The Missing
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.
She’d helped so many kids. Cullen knew there were probably far more than those found between these album 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 album 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 album, 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
J ILLY 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 glass, 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 wall, her sketchbook and pencil in hand. By the time they left Atlanta, the sketchbook would be full, 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 passed. 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
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