The Missing

by Shiloh Walker

  Grimacing, Taige said, “Not some. A lot.” Inside, she could hear them working. It would be hours yet before they were ready for Dez, hours away from finding all the bodies. But Dez always liked to be there from the first.

  If Taige was right, the bones beneath the floorboards of the cabin were going to take a long time to sort out. Jones probably hoped Dez would help shorten that time frame. She probably would. Dez, like all of the people Jones had grabbed for his secretive unit, was damn good with her abilities. More, she had an ethereal way about her; all the death she dealt with rarely seemed to faze her. Taige had once asked her how she could do what she did and still seem so at peace.

  Dez had told her it was because by the time the victims came to her, they were all way past suffering. Then she’d smiled and told Taige it was easier that way. At that point, she couldn’t do anything to add to their pain; therefore, she couldn’t fail them.

  In their line of work, failure meant people died.

  “Scoot your skinny butt over, Lone Ranger. Tell me what’s going on in there.”

  Obligingly, Taige scooted over enough so Dez could sit down, and when Dez wrapped an arm around her shoulder, she willingly accepted the silent offer of comfort. “Wasn’t trying to be the Lone Ranger, Dez. I just couldn’t wait.”

  “These poor babies calling you that hard?”

  Taige shook her head. She shot a grim glance over her shoulder, staring inside the open door as Taylor barked out orders left and right. From time to time, he reached up and rubbed at the back of his neck. It was one of those rare times when the bastard actually seemed almost human. All this death was enough to do it, though. Even Dez looked a little grim, and for her, that was unusual. “It wasn’t them that pulled me here; it was the girl.”

  “Hmmm. Yeah, the little cutie that was grabbed from Atlanta. You felt that?”

  “Nope.” She braced her arms on her knees and leaned forward. “It was her father.”

  Dez’s midnight brows arched up. “Her father. Well, that’s a different turn for you.”

  Taige grimaced. “Not exactly. I knew him. We . . . we sort of had this thing when we were younger.” Exhaustion pressed down on her hard like a weight, but there was no way in hell she was going to rest here. Those few minutes when she had tried to just zone out had been rough. Really going to sleep? That would be like walking willingly into hell. All around her was the lingering touch of death. Even if her gifts didn’t intrude on her sleep, the negative energy here sure as hell would. She was going to have enough nightmares as it was. Taige had no intention of letting the sad, angry atmosphere of this place color those bad dreams any more than she had to.

  “A thing, huh?” Dez smiled. “Saw his picture in the paper. He look as biteable in person as he is on paper?”

  Biteable. Despite her exhaustion, she couldn’t help but smile. “More so.”

  Feeling Dez’s eyes on her, she looked back over her shoulder. The appraising look on the woman’s face made Taige squirm. “So that’s the deal.”

  “What?” Taige demanded defensively.

  “I always wondered why you don’t talk about guys. You’re hung up on some sexy boy from high school.”

  She didn’t bother denying it. “It wasn’t high school. His parents were loaded; they had a summer house close to where I grew up.”

  Dez made a face. “Oh, please tell me he wasn’t some rich boy looking to piss his folks off by dating a black girl.”

  Taige’s face softened a little. “No. He wasn’t like that. Cullen . . .” Her voice trailed off while she tried to figure out just how much she wanted to tell Dez. She hadn’t discussed that last day with Cullen with anybody. Not even Rose before she died, and the good Lord knows, Rose had asked. And asked. And asked . . . Especially after—

  Oh, Taige, girl. Don’t go there. She had enough shit inside her head without remembering that period in her life.

  “He broke your heart.”

  “Yeah.” Taige blew out a soft breath and rubbed her hands over her face. “Yeah, he did.”

  “So, speaking as your friend, should I totally hate this guy?”

  Taige laughed. “Cullen isn’t the kind of guy you can hate easily. God knows I certainly tried to hate him.”

  “So are you going to tell me what happened?”

  Taige dropped her hands and stood up. Every muscle in her body screamed at her as she did it. She hurt so much that every movement was a small lesson in agony. Right now, the pain was a blessing. A sweet blessing, because it distracted her from the pain of her own memories. Blowing out a sigh, she said, “There’s not all that much to tell, honey. He lost somebody—and I wasn’t able to help.”

  She heard Dez moving up behind her and turned around, lifting her hands to ward Dez away. “Don’t, Dez. Okay? I’m not up to this right now.” I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready for it.

  “You don’t get to pick and choose who you are able to help, Taige. You know that.”

  She blinked away the tears stinging her eyes. “Yeah. I know that. Still doesn’t make it any easier when I can’t help.”

