FBI Psychics: The Missing Part 7

She'd helped so many kids. Cullen knew there were probably far more than those found between these alb.u.m pages. Ones that she helped and then disappeared before anybody even had a chance to thank her, much less ask her name. She'd done that sort of thing a lot when they'd been together, and he knew how uncomfortable the attention made her.

Taige would avoid it as often as was possible, and when it wasn't, she'd tolerate it with clenched teeth and a grim look, as though she couldn't understand why people were so amazed by what she did. As though she couldn't comprehend how amazing she was.

Cullen turned to the last page in the alb.u.m and stared at the picture of her there. It was the best image by far, taken by a reporter for the Birmingham News, but it wasn't one he'd cut out of the newspaper. No, this one was an eight-by-ten glossy that he had paid for. "You've got it bad," he murmured. If anybody saw the alb.u.m, they'd probably peg him for some crazy stalker, and chances are, they wouldn't be far off.

He had subscriptions to every major paper in Alabama because he didn't want to risk missing any information on her, and he regularly Googled her on the Web. Even when he'd been married to Jilly's mom, his obsession with Taige never faded. Fortunately, he'd kept it from Kim, and he only hoped she'd never known that he didn't love her the way she'd deserved to be loved.

He couldn't love her, because he hadn't ever stopped loving Taige-and he never would.

FIVE.

JILLY stood with her face pressed up against the acrylic, practically nose to nose with a gleaming white beluga whale. Cullen thought the thing looked more like a toy than a whale, but Jilly was entranced. The whale seemed to be in the same boat. He'd swim upward, spin around, and then come back to stare at Cullen's little girl with besotted eyes.

Cullen was used to it. Animals had that kind of reaction to Jilly, and they had ever since she'd been born. He could remember bringing her home from the hospital when she was three days old, and the old mutt across the street that usually howled and chased anybody and everybody had come running across the street to check out the new baby. But the dog had stopped dead in his tracks about three feet from the baby's car seat, whining low in his throat, staring at Jilly the same way he would have looked at his owner after being left alone for a week.

The whale swam upward again, his long, bulky body amazingly graceful. He circled around and then headed back down to gaze at Jilly through the acrylic. Jilly smiled at him and reached up, laying her hand against the smooth barrier that separated them. The whale nosed the acrylic, and Cullen heard a few of the parents behind him murmuring.

"Look at that . . . "

"Isn't that sweet?"

The kids around her weren't thrilled, though. They wanted to see the whale, too, but the big marine creature was totally focused on Jilly. Cullen made his way through the crowd so he could crouch down by his daughter. "Come on, baby. Let's go see the sharks again."

Jilly glanced up at him. "He likes me, Daddy."

"I know, baby. But the other kids want to see him, too." As they left the exhibit, the whale lingered near the gla.s.s, staring after Jilly with infatuated eyes.

The whale sharks weren't as entranced with Jilly, but she still enjoyed watching them.

She ended up perched on the floor by the great wal , her sketchbook and pencil in hand.

By the time they left Atlanta, the sketchbook would be ful , and she'd need another one.

According the brochure, the trip through the aquarium usually took a couple of hours.

By the time they left the cool darkness for the heat of the Atlanta afternoon, more than four hours had pa.s.sed. They had one last night left before they headed back home, and if Cullen knew his daughter, he knew where they'd spend the rest of the day: at the zoo.

A hot breeze kicked up as they headed for the parking lot. They stopped at the crosswalk to wait for the green light, and the feel of that hot breeze blowing in his face teased a memory, and for a moment, time fell away. It hit him like that sometimes, memories sneaking up on him and hitting him with the intensity of a sucker punch.

It was like yesterday, standing on an Alabama beach with his arms wrapped around Taige, her mouth sweet and warm under his lips, and her body, so soft and strong, pressed against his own.

A little hand tugged on his, and the memory fel apart around him. Cullen looked down to find Jilly staring up at him with big green eyes. "The light changed, Daddy. We can cross now."

