The Missing

Needed to . . .

    EVER since Taige had been brought to the hospital, bleeding and hovering near death, he had lived on catnaps, vending machine coffee, and stale sandwiches. It had been exactly seven days since he had stood by, helpless, as her uncle shot her. Seven days since Cullen had killed a man with his bare hands.

    His eyes were gritty with exhaustion, his entire body clumsy with fatigue, and his stomach was so knotted up that he doubted he could keep a meal down should he try something beyond the stale sandwiches the hospital cafeteria specialized in.

    Tired as he was, he wouldn’t let himself sleep. He couldn’t really sleep. Not until Taige woke up. He was terrified to leave her side for more than a couple of minutes. Couldn’t do it. Although logically he knew that the danger was mostly over, he still couldn’t tear himself away for longer than it took to go to the bathroom or take a quick shower.

    He ate by her bed, he slept next to her, and when the nurses came in to care for her, he stood at her side and watched them like a hawk to make sure they didn’t hurt her. After the first day, they’d given up trying to get him to give them some privacy. They’d argued and threatened to call security, but in the end, none of them pushed it beyond a lost argument.

    One or two of the smarter nurses had started waiting until they knew he was either grabbing a sandwich or using the phone in the family lounge to call home so he could check on Jilly. While he was gone, they’d slip in, do their work in speed and silence, and when Cullen returned, Taige would be sleeping in fresh sheets with her bandages changed.

    “You really should lie down.”

    Cullen, foggy and half out of it, didn’t process what the nurse said until nearly a minute after she had said his name. She was young, pretty, and he suspected she was fresh out of college. Muffling a yawn, he just shrugged.

    “What if I had a cot brought in?” she offered.

    It wasn’t the first time he’d been offered a cot. He started to make his normal refusal, but then he realized he was drifting off, even in the middle of trying to form some sort of coherent response. Shit, he did need a nap. A nap of the horizontal variety and not in that torture device of a chair. “Yeah.” Before he could change his mind, he nodded again, “Yeah, I’ll take a cot so long as they can put it in here. I’m not leaving her.”

    The nurse smiled. Her teeth flashed white against the darkness of her skin, and her eyes were bright with amusement. “You haven’t left her side since they brought her up here. I didn’t figure you were going to leave now.”

    A nap.

    A real nap.

    He leaned forward and closed his hand around Taige’s. “You need to come on back now, Taige.” It was early in the afternoon yet, but he figured he had less than an hour before Jones or one of the other jerk offs in the Bureau showed up. Jones was persistent. He showed up like clockwork every day at four, only moments after Jilly and Robert came by to bring him clothes. Cullen half suspected that Jones was following Jilly and her grandfather. Cullen knew damn well how persistent Jones had been getting with Jilly, and when he saw the bastard today, he was going to make sure Jones understood that it had to stop.

    Just a quick nap, and he’d be ready to face all of it: the well-meaning, intrusive nurses, the impersonal doctors, the agents who came by singly or in small groups of two or three, not to mention Jilly and her grandfather. Ready to face another day that didn’t really include Taige. The only contact he’d had with her was holding her hand or brushing her hair back from her face.

    The nurses wouldn’t let him help with anything. If he tried to so much as change her blanket, they showed up. He was starting to think the linen closet was bugged, and that’s how they always knew when he was trying to either change a blanket or give her a pillow. Hell, even move the bed around a little. Granted, he didn’t really need to do any damn thing, because the nurses were taking good care of her. Even Cullen couldn’t fault their care. But just sitting there was driving him nuts.

    The lack of sleep wasn’t helping. The worry and lingering fear over seeing her go down, blood blossoming on the front of her shirt like a vicious rose—that was really driving him nuts. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw it again, but it was getting harder . . . and harder . . .

    It dropped down