “Damn it, Taige. You know she needs—”

  Interrupting, Taige said, “She needs fluids. She’s dehydrated. Seriously dehydrated.” Another wave of agony washed over her, and she almost buckled under the weight of it. She had no idea how tortured her voice sounded when she said, “It’s bad here, Jones. So bad.”

  Jones was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “Are you in trouble?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet. But I will be if you don’t hurry.”

  “Get out of the house until the team arrives, Taige. That’s an order.”

  But Taige didn’t like orders. Especially orders that came from Taylor Jones. “Get your ass here now.” Then she disconnected and turned her back on the bathroom. Whatever had happened in there, she wasn’t going to let herself see just yet. But the main room, she would look there.

  Look for traces of the monster who’d done this.

  “ARE you ever going to learn to listen?”

  “I don’t work for you, remember?” Taige said as she glanced up from her focused study of the floorboards and wished she had some tools: a crowbar, a shovel, something. There was something under the floor of this house, and considering how edgy she was, considering the voices that continued to scream at her, she suspected she knew what it was.

  Bodies. How many, she had no clue, but their cries were a dull roar inside her head, and she had long since stopped trying to differentiate between individual voices. She tapped on one of the floorboards with the butt of her gun and said, “There’s something under here. I think he buried their bodies.”

  “Their?” Jones asked from the doorway, his bland, professional face falling away for a minute and letting her see some semblance of humanity. “Whose?”

  Shaking her head, she murmured, “I don’t know. But there are a lot of them. She wasn’t his first, Jones. Not by a long shot.”

  Shoving to her feet, she glanced around the plain, Spartan cabin. “There’s no sign of the owner here. No vehicle when we got here, no personal belongings—no imprints. I can’t sense anything from him. It’s almost like he doesn’t even exist.”

  “You can’t see his face?”

  Taige shook her head. “No. A glimpse of his hands, but there was nothing there to identify him beyond the fact that he’s male. Even his voice doesn’t sound real to me. It’s too ugly, too distorted.”

  Taylor scowled and stood aside, letting his team come in. The team that had arrived on the helicopter had been ordered to wait until he arrived now that they knew the girl was safe. Jones gestured to the floor and said, “Ms. Branch thinks there is something under the floorboards. See if there’s a crawl space or something for now. Let’s get to work. Ms. Branch, if you don’t mind . . .”

  He gestured to the open door. He said nothing else, but she got the picture loud and clear. Oooohhh . . . he was pissed. Smirking, she headed for the door. “What, can’t I stay and play with the big kids, Daddy?”

  “The big kids work for me, remember? You don’t.” He parroted her own words back at her as he followed her outside. Once they were on the porch, he said, “Fill me in, Taige. And don’t bother telling me that this wasn’t a Bureau case. The only reason you got here with him instead of with us is because he slipped away from his tail.”

  In a mockingly respectful tone, she replied, “Then maybe you should train your men better, boss.” Taige wrapped her arms around her belly and wished there was someplace she could sit down. She was damn tired, and her legs felt like wax. “Cullen Morgan is a private citizen with no training. If he can evade your agents, then you have a problem.”

  Jones’s eyes narrowed, and if Taige were actually an official part of his team, she just might have gotten a little nervous. He gave agents that look, and demotions came rolling along like a river. But she wasn’t part of his team, she wouldn’t ever be part of his team, and the most he could do was not send her any more cases.

  Which would suit her just fine.

  Taige wasn’t naive enough to actually think that would happen, though. She’d been trying to get him to fire her for the past five years—longer. Hadn’t happened yet, and she was under no illusions to think that might change any time soon.

  She waited for him to press the issue, but instead, he went off on another tangent. “I believe the two of you had some history.”

  Taige shrugged. “Long time ago. Had nothing to do with this beyond the fact that he suspected I could help. I haven’t seen him in years.”

 
“Are you familiar with his daughter?”

  Rolling her eyes, Taige said, “Now didn’t I just say I hadn’t seen him in years? I didn’t even know he had a daughter. How can I be familiar with her?”

  Jones didn’t look terribly convinced. “So you don’t know anything about her abilities?”

  She didn’t bat a lash as she lied, “Nope.”

  Taige knew that nothing on her face had given her away, but she also knew that he hadn’t believed a word she’d said, either. It didn’t matter. She didn’t care if he believed her or not, and in another few minutes, he was going to be plenty distracted. Sliding a look back at the house, she said, “Bad things happened in there, Jones. I can feel them pushing at me. Can’t fight it much longer.”

  He nodded. “I had expected as much.” He glanced around and finally cupped a hand around her arm, gestured to his car with his other hand. “I don’t imagine you want to sit down in that place.”

  No. No, I don’t, she thought grimly. Jones opened the back door and she crawled inside, cradling her injured hand to her belly. Curling into a fetal position, she stopped fighting and let the madness take her.

  Bad didn’t even begin to describe the torment that awaited her. Sheer hell didn’t describe it. It was an evil unlike anything she had ever felt in her life, and Taige had dealt with a lot of evil. She felt their presence screaming at her, felt their pain. The shock.

  Beatings, harsh and pitiless. Days of starvation and dehydration. The ugly blackness of despair as the mind finally accepted what the body had already known. Death waited, and the only question was when it would come and how painful it would be.

  The young children were the worst though. They never stopped believing that somebody would come for them. That they would be saved. But they weren’t. They died screaming, broken and alone.