"Yeah. Yeah, it has."

EVEN as much as Taige despised Jones, she didn't shut the door in his face when he woke her up early the next morning-way early. The sun was already s.h.i.+ning, but it wasn't even seven. Too d.a.m.n early, considering how little she'd slept the night before. Her reflexes were off, so that might explain why she didn't feel too inclined to knock that smug, smarmy smile off his face.

Taylor Jones was just a little too perfect-looking. He had perfectly tanned skin, a perfectly blinding white smile, his hair perfectly cut and styled. She imagined he had a standing appointment at some pricey designer salon for men to keep his hair from growing even one eighth of an inch longer than he liked. His suits were a little more expensive than the typical FBI agent wore, as were his shoes. The man came from money, and she'd heard rumors that he had political aspirations. He'd probably do well in the political arena, too; he had a knack for knowing exactly what to say.

If Taige hadn't seen the b.a.s.t.a.r.d in action, she wouldn't believe how utterly ruthless he could be. If he focused that ruthless intent solely on helping victims, she could even admire it. But although he was d.a.m.n good at his job, he placed his own ambitions just a little higher than the job. He'd ruined the careers of people who got in his way-part of the reason she had decided not to join the FBI. She didn't want to end up some innocent bystander in one of his crusades.

But as focused and ambitious as the b.a.s.t.a.r.d was, he knew better than to show up at her door after she'd told him she needed time off. So whatever case had brought him here had to be d.a.m.n important. Otherwise, he wouldn't risk it. She glared at him, eyes stil bleary with exhaustion, but instead of shutting the door on him, she pushed it open wider and let him step inside.

Without saying a word, she left him in the foyer and went to her room. Her wardrobe was fairly monochromatic: a lot of black, interspersed with the occasional pair of blue jeans, and a few things in red and white. She hated shopping, and as a result, her wardrobe was minimal, containing little more than the basics. p.i.s.sed Jones off to no end when she showed up on a job wearing her standards, black jeans and T-s.h.i.+rt. Feeling just a little petty, she grabbed a particularly ratty pair of blue jeans, so faded they were nearly white, snug through her hips and b.u.t.t with a big hole in the left knee.

If Jones's case was something she needed to do, they wouldn't have any time to waste, which meant she'd show up at the job wearing the jeans she usually saved for yard work or cleaning. The black T-s.h.i.+rt wasn't much better, faded to a dark, washed-out gray and hanging on her slender body. On the way out the door, she paused long enough to grab her boots and a pair of socks, just in case.

But it was all for nothing, she knew less than three minutes later.

She sat on the couch, staring at the confidential file, her heart breaking as a pair of innocent, sky-blue eyes stared up at her. The girl had been kidnapped by her father, who'd been released from jail on parole after serving three years for molesting the girl's older sister. The mom had been pregnant when he went to trial, and it had been her impa.s.sioned testimony that had sent the b.a.s.t.a.r.d to jail.

Too bad they hadn't kept him.

Taige swallowed around the knot in her throat and then closed the file and pushed it back at Jones. He didn't even need to ask. The look on her face told him everything he needed to know, just like the look on his face told Taige that he was seriously p.i.s.sed.

"You're sure?" he demanded.

"If I wasn't sure, you know I'd say so."

He turned his head, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose. As much a b.a.s.t.a.r.d as he was, Taige knew he believed in his job, and she had a feeling the little girl's big blue eyes were bothering him as much as they bothered her. Touching that girl's file, she had felt nothing. Staring at the girl's picture, she'd felt nothing but a familiar sense of grief and guilt.

Another child she wouldn't be able to save. She knew, somewhere inside, that she wasn't meant to save this one-this girl wasn't hers-but even that knowledge didn't help her guilt.

Jones looked back down at the file in his hand and then back at her. "You're tired," he said after studying her face. "The last case was a bad one. Maybe if you get some rest today and try again tomorrow . . ."

