FBI Psychics: The Missing Part 6

She didn't boot up the computer or turn on the radio. Instead, she turned her chair around so she could stare out over Mobile Bay and wait for the numbness to set in.

But it didn't come as quickly as it used to.

I worry about you, baby girl.

Often, in moments like these, when Taige was alone, she could hear the ghostly whisper of Rose's voice. It wasn't the woman's ghost, Taige knew that, just memories. There had been long, endless nights of studying when Taige wouldn't have slept at al if Rose hadn't forced her into bed. Days when she would have gone without eating if Rose hadn't sought her out around dinnertime and forced her to eat.

You work yourself too hard. Why are you doing this?

Rose had been dead for three years now, a victim of Katrina. She'd gone to New Orleans to visit a friend who had just lost her mother, one of those friends who hadn't tried to leave until it was too late, and by the time it was clear they needed to leave, they couldn't. Rose had stayed by her side. They had both drowned when the water got too high.

Another one of Taige's failures.

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 winegla.s.s in a salute. "If it's all the same to you, Rose, I'm just going to sit inside and brood." She drained the gla.s.s and fil ed 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 b.i.t.c.h 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 fal 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 c.o.c.ktails. c.o.c.ktails usually required a little more work than Taige liked, unless it was something simple like rum and c.o.ke. It all added up to her drinking a h.e.l.l 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. "d.a.m.n it," she muttered. She set the winegla.s.s 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, s.h.i.+rt, 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 fil ed 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 a.s.s 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 s.h.i.+vering 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 fil ed 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 s.h.i.+mmied 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 d.a.m.n 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 d.a.m.n 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 cras.h.i.+ng 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 fel asleep with the midmorning sun s.h.i.+ning 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 fal en 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 b.u.t.t 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 a.s.s."

"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 s.h.i.+ver 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. Cul en 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 wis.h.i.+ng the d.a.m.n thing would flip them out onto their b.u.t.ts. "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 gla.s.s 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, Cul en's thumb pa.s.sed over her lower lip. "I'm not your imagination, darlin'. Tel 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.ds 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 a.s.saults 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 gla.s.s and choke the b.i.t.c.h. 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 s.h.i.+vered 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 s.h.i.+rt and wished this was real.

If it was real, she could tel 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 c.r.a.p 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d, 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 wis.h.i.+ng 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, pul ing her up against him.

Taige struggled, kicking at his s.h.i.+ns. But her bare feet weren't going to do much damage. She ended up with a sore foot, and that only made her madder. "Let go of me, d.a.m.n it," she snarled.

"No. I did that once, and I've hated myself ever since," he said, his voice calm and soft, gentle even. Taige leaned forward to bite him, and Cullen jerked back at the last second.

Then he flipped her around in his arms, pressing her back up against his front and wrapping his arms around her in a bear hug that effectively pinned her in place.

Seething, she reared back with her head, but he moved his out of reach and kept her from smas.h.i.+ng his nose the way she planned. "You son of a b.i.t.c.h, you didn't let go of me. You kicked me out of your life. There's a big-a.s.s difference, and you got no right doing this to me."

"Doing what?" he murmured. He nuzzled her neck. When she flinched and hunched her shoulder to keep him away, he just s.h.i.+fted his focus to her shoulder, kissing the skin bared by the thin straps of her s.h.i.+rt.

Making me still love you. Making me still need you. The words leaped unbidden to her mind, and she almost blurted them out. She had a little bit of pride, though, and she managed to keep them behind her teeth. Barely. "Touching me like this. Talking to me like you give a d.a.m.n. Any of it."

"You like me touching you," he whispered. Slowly, his arms loosened, and the hands that had been restraining her left her arms to cup her hips. He pul ed her back against him, and the feel of him through his jeans had her wanting to strip naked and beg him to touch her.

But she didn't have to beg. Even though she hated herself for being weak, when he slid one callused hand up her side to cup her breast, she groaned and arched into his touch.

He squeezed her nipple, rolling the stiff peak between his thumb and forefinger, tugging it lightly. Cullen rested his chin on her shoulder, and together, they stared at the sight of his hand moving under the thin cotton of her s.h.i.+rt. "You like it when I touch you," he repeated, and his voice was hoa.r.s.e and rough. The sound of it sent s.h.i.+vers dancing down her spine. "And I do give a d.a.m.n. If I didn't care about you, I wouldn't keep coming to you."

If you cared about me, you never would have left me, she thought. But she didn't say it.

She was tired of fighting him. This was inevitable. He would touch her, and she would let him. He would strip her clothes away and she his. He'd make love to her and for a little while, she would pretend it was real and that he did love her, that he hadn't ever left her.

