The Missing

in serious need of a doctor, and she knew she wasn’t. He could check her over, and Rose could fuss over her, and she’d be fine.

    Cullen stared at her as though he seemed to realize just how unsteady she felt, and he guided her around the car so that she could lean against his rusted-out Mustang. It was mottled between some indeterminate shade of blue, that ugly primer gray, and rust. But it could have been covered with slime, and she wouldn’t care. It took some of her weight, and she finally stopped feeling like she might hit the ground.

    “What about your folks?” he asked softly. “They’ll be scared. Won’t they want you to get looked over?”

    She looked away. “My parents are dead. I live with an uncle and he—” She just barely managed to stop herself from saying, If those boys had killed me, Leon would have offered up his praise to God. She finally forced herself to say, “He won’t care. Look, just take me to my friends. I feel like hell.”

    THE door opened to reveal a skinny black lady. The top of her head might have barely reached Cullen’s shoulder. The guy behind her looked like a damned giant. He probably stood a good head taller than Cullen, and he probably weighed the same as Cullen and the lady together. Cullen topped out right at six feet, but he felt like a midget standing there. The man’s eyes narrowed on Taige’s battered, bruised face, and then they slid up to Cullen’s, like he was imagining how Cullen would look after a close encounter or ten with a big, blunt object.

    The woman, though, was focused on Taige. “Oh, baby,” she murmured, reaching out to touch Taige’s face. She immediately stepped aside and shoved on the big guy’s chest until he did the same. “Out of the way, Dante. Go get me the first aid kit.”

    Dante—great name, Cullen thought. He could see hell burning in the big guy’s eyes, and even though he hadn’t done a damn thing, he wasn’t all that happy to be standing in front of the man. Dante didn’t move, and the woman spun around and slammed the heel of her hand into his chest. “Boy, I told you to get out of the way. Come on, now, honey, let’s look at you.”

    Taige gave the woman a wan smile. “I’m okay, Rose. I just need to get some rest.”

    “Okay,” Rose muttered. She shook her head and then repeated it again, like she couldn’t quite believe what Taige had said. “You’re okay?”

    Cullen said, “I tried to get her to let me take her to the hospital, but she wouldn’t go. Said somebody here’s a paramedic . . . ?”

    Rose jerked her chin toward the man who still hulked in the shadows like he was ready to rip Cullen’s arm off and beat him to death with it. “Yeah. My boy, Dante, does emergency rescues. He can look her over well enough—if he’d get his butt moving.”

    Dante’s lip curled in a snarl, and without saying a word, he turned and stomped off down a dark hallway. The woman reached up and patted Cullen’s arm. “Don’t you worry about him. He’s just protective of Taige. We both are.”

    Rose shouldered Cullen aside, tucking her small body up against Taige’s and leading her through an arched doorway. “Get that light on the wall for me—what’s your name?”

    “It’s Cullen.”

    “Get the light on for me, Cullen, and then you sit right down there and tell me what happened.” She eased Taige’s body onto the couch and gave her the same look Cullen had gotten from his mother a time or two before. “Because I know this girl, and she ain’t going to tell me a damn thing.”

    Dante slid into the room, moving quieter than a man that big ought to be able to move. In his arms he held a box that looked more like a tackle box than any first aid kit Cullen had ever seen. But he didn’t turn it over to his mother; instead, he crouched down by Taige’s head and started looking her over. Cullen knew the man was listening to every word Cullen said, but Dante didn’t say anything until Cullen had finished speaking. “You should have taken her on into the emergency room, no matter what she said,” Dante said. He had a deep, gruff voice, and when he glanced at Cullen over a big shoulder, Cullen saw the fury simmering there.

    Fortunately, it didn’t seem like it was directed at Cullen now, and he breathed a little easier. “I tried to. But I don’t know where it is, and she wasn’t too interested in telling me. She said she’d have you look her over, and if you insisted, she’d