Taige shook her head. "It won't do any good." But she gestured toward the file. "Leave it if you want. I'll try again, but it isn't going to do any good. If you all find her, it won't be because of me. I'm not going to get a thing."

That was how it worked for her. She'd long since come to accept it, and for the most part, she was even grateful for it. She knew people in the Bureau talked about her, had heard it said, "Branch doesn't find dead ends. Just dead bodies."

Not always, thank G.o.d. But enough so that those lost lives had left a mark on her, each one adding to the mess of scars she carried in her heart. Sometimes she was amazed her heart still beat. If emotional scars left the same damage as physical scars, she would have died years ago.

Jones threw the file on the coffee table, and Taige averted her eyes as one photo fell out. Staring at the girl's face wouldn't help anybody. As he headed for the door, she followed him. He opened the door and paused to look back at her, his practiced, semipolite mask back in place. "When can I count on you being ready to work?"

She smirked at him. "You can't. After all this time, you still seem to forget that I don't really work for you, do I?" Then she shrugged and answered his question. "I need a few days at least. Maybe even longer. Four months is a long haul for me."

The skin around his eyes tightened, but he didn't say anything, just nodded and left. He wasn't her boss, but she did have a responsibility to the Bureau. Taige didn't technically work for him; her official t.i.tle was civilian consultant. Those responsibilities were something she never let herself forget, no matter how tired she got, no matter how bleak things became.

She looked back at the table, and although she didn't want to, she found herself staring at the picture of the girl's smiling face. Things were looking especially bleak right now.

ALTHOUGH Taige had told Jones it wouldn't do any good, after lunch she made herself sit down and go through the girl's file. Her name was Hannah Brewster. She was three years old, and she'd been at her sitter's when her father showed up, a.s.saulted the sitter, and then kidnapped the young girl. The sitter was stil in ICU. One look at the extent of damage done to the twenty-year-old single mom, and Taige knew it was actually a miracle the young woman was still alive. Her own daughter had been at her dad's for the weekend, and Taige couldn't help but feel a little grateful for that. If the sitter's daughter had been home, there might have been two kidnapping victims instead of one.

She pored over the report, spent nearly thirty minutes staring at the file, willing herself to feel something. But there was nothing. When she connected with a case, it was instantaneous; sometimes she knew it was coming even before Jones contacted her. She'd feel a rush of adrenaline, and everything inside of her would seem to focus on the job.

Sometimes all it took was a look at a picture or hearing the victim's name, and it was like an invisible bridge formed between them, a road only Taige could see and follow.

Other times, it was more complicated. Like Chicago. Chicago had been bad, but she had known it would be even before she accepted the job.

"I'm sorry, Hannah," she murmured. She touched her fingers to the girl's face and hoped that Jones would have better luck with one of his other psychic bloodhounds. She wasn't the only one, and she wasn't even their best, she knew. But Taige had a talent with kids, so that was probably why he'd come to her first. But she wouldn't be the only one he approached.

Frustrated, she shoved all the reports and pictures back into the file, and then she took the file into her office, stowing it inside the file cabinet. It didn't help much. Putting it away only put it out of her sight, not out of her mind.

She paused by her desk and stared at the empty wine bottle and the gla.s.s from last night. The alcohol seemed to call to her, and for a minute, she almost went and unearthed the merlot. But instead, she grabbed the bottle and the gla.s.s and carried them into the kitchen. She wasn't going to drink herself into oblivion before one o'clock. Even she wasn't that pathetic.

But she had to do something. Cleaning like a demon seemed to be the ticket. She opened all the windows, letting the hot summer breeze blow through the house and sweep away the musty, closed-in feel, and then she headed for the garage and all the cleaning supplies.

It was a sad, sad state when the only thing a woman could do to occupy her mind was clean.

Three hours later, the house was so clean, Mr. Monk himself would have been satisfied with it. The quirky, obsessive-compulsive fictional detective could have gone through her house with a white glove, and he wouldn't have found so much as a speck of dust or a hair on the floor.

