The Missing (11 page)
Authors: Shiloh Walker
Tags: #Contemporary, #Romantic Suspense, #Romance Suspense
You can’t help everybody, baby girl. Come on now, put the wine down and go get something to eat. Take a bath . . . go for a swim . . . you got to do something besides sit inside and brood.
Taige lifted her wineglass in a salute. “If it’s all the same to you, Rose, I’m just going to sit inside and brood.” She drained the glass and filled it a third time. She hoped by the time she had emptied a fourth, her brain would be getting fuzzy. Otherwise, she was going to have to drink that nasty merlot Dante had brought over when he came down at Christmas last year.
You didn’t fail me, Taige.
She closed her eyes and wished she could block out those annoying little whispers. Sometimes, it seemed like Rose had settled inside of Taige’s soul, instead of going on to be with the husband she’d lost when Dante was only two. But it wasn’t really Rose, just memories of her, just Taige missing her.
But the real bitch was that Taige would have preferred a real ghost and all the nagging and mothering in the world over what happened if she managed to fall asleep before she was so tired she ached with it. When she was that tired, bone tired, she could fall fast and hard into a sleep to rival that of the dead. Dark, dreamless sleep.
Over the years, training and regular use had given her a greater control over her skills, and as her control increased, those abilities had evolved so that she rarely needed to sleep for the visions to come. They came easier now, and she could recall them in fine, vivid detail. Now that she actively sought them, instead of waiting for them to find her, she had more control over them, and they rarely plagued her when she slept.
Unfortunately, though, that left room for something that much more disturbing. The only thing that kept those dreams at bay was sheer exhaustion—or lots of liquor. She didn’t have the stomach for whiskey, hated the taste of it, and the smell of beer was enough to nauseate her. So that left wine and cocktails. Cocktails usually required a little more work than Taige liked, unless it was something simple like rum and Coke. It all added up to her drinking a hell of a lot more than she should.
The rhythmic ebb and flow of the waves was having a hypnotic effect on her. She could feel her eyelids dragging down while her body sank into that heavy, drowsy state that came right before sleep. Tired . . .
Her lids drooped low once more, and then she tensed, her body going ramrod straight in the chair. “Damn it,” she muttered. She set the wineglass down and scrubbed her hands over her face. Didn’t do too much to help. The fog of sleep was already clouding her brain, and nothing short of a caffeine injection or a cold shower was going to do the trick.
Caffeine required too much work. Shoving her tense body out of the chair, she stumbled into the bathroom, stripping off her clothes and dropping them behind her as she went. She left the clothes wherever they fell, shirt, bra, boots, socks, and jeans forming a haphazard trail. Wearing just a pair of plain cotton panties, she flipped on the light in the bathroom and opened the door to the shower stall. She turned the water on full, not bothering to adjust it to a warmer temperature. After stripping off her panties, she climbed inside and let the cool water rain down on her.
It soaked her hair, and Taige realized she’d forgotten to undo the thick braid. Too tired to care, she left it alone. She’d deal with it later. Even with the cool water spraying down on her, she felt like she was in some sort of fog. She gritted her teeth and adjusted the spray, letting the water go from cool to icy. Then she grabbed the mesh sponge from the hook on the wall and soaped it up. The familiar scent of the Molton Brown bath gel filled her senses. She breathed it in as she scrubbed the sponge over her body, hoping she could force herself into wakefulness for a while longer.
By the time Taige finally turned off the water, her teeth were chattering. She decided that maybe coffee wasn’t too much work now. Especially now that she was freezing her ass off. She tucked the towel around her body and headed into the kitchen, kicking her boots out of the way. She’d pick them up later. Once she had rested, the whole house needed to be cleaned. It was dusty from her long absence and had that musty smell houses got after sitting empty for weeks or months on end.
She got the coffee brewing and stood shivering in the kitchen as she waited for her first shot of caffeine. Hot coffee splattered on the warming plate and counter as she pulled the carafe out and filled her cup. Folding her hands around it, she let the heat seep into her palms while she took a sip. It scalded her tongue, but she didn’t care. She finished off the first cup and poured herself a second before she bothered to get dressed.
As Taige shimmied into a pair of shorts and a tank top, she heard the annoying ring of her cell phone out in the kitchen. She knew that particular ring, and she blocked it out of her mind. There was no damn way she was talking to Taylor Jones anytime soon.
Never would suit her just fine.
By her third cup of coffee, Taige figured she was awake enough to sit down, maybe watch some TV or try a book. She picked up a trade paperback she’d grabbed on impulse at the airport in Birmingham, but instead of curling up on the couch, she headed out to the hammock in the backyard. She could read for a while, then maybe get some housework done.
If she worked hard enough at that, did it long enough, she could exhaust herself to the point that the dreams wouldn’t come. It was either that or dig out the merlot.
Taige was getting damn tired of drinking herself into oblivion.
With caffeine buzzing through her system, she settled down on the hammock. But she hadn’t even made it past the first chapter before fatigue came crashing down on her. Her mind started to wander away from the story, daydreams intruding on reality, and she never realized she was drifting off.
The caffeine in her system, the cold shower, none of her attempts to stay awake made a bit of difference under the weight of her exhaustion. She fell asleep with the midmorning sun shining hot on her face, and when the book slid from her slack hands and hit the ground, she didn’t notice.
“You push yourself too hard,” he murmured as he leaned down and pushed a few wayward strands of hair back from her face.
His voice had changed over the years, deepening just a little. His face had changed some, too, but he was still just as beautiful to her now as he had been when she was sixteen and he had come running to her side the night Joey and Lee had tried to rape her.