  All until Jillian. Jillian broke the cycle.

  Taige came out of her stupor screaming and crying. Her entire body twitched and jerked. It was a familiar feeling, and one she didn’t really care for. The bastard had used a Taser on her again. Sending Jones a dirty look, she said hoarsely, “I think you like having a reason to zap me.”

  Jones cocked a brow. “Taige, I may be a bit of a bastard, but I have no desire to cause a woman harm.” Then he shrugged. “But you weren’t coming out of it. You’ve been under more than an hour, and you screamed for a good twenty minutes. You weren’t stopping.”

  Yeah. She knew that. But just because she knew a physical blow was sometimes the only way to bring her out, that didn’t mean she had to like it. Her limbs shook with exhaustion as she climbed out of the car. Glancing at the brightly lit house, she asked, “Have they started looking under the floorboards yet?”

  “No. There was a crawl space, but somebody sealed it with concrete. We won’t be able to do anything until we tear up the floorboards.” He looked back at her and said, “There’s nothing to be found in that house that will lead us to him, is there?”

  Taige shrugged. “You’d be better to ask one of your precogs that, Jones. But I really don’t think so. This guy, he’s too careful.”

  With a bitter smile, Jones muttered, “We’d noticed. They’ve been keeping me updated. We haven’t found a single hair. Not a fingernail. The one thing we did find was a receipt under the refrigerator, dated three years back. It was from one of those old-fashioned cash registers, didn’t have so much as an address on it. Just the date.” Shaking his head, Jones said, “What are we supposed to do with a receipt? Nothing but prices, a date, and a total.”

  “No fingerprints, I assume?”

  Jones’s flat look was answer enough. Sighing, Taige shoved away from the car. Her head was pounding, her throat felt raw from screaming, and she wanted to sleep so badly, she almost hurt from it. But instead, she locked her legs and said, “Before they tear it up, I want to go over it once more, okay?”

  He gestured to the house. “Be my guest.” As she walked off, he called out, “You need to give me an official report, Taige.”

  “I wasn’t here on Bureau business,” she said over her shoulder.

  Sliding in front of her, Jones blocked her path. “You look like hell, Taige. You need some downtime.”

  Taige shook her head. “No, I don’t. What I need is to find something that can lead me to the bastard who did this.” Then she walked off, her head down and her gut already churning. “If you’re smart,” she muttered to herself, “you’ll just stay out of this part.”

  But Taige hadn’t ever claimed to be a genius. Once more, she walked back into that hellish house, watching as the team went over everything with a fine-tooth comb. No, it was more detailed than that. They might as well have used X-ray vision, because they peered between the cracks in the floorboards, they checked out the walls, they moved out the few appliances and took them apart.

  She joined them, skimming the back of her hand along surfaces so she could have physical contact without adding her prints to the mess. Everything would be dusted for prints, and if they found hers among them, they’d rip her a new tail. It had happened before.

  Physical contact could strengthen her gift, and all she really needed was just a faint link. Not much, just a little. She could get a memory flash off something a killer had touched months, years earlier.

  But there was nothing. After the first two hours when she went crawling across the floor on her one good hand and her knees, Jones had told her to take a break. She hadn’t. She kept going, searching for something that couldn’t be found, and she had no intention of quitting.

  It was midnight before she finally acknowledged what most of the team had accepted hours ago. Taige would find no trace of the kidnapper here. There might be trace physical evidence—and oh, did she mean trace. So far, they hadn’t even found an eye-lash.

  And there wasn’t even a sliver of a psychic trail.

  She sat on the porch, numb inside, as she watched the crime scene techs going over the yard. More teams would have to be brought in.

  She wouldn’t be on hand for those, though. She’d done her part, done what little she could. The visions had showed her precious little this time, but it was a damn good thing she waited, because once the gray sucked her under this time, it hadn’t wanted to let go. Jones probably hadn’t enjoyed using that Taser on her, but she also doubted that it would give him any bad moments. The man was relentless, pitiless, and driven.

  Still aching from the Taser jolt, Taige stood off to the side and watched as they pried up for the first floorboard. Taige had told Jones the harsh, ugly truth: there was a graveyard of bones under the floorboards of the main cabin. And she had no idea how many bodies.

  Right now, she didn’t want to even see the first one. Turning on her heel, she left the house and went out onto the porch. The air out there was cooler, just a bit, and the stink of death wasn’t so strong. But she didn’t dare relax. Worn out, she sank down on the front steps and braced her elbows on her knees.

  She was so damned tired.

  Breathe, girl. Just breathe. One breath in. One breath out. She might not be able to sleep, but if she tried hard enough, maybe she could zone out for just a minute or two. Except every time she drifted just a little closer to a mindless state of rest, the screams would start again.

  “You ever going to stop being the Lone Ranger?”

  Taige managed to smile as Desiree Lincoln settled down beside her. If Dez wasn’t such a sweetheart, Taige could have hated her on the spot. Dez bore a startling resemblance to Halle Berry, and she almost always had a smile on her face. She worked with Jones’s unit, and technically, she was considered part of the crime scene investigative team. But Jones didn’t work with typical agents, plain and simple. Dez’s particular skill wasn’t the kind that Taige would have taken for all the wine and chocolate in the world. Dez made a connection with victims who had already died, and that was why she was here now.

  Dez glanced at the house and murmured, “I hear they think they’re going to find some bones.”