Taige, on the other hand, was filthy. But instead of heading for the shower, she changed into her swimming suit and headed out the back door to the stretch of sand and the gentle waters of Mobile Bay. She dove into the water, swimming under the surface until her lungs threatened to burst, and then she surfaced, shoving her wet hair back from her face and treading water.

A little farther down, she could see a family playing in the sand. Beyond that, a couple of people in the shallows were crabbing. A little girl shrieked, and she turned her head to watch the family. A grin tugged up the corners of her mouth as the father threw the little girl up into the air and then caught her, laughing as the girl screamed, "Again! Again!"

He tossed her, and she went up with a delighted shriek-Please don't hurt me.

Taige froze as a girl's voice whispered through her mind, insubstantial as mist.

Silence, child.

The man's voice didn't seem real, monstrous and inhuman. How much of that was because of the girl's fear, Taige didn't know.

Taige didn't even have to see the girl to know who it was. The delicate little black-haired darling had been invading her thoughts and dreams for more than a decade, and Taige knew her voice nearly as wel as she knew her own. Come on, honey, tell me who you are, Taige thought helplessly. How can I help you if you won't talk to me?

But it didn't work like that. She didn't even know if the girl was still alive. For all Taige knew, the girl had been kidnapped and killed before Taige was even born. She could be seeing something that happened years ago-or something that hadn't even happened yet.

She had no idea, and she knew that she wouldn't get any more than she'd already gotten until the time was right.

You don't act-you react. A ghost from her past, Cul en's voice seemed to echo in her ear as she treaded water and tried not to cry. More than a decade had pa.s.sed since he'd flung those ugly words at her, words that had cut into her like poisonous claws, and through the pain, she'd known she had to do something. She'd forced herself to go to college, she'd forced herself to learn control, to experiment with her gift and see what she could do. Things that had put her through sheer h.e.l.l and sometimes, she wondered why she'd even bothered.

Because even after all of that, there were people, children, that she couldn't save.

People just like Cullen's mother. People just like her own parents. People like Hannah Brewster.

She couldn't save them.

Useless.

NICE thing about airports that early-it was quiet. The Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta was hopping with travelers, business and leisure alike. The hour hand hadn't even edged up on five o'clock in the morning, and all the travelers were tired.

They sipped on coffee, tried to stay awake while reading the paper, and a few diligently worked on laptops. Cullen was one of them, or at least he was trying. The white screen seemed glaringly bright. Of course, that might have something to do with the fact that he hadn't gotten to sleep until midnight. With a three a.m. wake-up call, it was no wonder he was so d.a.m.ned tired.

When he realized he had been staring at the same line for the past five minutes, Cullen finally gave up and shut the laptop down. The faint scratch of pencil on paper had him glancing over. The early hour wasn't affecting al of them. Nice to see.

"What are you working on, beautiful?"

Big green eyes looked up at him. Jillian was as beautiful as an angel, Cullen thought.

He'd thought so from the first time he'd seen her, nine years ago, when the doctor wrapped her tiny, red little body in a blanket and placed her in his arms. Jilly's mom had died due to complications from childbirth. She'd held Jillian for half an hour, a miserly thirty minutes, before the nurses took the baby to do a more thorough exam on the newborn. Five minutes after the nurses had taken Jilly, Kim had looked at him and smiled.

"Isn't she beautiful?"

It was the last thing Kim ever said. She drifted off to sleep, and while she was sleeping, she'd started to bleed again. The doctors couldn't get it to stop, and Cul en had stood there, stunned into silence, as his wife died.

It had come as a complete and total shock to everybody, including Cullen. How could he lose his wife in childbirth? Women died in childbirth a hundred years ago. Even fifty years ago. But in 1999? He just couldn't wrap his brain around it, even now.

Jilly had inherited her mother's big green eyes, rosebud mouth, and artistic talent. The girl might as well have been born with a pencil and sketch pad in hand. It had been that artistic talent that had landed her in an advanced school when she was only three years old. She had a grasp of light and shadow that many adults lacked, Cullen had been told when he'd met with Arlene Wil ington.

