The Missing (15 page)
Authors: Shiloh Walker
Tags: #Contemporary, #Romantic Suspense, #Romance Suspense
And deep inside, he only hoped he wasn’t lying to her.
SIX weeks later, Cullen had mostly forgotten about the weird episode in the airport. For a day or two, Jillian had been like a little rabbit, jumping at every sound and unable to sleep without Cullen right beside her. But after a few more days passed, she slowly started acting more like herself. And Cullen had forgotten.
It was hotter than hell and so humid that it felt like a weight was pressing down on his chest every time he went outside. The deadline from hell was looming closer and closer, and he still wasn’t anywhere near to being done with the last book in his contract. If he didn’t hurry the hell up, he wasn’t entirely convinced his editor was going to want to see the proposal he had put together for her.
Shoving back from the desk, he rubbed his hands over his face and tried to clear the cobwebs from his brain. He’d dreamed about Taige again last night. She’d been hurt. The dreams made little or no sense, unless he looked at them as yet another form of torture. There was no way imaginable he would have chosen to dream seeing her like that, her left eye puffy, swollen and bruised, and her right hand in a soft cast that went halfway up her forearm.
The dream had disturbed him more than usual, and as a result, when he got up at four that morning, he hadn’t felt like he’d slept at all. Instead of going back to bed, he’d settled down to work, and with the exception of refilling his coffee cup every hour or so and fixing some breakfast for Jilly, he’d been there ever since.
Movement caught his eye, and he looked up to see Jilly peeking around the corner into his office. There was a smile on her usually somber little face, and as she edged into the room, he saw the phone in her hand. “Mandy called. They want to know if I can go swimming with them.”
Later, it would haunt him as he recalled how relieved he’d been when the Paxton family had shown up to take Jillian to a local water park. Loaded down with sunscreen, money, dry clothes, and a towel, she’d wrapped her arms around his neck, squeezing tight. “Love you, Daddy . . .”
Now, as Kelly Paxton sat across from him on a hard bench, sobbing helplessly, Jillian’s words echoed inside his head:
Love you, Daddy . . .
Love you, Daddy . . .
“Mr. Morgan, I realize how terrible a time this is for you, but I need some more information about where you were today . . .”
Numb, Cullen looked into the agent’s face. His voice was rusty as he repeated, “I’ve already gone over this. A hundred times.”
“Let’s go over it once more,” Special Agent Holcomb said, his voice polite, professional.
Frustrated, Cullen turned away, scrubbing his hands over his face. “I’ve been at home. Working. Around two, I talked to my agent. Around three, I stopped to take a piss and get a sandwich. Around three forty-five, my dad called.” His voice cracked, and he had to stop for a minute. “Dad wanted Jilly to come spend the weekend with him,” Cullen said softly. “He hasn’t seen her much this summer. I’ve been so busy . . .”
Although the agent had heard all of this before, he nodded and continued to jot notes down on his notepad. “And your father lives . . . where?”
“Shit.” Cullen blew out a harsh breath and then turned to face the agent. “Look, I get what you’re doing. I know you need to check me out, and you’ll even have to check up on my dad and make sure one of us hasn’t been hurting her.” Even thinking it filled him with an irrational fury, but he knew they had to ask. Cullen had had it, though. His temper was frayed, he was scared to death, and his overactive imagination, such a blessing when it came to his job, was adding to the grief and terror.
“But I’ve had it with this. Jillian has been missing for five hours. Have you done a damn thing to find my baby, or are you going to grill me for another five hours?”
“Mr. Morgan—”
The agent’s patient expression cracked as somebody new intruded on the scene. Cullen sized him up as another fed in about three seconds, although the man’s suit was a little more pricey than what his associates wore. Armani, Cullen knew, and he figured it cost what some agents made in a month. The shoes were Italian leather, and somehow the agent had managed to keep them relatively clean as he made his way through the sand. He had perfectly groomed hair and a smooth, even tan. Considering the blond hair and blue eyes, Cullen was willing to bet the man’s tan came from a bed rather than being outside. The new guy didn’t much look like the outdoor type.
There was also something vaguely familiar about him, but Cullen was so sick of agents, he couldn’t think straight. “Great,” he muttered as he stomped away from the agents, not stopping until he reached where the sand gave way to pavement. He stared at his car, wondering if, by some miracle, he could climb in and drive, just letting his gut lead him to his daughter.
But while he had decent instincts, they were just that. It wasn’t a gift. He had no way in hell of finding Jilly on his own. There was a flash, a flicker of knowledge dancing just at the edge of his mind, like the first sparks before they gave way to wildfire. Even as he tried to reach out and wrap his mind around it, somebody came up from behind. He turned to meet the steady, congenial gaze of the new agent.
He had friendly eyes and the kind of face that most people would trust. Cullen wanted to hit him until that understanding left his expression. The bastard couldn’t understand. Voice harsh with fury, Cullen said, “I can’t do this again. I have to do something.”
“The only thing you can do is work with us, Mr. Morgan. Look, why don’t we go sit down inside? Management has given us use of their offices. We can cool down a little, get something nice and cool to drink—”
Cullen slashed a hand through the air. “This isn’t a barbecue. I don’t give a damn about cooling off or getting a damn soda. I want to do something to find my baby.” His voice cracked again, and Cullen knew he had to get out of there, had to do something. “Oh, God.” He covered his face with his hands and sent up another desperate prayer. He hadn’t prayed since before his mother had died and he hadn’t set a foot in church. But he’d do whatever God wanted if He would just bring Jilly back safe.
“I know this is hard. I can’t imagine the hell you have to be going through right now.”
