The Missing

desert. “Get me some water?” she croaked.

    He shoved to his feet but didn’t look too happy. His entire body vibrated with impatience, and she could understand that. He left the room, and Taige closed her eyes and rocked forward, folding her arms across her middle. She felt vaguely sick. Something about this whole mess was leaving her with a bad taste in her mouth—very bad. Cullen showing up on her doorstep, seeing the picture of a girl she’d been dreaming about since before the girl was even born. Her head pounded, and everything in her was braced for some oncoming storm.

    There was heartbreak looming when she thought about that daughter—and her unknown mother wasn’t even part of the equation. Taige deliberately wouldn’t let herself think about that yet.

    She heard the familiar little jingle of the phone coming closer, and when Cullen came into the room, he had her cell in his hand. He tossed it on the bed beside her and handed her a tall glass of ice water. She guzzled down half of it without pausing to take a breath. “Your phone’s been ringing like that for the past three and half hours,” Cullen said. “Says it’s a Washington, D.C., call, same number. Over and over.”

    Taige glanced at the phone, disinterested. “It’s my boss.”

    “Your boss.”

    The phone stopped ringing, and she picked it up, pushing a button and scowling as the list of missed calls came up. Jones must have been calling every fifteen minutes. “Yeah. He’s the impatient type.”

    “Calling three or four times an hour is a little more than impatient.” His features were tense, and he glanced at the phone, then at her face, troubled. “I need your help right now, Taige. Jilly needs you.”

    She drained the rest of the water, and feeling steadier, pushed herself to her feet. “Don’t look at me like that, Cullen. I said I’d help, and I will.”

    “And if that’s your boss calling about some other kid?”

    Taige narrowed her eyes, staring at Cullen. Some other kid. Then she scowled. He knew about her work with the feds. For some unknown reason, that made her damn uncomfortable. “I pick and choose the jobs I take, Cullen—or, rather, the job picks me. It’s not up to him who I’m going to be able to help.” She went to move past him, shifting her body so she could edge by without making contact, and when he reached out to touch her, Taige jerked away.

    He closed his hand into a fist, and it fell to his side. “Taige . . .” She shook her head. “Don’t, Cullen.” She didn’t know what he had been about to say, and she didn’t care. She didn’t need to hear it, didn’t want to hear it. It was hard enough seeing him like this after twelve years. The sight of him hit her on a deep, visceral level, and she hated that he could still affect her like this. Even after all this time.

    Taige knew she hadn’t ever gotten over him, and truth be told, she had little interest in trying. It wasn’t that she was pining after him. She was just protecting herself, keeping her heart closed off because she didn’t want any man to ever have the power to hurt her again.

    He was here because he needed her help, and that was more than enough for Taige to deal with. She didn’t need any more complications piled on top of it.

    She held his eyes for a long moment and then turned away from him, heading to her closet and digging out some clean clothes and her boots. She studied the boots with their intricate lacing and scowled. The boots reminded her that she still couldn’t fasten her bra, either. A sports bra wasn’t much better, just because the damn things were so tight, she couldn’t work it into place one-handed.

    And there was no way she was going to spend the next day or two in Cullen’s company without a bra. She grimaced, realizing what she was going to have to do. She tossed her boots on the floor and shot him a look over her shoulder and said, “Wait here.” On the way into the bathroom, she gave her casted wrist a dirty look. She’d fractured one of the bones in her hand when she hit a guy last week after she’d caught him trying to slip out of town with his girlfriend’s daughter stowed in his trunk.

    It hadn’t been a federal case. Taige had been watching TV when the AMBER Alert was activated. The girlfriend was in the hospital recovering from the beating he’d given her after she tried to leave him. As though Taige had been in the car with the man, she’d seen him sitting