And when it was over, and she woke, she'd feel that much emptier inside, that much lonelier.

His hands grabbed the bottom of her s.h.i.+rt, and she lifted her arms so he could pull it off. The s.h.i.+rt went flying. Gathering the thick ma.s.s of her hair in his hand, Cullen bared her neck. She s.h.i.+vered when he bent down and kissed her skin. Then he bit her gently, his teeth grazing her skin and leaving a burning, sizzling path. He spoke, and when he did, it was an eerie echo of one of the last things he'd ever said to her. He'd said it time and again in their dreams, almost as though he had to hear it.

"Tell me that you love me, Taige," he ordered gruffly as he slid his hands around and cupped both of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He teased the nipples, and each slow tug of his fingers sent need streaking through her, arrowing down and echoing low inside her belly. She squirmed and pressed her b.u.t.t back against him.

"I love you," she murmured, parroting back the words he needed to hear, words that she had to say. If she didn't need to keep saying them, would she keep having these pointless, painful dreams? She reached behind her and pressed her palms to his muscled thighs, her fingers clenching and digging into the worn material of his jeans so she could tug him closer.

She felt him working the zipper of her shorts, and she bit her lip, holding her breath as he opened the faded denim and slid his hand inside her shorts and panties. He cupped her in his hand and pushed two fingers inside her. She keened out his name and rocked against his hand. Cullen wrapped an arm around her, lifting her against him, and she felt them moving. Opening her eyes, she saw that he'd moved them closer to the deck, and then he slid his hand out of her panties. When he wrapped his fingers around her wrist, she felt the heated moisture there. He guided her hands up, bracing them against the deck floor. Where they stood, the deck's floor came up to her chest, and she leaned against it willingly, letting it support her a little as Cullen stepped back and stripped her panties and shorts away. They fel in a tangle around her ankles, and she went to kick them off. Cullen cupped her hips and leaned against her, muttering roughly, "Be stil ."

It was dej vu; she felt like she was reliving that last time with him, and as desperate as she was for him, she almost pulled away. She had to deal with that pain in real life. Was she going to have to deal with it here, too? Was he going to walk away from her again?

Her body was weak, though. Her sense of self-preservation might be telling her to run, but the rest of her was screaming, Stay! Taige remained motionless, leaning against the deck with her palms braced on the smooth, faded wood. She heard the harsh rasp of his zipper and caught her lower lip between her teeth, need and antic.i.p.ation twining through her. She was so hot and shaky, so hungry and so desperate for him. When he pressed against her, she jolted as though she had been shocked. Her legs were pinned together by the shorts at her ankles, and he had to work his way inside, pus.h.i.+ng through the tight tissues and forging his way in, deeper and deeper.

She groaned at the sensations dancing through her. The line between pleasure and pain blurred. She arched back, trying to take more of him. He gripped her hips and pul ed back. When he shoved in, hard and fast, the line between pleasure and pain disappeared altogether. She screamed, a startled cry. He did it again, and she whimpered. Again and she twisted against him, unsure if she wanted him to do it again or if she wanted to pull away. Again, and she erupted, crying out his name and coming with an intensity that stole her breath away.

But he wasn't done. He kept slamming into her. With her hands braced on the deck and his hands cupping her hips and holding her tight, she stood there, a willing vessel for him but too satisfied, too drained to feel anything beyond the pounding of her heart and the friction as he shafted her.

The roaring in her ears subsided, and she heard him muttering under his breath.

"You're mine, d.a.m.n it. I want you back. Never lose you again-mine . . ."

Strange words, considering. But then he slid his hand around her hip, spearing through the curls between her thighs, seeking out the hard bud of her c.l.i.t. She went from letting him ride her and thinking about the weirdness of her dreams and how her heart hurt just being with him like this to hot, hungry, and desperate, as desperate as he was. As though he had just been waiting for that response, he stopped touching her c.l.i.t, left her hovering on the brink of o.r.g.a.s.m. He trailed his fingers, wet from her, up over her hip, the small of her back, and up her spine. Then he bent over her, crowding her closer to the deck and bracing his hand by hers. "I love you," he rasped in her ear. "You're mine . . . aren't you, Taige? Say you're stil mine."

"Yours," she agreed, even though deep inside she wanted to scream in denial.

Satisfied, he rode her hard, driving her to another climax before he came, and then he pul ed back long enough to pull his jeans up. Taige leaned against the deck, panting for air and her knees wobbling. Then he pulled her into his arms and lifted, carrying her out of the warm summer sun and into the cool, quiet darkness of her house.

