The Missing

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 glass 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 glass 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 well 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, Cullen’s voice seemed to echo in her ear as she treaded water and tried not to cry. More than a decade had passed 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 hell 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 damned tired.

    When he realized he had been staring at