  IT was nearly three a.m. before she got away from the crime scene. It probably would have been later if Dez hadn’t pushed the issue. She’d taken a break from her gruesome job and was outside for some fresh air. While she was walking through the maze of yellow tape and portable outdoor lights, Dez saw Taige leaning against a plain black van. Taige had been weaving on her feet, fighting to stay awake as the exhaustion weighed down heavier and heavier with each passing second.

  Dez had turned on her heel and stalked back into the house, grabbing Jones by the collar of his suit and jerking him away from the tech he was berating. “You want her to collapse out there?”

  If Taige were an optimist, she could have said that him leaving the scene to drive her into town was a sign that he was human. But she knew better. He saw it as an opportunity to go find Jillian’s dad—and Jillian. Which was how Taige had ended up in the waiting room of the county hospital. Jones had told her that she could get a hotel room and put it on her expense account, but since she didn’t have a car, she was stuck waiting for him.

  “Asshole,” she muttered, watching his suited back disappear through the doors. The triage nurse at the desk hadn’t wanted to let him back, but he’d flashed his identification from the FBI, and Taige had seen the woman’s eyes round in surprise. A second later, the door was buzzed open.

  If Taige hadn’t been so bone tired, she would have followed him back. She wanted to check on Jillian, and she wanted to see Cullen, but it felt like she had cement blocks strapped to her feet. She’d fallen asleep in Jones’s rented car on the way in, but that thirty minutes had done more damage than good.

  Now, though, in the quiet of the predawn morning, sitting in an armchair that was covered with that easy-to-clean fake leather, she was almost comfortable. The chair was a little harder than she preferred, but at least it was better than the straight-backed chairs or benches that were in most emergency rooms. The only sounds were the low voices coming from the staff at the triage desk and a sniffling child. The little boy’s face was flushed from a fever, and he had a nasty, deep cough that made Taige’s chest hurt in sympathy.

  The tired mom glanced at Taige, and Taige tried to smile back, but she was just so tired. The little boy started to whimper again, and the mom automatically rocked him, singing softly: “You are my sunshine . . . my only sunshine . . .”

  A sad smile curved Taige’s lips. Her mother had used to sing that song to her.

  “You make me happy . . . when skies are gray . . .”

  Taige felt her lids drooping, and she tried to move around. Body was too heavy, though, and as her head fell forward, the woman’s song echoed in Taige’s mind.

  “You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you . . .”

  Sleep didn’t ease up on her as it had in the car. It sucked her under like a leviathan emerging from the depths of the ocean, grabbing her, and pulling her down deep and
hard. Although the mom kept on singing, Taige heard nothing, saw nothing, just the black oblivion of deep sleep. How much time passed as she slept, she didn’t know. It could have been hours. It could have been minutes. Then the darkness eased, and she knew she wasn’t alone anymore.

  Still caught in the grip of sleep, Taige sensed Cullen’s presence as he joined her in her dreams. He looked as exhausted there as she felt, standing at the door of the emergency room. He paused there, looked back over his shoulder like he didn’t want to leave, and then he came forward, his steps slow, almost clumsy.

  Straightening in the chair, she forced herself to smile at him. “How’s Jillian?”

  He shrugged. “Sleeping right now. They’ve got her on IVs. You were right. She was seriously dehydrated.” A scowl darkened his face, and he murmured, “That boss of yours is an ass. He wants to talk to her, but neither the doctor nor I are willing to let him wake her.”

  “Jones is definitely an ass,” she agreed, her forced smile fading away. “He will have to talk to her, Cullen. They need to know who hurt her.” But even as she tried to explain that to him, she wondered why she bothered. In real life, she needed to deal with reality. These were her dreams; she didn’t have to be logical here.

  A grimace twisted his mouth. “Yeah, I know. And if she can help, I want her to try. I don’t want another parent to have to go through this kind of hell if I can stop it. Just . . . not yet.”

  “Have you talked to her?”

  Cullen nodded. “She opened her eyes—”

  Hands closed around Taige’s shoulders and shook her. Still trapped in the dream, she stared at Cullen’s face, and he said something else, but it wasn’t Cullen’s voice. It was Jones. “Damn it, Taige, wake up. You know you shouldn’t sleep here.”

  “Wha . . .”

  She groaned and smacked at Jones’s hands as he shook her again. Awake now, she squinted up at him and then looked at the clock hanging on the wall over his shoulder. Ten a.m. She’d been under probably close to six hours. And she could tell, just by how stiff her body was. Sleeping in an armchair was always a bad idea. Groaning, she straightened up. Her stiffened muscles screamed at her, and she pressed a hand to her low back, scooting to the front edge of the cushion so she could stretch a little.

  “What in the hell are you still doing here?” Jones demanded.

  Tired and cranky as hell, she snarled at him, “Where am I supposed to be? You dump me here, and it’s not like there’s a yellow cab outside waiting to take me to the nearest Holiday Inn.”

