The Missing

businessman. Went from working for a CPA firm to being some big-time stock wizard. Surely he’s stepped on a few toes.”

    Cullen shook his head. “Everybody likes my dad. He’s just one of those people who doesn’t really make enemies. Even his competition likes him. Besides, if this was some kind of vendetta thing or ransom deal, wouldn’t we have heard something by now?”

    A faint smile curled up the agent’s mouth. What in the hell was his name again? Cullen wondered. He’d already forgotten it. “You’re a quick one, Mr. Morgan, aren’t you?”

    Shrugging restlessly, Cullen replied, “Research.” He folded his arms across his chest and pinned the agent with a flat stare. “This was a stranger abduction, wasn’t it?”

    Finally, the agent’s polite, professional demeanor cracked just a little. He jerked at his tie to loosen it and then reached for his cooling cup of coffee. “It’s too early to say for certain, but it is starting to look that way.” He leaned forward, lacing his fingers together. “Mr. Morgan, I’m going to be blunt here. I don’t think you had anything to do with this. At all. I think some stranger took your daughter. Nobody other than the Paxtons knew she was going to be here, and although we’re looking at them, I don’t think they had anything to do with this, either. But, regardless, I need you to be honest with me. You can’t hide anything.”

    “Like what?” Cullen demanded, his aggravation coming through loud and clear.

    “Like your daughter’s . . . unusual abilities.”

    Cullen froze. When he spoke, his voice was rusty and hoarse. “What are you talking about?”

    Holding Cullen’s gaze, the agent lifted up the file, revealing a thinner one, one that Cullen hadn’t even seen. Without saying anything, the agent opened the file and revealed the contents. There was precious little. A few pieces of paper and a picture. Braden Fleming’s picture. Cullen hadn’t wanted anybody to know about Jillian, so when he’d made that phone call to the police’s anonymous tip line, he’d done it from a pay phone on the other side of town.

    He took the file and was gratified to see that his hands weren’t shaking. Damn miracle because on the inside, he was shaking so hard, he thought he might fall apart from it. He didn’t want people knowing this about Jilly. He managed to flip through the papers and then give the agent a quizzical glance. “I’m not sure what this is about.”

    “It’s about some statements taken from some nurses at the county hospital where Jillian was treated after she collapsed at school. She spent two days catatonic, and then suddenly, she woke up and told you that she knew where Braden was, according to these nurses who were outside your daughter’s room while she was crying about it. Tell me, Mr. Morgan. How did Jillian know about Braden?”

    Cullen closed the file and tossed it back on the table. The pages and pictures inside spilled out, but Cullen kept his gaze on the agent’s face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Agent . . . Sorry, I forgot your name.”

    In response, he flipped his name badge around. He said something else, but Cullen couldn’t hear it for the roaring in his ears. Taylor Jones.

    Like he was watching a slide show that only he could see, Cullen suddenly saw all the pictures and articles over that past year that he had collected about Taige. Most of them made little mention of the feds she worked with, but here and there were a few times somebody within the Bureau had been mentioned. Taylor Jones’s name had come up more than once, and there had even been a couple of pictures where both Taige and Jones’s face had shown up in the paper together.

    A hundred memories rose up to haunt him, to taunt him, and he was suddenly having a hard time breathing. Must have had something to do with the fact that his heart was pounding a mile a minute.

    Taige. All that restless, useless energy pulsating through him suddenly sharpened, focused. Finally—son of a bitch, this was something he could control.

    IT was eleven o’clock before the agents decided that he should go home, try to get some sleep, and wait for them to call—and they’d call with an update just as soon as they could. If he hadn’t been waiting for just this opportunity, Cullen was pretty damn sure he would have been arrested for attempted murder when he tried to strangle one of the bastards for handing him that line.

    “Go