IT wasn't a weird way for him to wake up, but it sure as h.e.l.l was unsettling. Not to mention a little bit embarra.s.sing, Cullen mused as he climbed out of bed and stripped the sheets away. Wet dreams were supposed to stop after p.u.b.erty . . . right? Whoever came up with that obviously hadn't had dreams about Taige Branch.

Bizarre dreams, dreams that seemed too real for them not to be true.

Bizarre and powerful enough, unsettling enough, that one dream was enough to hurl him into a black mood that could last for weeks. It was a good thing they didn't happen too often. He'd spent most of his life trapped inside a guilt-induced rage.

Guilt and need colored too much of his life as it was. If these dreams came more often than they did, he'd probably end up on a shrink's couch. And he didn't have time for that.

From somewhere in the house, he heard music, and he glanced at the clock. Seven thirty. s.h.i.+t. He'd wanted to be up an hour ago. They had too much stuff to do today, and now he was going to be running late.

"Daddy . . ." There was a knock on his door. Years of experience kept him from reacting when the door swung open, and he saw his daughter standing there with an expectant look on her face. He s.h.i.+fted his armload of sheets and blankets a little lower, just in case.

"Gimme a few minutes, Jilly," he said. "Overslept."

She grinned at him and said, "Hurry up, sleepyhead."

She slammed the door behind her, and automatically, he called out, "Don't slam the doors." Then he looked down at his armful of sheets. He didn't have time to mess with them right now, so he carried them into the bathroom and opened the closet in there, dumping them into the hamper. Marci, the cleaning lady, would be in while they were gone, and she'd make the bed with clean sheets, and he could wash the dirty ones when he got back.

Too bad he couldn't deal with the lingering echoes of the dream just as easily.

The haunted look in Taige's eyes bothered him. A lot. She wouldn't tell him what was going on, and Cul en knew from experience that if she wasn't going to share what had caused those shadows, he may never know.

Thinking of her, the weird, too-real dreams, Cullen found himself walking out of his bathroom and into the office that was on the other side of his bedroom. He opened the connecting door and went to the bookshelf that spanned the entire northern wall. On the top shelf, out of Jillian's reach, was a fat leather alb.u.m. Inside it were pictures, newspaper articles, some clipped from the paper and some printed off the Web, all of Taige Branch.

He'd seen the first one nine years ago, the day after Jilly was born. He'd been looking through the fat Sunday paper. The nurse came in, bringing Jilly with her, and Cullen had tossed the paper onto the narrow, uncomfortable couch. A section slid to the floor, and when he picked it up a few minutes later, time froze.

Down in the bottom right corner on the last page of the section was Taige. It wasn't a great picture. She had sungla.s.ses on and was looking away from the camera. The bold caption above the picture read, "Local Psychic Saves Kidnapped Child."

It had happened in Mobile. Some thug pulled a woman out of her car at a stoplight and either didn't see the baby sleeping in the back or didn't care. Two days of nonstop searching had turned up nothing. Then a college soph.o.m.ore showed up at the police department. She'd said she could find the baby. Cullen knew that must have been hard for her, going there and knowing she'd be ridiculed, and after she helped, she'd become the focus of rampant speculation.

As promised, and without any help from the police, she'd found the baby. All it had taken was getting to the mom's side. The paper didn't detail what all had happened beyond her finding the child, but Cullen had done some digging. After the police found the baby exactly where Taige had told them to find her, they had arrested her on suspicion of kidnapping.

The charges were dropped only after they failed to find any evidence at all linking her to the carjacker turned kidnapper, but not until she'd spent a week in jail. n.o.body had come to post bail, and by the time Cullen knew a d.a.m.n thing, she'd been released.

There were other stories, some of them no more than a paragraph or two and others that were nearly full-page stories featuring color pictures and interviews with people who claimed to know her. Dante and Rose had been mentioned in a few, always with something along the lines of "No comment" when asked about Taige Branch. A couple of enterprising reporters had even unearthed some of the kids she had helped when she was younger.

The most recent article was nearly two years old. She'd either gotten better at keeping her name out of things, or she had people helping her on that end. He had a feeling it was a combination of both. Over the past few years it was getting harder to find any information about her, but he had a friend who worked for the FBI. A paper pusher more than anything, but Grant Wilson had confirmed that the FBI did have special task forces, and Taige Branch was often called in to work on kidnappings or other crimes related to children.

He touched his fingers to the grainy image of her face. It didn't seem as if she had aged a day physically, but there was a hardness to her that made him hurt inside. He didn't imagine she'd had much choice but to develop some armor, given the life she lived.