  “There’s a Motel 6 a few blocks down the road.”

  Shoving up off the chair, she got in his face and demanded, “What, you really think I was going to walk there or something? Damn, Jones, what bug crawled up your ass this morning?”

  His eyes narrowed. Sometimes, she knew, he wondered why in the hell he tolerated her. If she actually worked for him, he could discipline her for the attitude she gave him. She mouthed off enough to know she could have been fired ten times over—if she were an employee. But since she was more of a freelance type, he didn’t have that much authority over her, and he also knew that if he never asked for her help on a case again, she could care less. Took away a lot of his fun, she was willing to bet. Which made it all that much more fun for her.

  His voice was pleasant as he said, “You know, Taige, one would think you could understand that I’m in a bind here. You broke procedure doing what you did. You could have endangered that girl even more. Maybe one of the bugs up my ass, as you say, is because I’m trying to figure out how to keep you from getting into a world of trouble.”

  Taige snorted. “Oh, come off of it, Jones. You and I both know that what your superiors care about is results. Just like you and I both know that I’d never have gone to get her if I hadn’t thought that was the best thing for her.” She eased around him, searching for the coffee carafe she’d glimpsed last night. It was on a small table under the TV mounted to the wall. Taking one of the small foam cups from the table, she filled it half full and took a sniff. Strong. Stronger than she liked, and she had a feeling it would eat away the lining of her stomach if she drank too much.

  But right now, she needed the caffeine. She added twice as much sugar as normal, and three times as much cream. Still, it was strong enough to make her blanch, and the caffeine hit her system with the force of a sucker punch. “Damn. These medical types make their coffee strong.”

  She turned around and met Jones’s gaze. He was still scowling at her, and she gave him a sweet smile. “So why did you wake me up?”

  He looked around and then jerked his head, a silent summons that she follow him. In the time since she had fallen asleep, the number of people waiting in the emergency room had gone up considerably. She made her way past two elderly patients in wheelchairs, a girl sitting doubled up in a chair, and a very, very pregnant woman as she followed Jones to the double doors by the triage desk.

  The nurse buzzed the door, and as Taige walked by, she saw the dirty look the nurse shot at Jones’s averted back. Yep, Taylor Jones made friends everywhere he went. He led her into a small office, one he’d obviously appropriated for his personal use. He gestured to a chair and told her to sit.

  She didn’t. She hated it when the bastard tried to throw his weight around with her. He dropped into his chair and gave her an irritated look. “Sit down, Taige. You need to give me your report, and you look like shit.”

  “My, you are in a bad mood. Cussing and everything,” she said with a cheeky grin. She sipped at her strong, overly sweet coffee and added, “I’ll stand.”

  He gave her his most intimidating stare. She didn’t even blink. He broke first, leaning over the desk under the guise of opening a file. “You’ll need to fill out your official report, but right now, I need your impressions on the kidnapper.”

  Taige’s mouth thinned out in a flat line, and she shook her head. “Can’t. Already told you that. I didn’t so much as get one look at him. That place, it’s like it’s been wiped clean of his touch. I can feel the evil of him, but not him.”

  Jones looked up, and she saw a muscle ticking in his jaw. “You got nothing?”

  SHE waited until Jones disappeared into the bathroom before she slipped out of the office and made her way down the crowded hallway. She kept her chin up, shoulders back, and she took a minute to loop the lanyard holding her badge in place around her neck. It displayed her official identification with the FBI and that, coupled with her confident stride, kept anybody from stopping her as she sought out Jillian and Cullen.

  It didn’t take long. Busy as it was, the county emergency room was small. She sensed Cullen’s presence before she actually saw him and turned to find him sitting behind a curtain that partially blocked him from view. Keeping quiet, she moved to the curtain, intending only to glance in and see Jillian for herself. After dreaming of this girl for more than a decade, for longer than Jillian had even been alive, it was hard to believe those dreams might actually be over.

  Very hard.

  But Jillian lay on the bed, her pretty little face peaceful, once more the soft, fragile ivory that Taige remembered from her dreams and no longer stained with the hot red flush that had come from the heat and dehydration. Cautious, Taige lowered her shields and reached out to Jillian.

  The girl slept with the deep, dreamless sleep of the exhausted. Taige didn’t sense any torment, any bad dreams, or any fear. All she could pick up was a sense of peace now that Jillian had her dad with her. The bad dreams would come, of that Taige had no doubt. Hopefully, it would be a while. The mind had a way of protecting itself, and maybe Jillian would forget for a while, at least until she was a little older, a little more ready to deal with what had happened.

  Taige certainly hoped so.

  “Hey.”

  Startled, she turned her head and saw that Cullen had opened his eyes. He stared at her, his lids hanging low over his eyes. “You look exhausted,” she said.