Something in the man’s voice had Cullen looking back at him. He dropped his hands and said flatly, “No. You can’t imagine it. So do something to help me, damn it. What are we going to do to find my daughter?”
THE bastard, Special Agent Jones, made Cullen go through it another three times. When he finished detailing his afternoon and explaining, “No, I don’t have any enemies that I know of, and I can’t imagine who could have done this,” he looked at the agent and said, “Now do you want to know what I ate for dinner last night and what kind of pajamas Jilly wears?”
With a pleasant smile, the agent murmured, “No. That isn’t necessary.” He flipped through a rather official-looking file, pausing here and there. “You’re a writer. Perhaps you have a rather devoted fan . . . ?”
Cullen shook his head. “I don’t have much of a relationship with readers. I don’t even have an address where they can write me.”
“You never do signings or anything?”
Cullen curled his lip. “I’m sure you have all of that information in your file there.” A rather impressive file, considering the short amount of time that had passed since the FBI had shown up on the scene. It felt like years had already passed, but it had only been a few hours since that panicked, terrified call from Kelly had come in. He ran a hand through his hair and tugged on it absently, thinking back to the Q and A he’d done in Lexington a month or so back. It had been right after their trip to Atlanta. “I do a few signings a year. Yeah, I have some persistent readers, but nothing stalkerlike that I can think of.”
“What about your dad? He’s a successful businessman. Went from working for a CPA firm to being some big-time stock wizard. Surely he’s stepped on a few toes.”
Cullen shook his head. “Everybody likes my dad. He’s just one of those people who doesn’t really make enemies. Even his competition likes him. Besides, if this was some kind of vendetta thing or ransom deal, wouldn’t we have heard something by now?”
A faint smile curled up the agent’s mouth. What in the hell was his name again? Cullen wondered. He’d already forgotten it. “You’re a quick one, Mr. Morgan, aren’t you?”
Shrugging restlessly, Cullen replied, “Research.” He folded his arms across his chest and pinned the agent with a flat stare. “This was a stranger abduction, wasn’t it?”
Finally, the agent’s polite, professional demeanor cracked just a little. He jerked at his tie to loosen it and then reached for his cooling cup of coffee. “It’s too early to say for certain, but it is starting to look that way.” He leaned forward, lacing his fingers together. “Mr. Morgan, I’m going to be blunt here. I don’t think you had anything to do with this. At all. I think some stranger took your daughter. Nobody other than the Paxtons knew she was going to be here, and although we’re looking at them, I don’t think they had anything to do with this, either. But, regardless, I need you to be honest with me. You can’t hide anything.”
“Like what?” Cullen demanded, his aggravation coming through loud and clear.
“Like your daughter’s . . . unusual abilities.”
Cullen froze. When he spoke, his voice was rusty and hoarse. “What are you talking about?”
Holding Cullen’s gaze, the agent lifted up the file, revealing a thinner one, one that Cullen hadn’t even seen. Without saying anything, the agent opened the file and revealed the contents. There was precious little. A few pieces of paper and a picture. Braden Fleming’s picture. Cullen hadn’t wanted anybody to know about Jillian, so when he’d made that phone call to the police’s anonymous tip line, he’d done it from a pay phone on the other side of town.
He took the file and was gratified to see that his hands weren’t shaking. Damn miracle because on the inside, he was shaking so hard, he thought he might fall apart from it. He didn’t want people knowing this about Jilly. He managed to flip through the papers and then give the agent a quizzical glance. “I’m not sure what this is about.”
“It’s about some statements taken from some nurses at the county hospital where Jillian was treated after she collapsed at school. She spent two days catatonic, and then suddenly, she woke up and told you that she knew where Braden was, according to these nurses who were outside your daughter’s room while she was crying about it. Tell me, Mr. Morgan. How did Jillian know about Braden?”
Cullen closed the file and tossed it back on the table. The pages and pictures inside spilled out, but Cullen kept his gaze on the agent’s face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Agent . . . Sorry, I forgot your name.”
In response, he flipped his name badge around. He said something else, but Cullen couldn’t hear it for the roaring in his ears. Taylor Jones.
Like he was watching a slide show that only he could see, Cullen suddenly saw all the pictures and articles over that past year that he had collected about Taige. Most of them made little mention of the feds she worked with, but here and there were a few times somebody within the Bureau had been mentioned. Taylor Jones’s name had come up more than once, and there had even been a couple of pictures where both Taige and Jones’s face had shown up in the paper together.
A hundred memories rose up to haunt him, to taunt him, and he was suddenly having a hard time breathing. Must have had something to do with the fact that his heart was pounding a mile a minute.
Taige. All that restless, useless energy pulsating through him suddenly sharpened, focused. Finally—son of a bitch, this was something he could control.
IT was eleven o’clock before the agents decided that he should go home, try to get some sleep, and wait for them to call—and they’d call with an update just as soon as they could. If he hadn’t been waiting for just this opportunity, Cullen was pretty damn sure he would have been arrested for attempted murder when he tried to strangle one of the bastards for handing him that line.
“Go home.”
“Get some rest.”
“We will call you. There’s nothing else you can do here.”
The dumb shits that came up with that BS ought to have the daylights knocked out of them. His daughter was missing—and they were suggesting he take a fucking nap.
The exit to his house was coming up, and he started to slow down, hitting the turn signal. But at the last second, he shot back onto the freeway, watching as his escort ended up blocked in by an eighteen-wheeler with a rebel flag emblazoned across the grill.
He watched from his rearview mirror to make sure he wasn’t being followed, and then he shot off the next exit so he could get back on the interstate, heading north. He wasn’t sure if he could make it to the airport and get on a flight to Alabama without the feds catching up with him, but there was no way he was going to drive the six hours to Gulf Shores.
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