Fancy way of saying the girl could draw, Cul en had always figured, but Arlene was right. No matter how she said it, Jilly was gifted. Even aside from her skill with a pencil, the girl was special in ways that Cullen couldn't even begin to understand, although he wasn't exactly a stranger to it.

He studied the faces on the sketch pad she showed him and asked, "Are they friends of yours?" Jilly had drawn three kids who didn't look familiar to him: a younger girl who was probably only five or six, and then two older ones, about the same age as Jilly. The boy was black, and he had a wide, mischievous smile. Both of the girls were white, one was probably in her early teens. It was the younger one, though, that really caught Cul en's attention. She looked like a little angel, all big eyes, long hair, and dimples. Although the pencil sketch was in black and white, he imagined the girl's hair was pale blonde. Jillian's talent amazed him. How a nine-year-old could draw something like that, so true to life, was just astounding.

Jilly shook her head. Fat, inky black curls bounced around her heart-shaped face, and she took the sketch pad back. "No. I don't know who they are." She reached out, stroked the tip of one finger down one penciled face. The little cherub. "She was the first one."

A voice came over the speaker, and a bored airline attendant announced a slight delay.

Delay. h.e.l.l, wasn't that great? Bad weather had grounded their flight yesterday, and Cullen had accepted the red-eye for today. He had a signing and some Q and A deal at a library tomorrow, and he'd really wanted the downtime. It was starting to look as though he just wasn't supposed to have any downtime.

Distracted, Cullen glanced at Jilly and asked, "The first to what?"

"The first to disappear."

A chill ran down Cullen's back, and he stopped, looked at the sketch pad, then back up at Jilly's face. "Disappear from where?"

Jilly just shrugged. "Around." She sighed and bent back over the sketchbook, shutting her worried father out. He was used to it. When she was working on something, she worked with a single-minded focus. Normally, it didn't bother him. Today? Different story. "Where did she disappear from, baby?"

Jilly muttered something under her breath. She caught the tip of her tongue between her teeth, and her eyes scrunched down to slits. Recognizing the signs, Cul en reached out and caught a black curl. He tugged sharply and waited for her to look up at him. At first, her eyes were foggy and unfocused. They cleared, and when he knew she was paying attention to him, he said flatly, "Tell me about this girl."

The firm, I-am-the-parent-and-you-will-answer-me tone still worked on Jilly, for the most part. She glanced down at the sketch pad, but Cullen knew she wasn't seeing the sketch. She squeezed the charcoal pencil so hard her knuckles went white, and Cullen felt a dark, ugly fear move through him. Not again . . . Cul en thought as he stared down at his daughter.

Special in ways he couldn't understand, that was his little girl. It wasn't until he'd had Jillian and realized just how special she was that he began to understand how terribly wrong it had been for him to blame Taige for not being able to save his mom. She'd been completely blameless, and while he guessed his misplaced fury might have been understandable, it had stil been totally wrong.

This kind of gift was sheer h.e.l.l, and it still made him sick inside to think about what he'd done to Taige and how much he must have hurt her. He'd undo it all in a second.

Often, he wondered if this wasn't the penance he had to bear for doing it, having a child who shared Taige's abilities and knowing he was powerless to protect her from the agony it would cause her.

It had been a year since he'd seen that look in Jillian's eyes, a hot, muggy summer when the little brother of Jilly's best friend disappeared. Braden Fleming had disappeared from his backyard, and he'd been missing for three days.

Cullen hadn't known anything about Braden's abduction until late, late that first night.

He'd been called to Jillian's school when his daughter collapsed out on the playground for no obvious reason. Jilly had spent two days in a catatonic stupor that had Cullen so scared he took her to the emergency room. She was admitted to the hospital, and on the second day, she had come out of it, only to look at her father and start crying. The doctors had wanted to admit her for psychiatric tests. Cul en might have agreed, but Jilly looked up at him and whispered, "I know where Braden is."