The Missing

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 . . . Cullen 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 still been totally wrong.

    This kind of gift was sheer hell, 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. Cullen might have agreed, but Jilly looked up at him and whispered, “I know where Braden is.”

    There had been no logical explanation. Jilly hadn’t been home when Braden disappeared. There was no way for her to know that the four-year-old had been grabbed out of his own backyard while he was playing.

    No way she had of knowing Braden’s abductor was the grand-son of the sweet little old lady who lived just behind Cullen and Jilly. But she had known. She’d described a man who sounded vaguely familiar to Cullen. Two hours later, as he continued to rock her and hold her, he had finally figured out who Jilly had been describing.

    They’d found the boy, but to this day, Cullen knew Jilly felt guilty. Braden would spend years—possibly his entire life—in therapy, and there were nights when Cullen could hear the boy screaming in his sleep even from two houses down. Although she never made a sound, Cullen knew Jilly also suffered nightmares, but she wouldn’t tell him about them. He’d tried putting his daughter into therapy as well, but the counselors had made the problem worse. Jilly retreated more and more inside herself, and finally, Cullen had stopped the therapy.

    Gradually, she emerged from the shell she had built around herself. Over the past couple of months, she had slowly started acting a little more like the child she was instead of a miniature grown-up. Jilly had always been a bit—well, different. An old soul, her grandfather called her. But it had been a bit of heaven to see her laughing and playing with other kids, to see her giggle at a magic show or get so excited when he’d told her about their trip. He had a couple of business-related things, the Q and A in Indianapolis, and then a few days in New York City, but before that, they’d spend a few days in Atlanta.

    Seeing Jilly excited over anything was an unexpected blessing. She stopped being scared of her own shadow, and sometimes weeks passed between nightmares instead of days.

    And now this—whatever this was.

    It’s nothing, he told himself. Absolutely nothing. But his gut wouldn’t let him believe that. He scrubbed a hand over his face and looked back at Jillian’s sketch pad. She stared at it solemnly and protectively. Cullen laid a hand on her shoulder and drew her close. Jilly cuddled into him and whispered, “He’s a bad man, Daddy.”

    Gaze narrowed, Cullen studied the people around him. “Who? Is he here?” He didn’t see anybody unusual, just the typical early morning airport crowd: vacationers, business travelers, and a couple either just recently married or involved in one very hot affair. They couldn’t keep their hands, or their tongues, to