She didn’t know where Cullen came from, only that one second she was alone, and then she wasn’t. They were outside, and Taige was lying on the hammock, with Cullen standing over her and staring at her with dark, unhappy eyes.
In some part of her mind, she panicked. She knew that she’d fallen asleep, and now he was here. Now she’d have to face him, face the memories she tried so hard to bury and the longings that had never faded. But the rest of her? The rest of her was so happy to see him, she figured that if he crooked his finger at her, she would willingly strip herself naked and plant her butt in his lap.
The idea had a lot of merit, but Cullen seemed more interested in scowling at her than making love to her.
“Figures,” she muttered. “Even in my dreams, you’re going to be a pain in the ass.”
“You’re one to talk.” He glared at her, and Taige had a feeling he wasn’t impressed with what he saw, somebody far too skinny, far too tired, and now scarred to boot. The midriff tank and low-rise shorts she had pulled on earlier didn’t cover the ugly scar low on her belly. It had faded some, no longer the angry red it had been a few years ago. The scar tissue was darker than rest of her skin, calling attention to it, and belatedly, she tried to cover it.
But Cullen wouldn’t let her. He crouched down by her side and wrapped his fingers around her wrist, pulling her hand away so he could press his lips to it. A shiver raced through her. “You worry me,” he whispered, his breath dancing across her skin like a faint, teasing caress. “You don’t eat. You hardly sleep. You drink too much.”
Tensing, she tried to move away from him. Cullen wouldn’t let her, though. He ended up crawling into the hammock with her, cradling her up against him. He made it seem easy, and Taige lay there wishing the damn thing would flip them out onto their butts. “I eat enough. And I drink because I don’t want to dream. I hardly sleep because I don’t want to dream. You don’t like it, then stop showing up in my dreams.”
He sighed, and when she looked up at him, she saw that familiar look of frustration, worry, and want. It hurt to see that look on his face. He was just like the ghost of Rose that Taige had conjured up out of her loneliness. Nothing more than a figment of her imagination, and the love she thought she saw on his face was nonexistent.
These dreams weren’t any more real than his love for her had been. She knew that, so seeing him looking at her like she was the center of his world was like plunging tiny, needle-sharp shards of glass into her skin.
His hand came up, cradling her face for a long moment, and then he smoothed her hair back. “What happened this time?”
Taige flinched as though he’d jabbed her with a hot poker. She shook her head and tried again to pull away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You never do.”
She sneered at him. “You’re nothing more than my imagination, you know. Since I imagined you, wouldn’t it make sense that you’d already know what happened?”
Slowly, Cullen’s thumb passed over her lower lip. “I’m not your imagination, darlin’. Tell me.”
But she didn’t want to talk about it. Her gut tied itself into ugly, slippery little knots every time she thought about the videos she’d found and all those girls and boys she had talked to, kids with chunks missing out of their lives, pieces of themselves taken away in the night. That the bastards had recorded it so that every last detail was floating around for the enjoyment of sickos everywhere made it so much worse.
Taige hated the perverts that had paid for the kids for what they had done to them, everything from the drugging to the assaults and the rapes. She hated that the oh so lily-white and pure soccer moms and their fine upstanding husbands had made videos of it, recording the way those kids had been victimized.
Taige wasn’t active law enforcement, but she had made sure she was there when the arrests happened, and she had threatened Jones within an inch of his life if he didn’t let her observe the questioning. She had left after the first two hours. There had been three couples involved, and most of them wouldn’t say a word. Their lawyers had shut them up but good.
One woman though, Deidre Sanger, hadn’t seemed to realize how much trouble she was in. Or why. “It’s not like they remember it,” she’d said. “It’s not like they know what happened.”
Taige had wanted to go through the mirrored glass and choke the bitch. Deidre had the nerve to act as though they had done the kids a favor by drugging them. Few people could understand how, sometimes, those drug-induced states made it so much worse for the victims. A piece of their life stolen . . .
“Taige.” A warm hand curved over her neck, and then a hard mouth pressed a gentle kiss against hers. She shivered and then opened her eyes, stared at Cullen. His lids were low over his eyes but that couldn’t hide the frustration she saw there. His hand tightened on her neck, but he didn’t say anything else. He just eased her body back up against his, holding her tight. She buried her face in the front of his shirt and wished this was real.
If it was real, she could tell him. She could cuddle up against him and cry herself dry, and maybe the ache in her heart would ease a little. Maybe if she cried hard enough, maybe if she told him all the vile crap she had been forced to wade through for the past decade, she could breathe without feeling like there was a band around her chest. She could sleep deep and easy without nightmares, without guilt.
But it wasn’t real. Cullen’s presence in her dreams came from years of loving the bastard, even after he’d kicked her out of his life. These dreams were a sham, something brought on by her weak, needy heart, and she hated them.
Suddenly desperate to wake up, to get away from him, she shoved against him, hard and fast. She ended up flipping the hammock over, but she landed on her hands and knees, away from him. He swore under his breath and reached for her, but Taige scrambled away. “I don’t want you here, Cullen,” she said, squeezing the words through her tight throat and wishing she could scream it at him. Wished she could hit him and do something to ease the pain inside her.
“Yes, you do,” he whispered, striding toward her. She brought her hands up, ready to punch him if he came any closer. Cullen was ready to risk it, apparently, because he just kept coming. She swung toward him, and he blocked the first punch. The second one caught him on the chin, but he still reached for her, pulling her up against him.
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