The Missing

“Can I get him breathing first?” Then she focused back on the boy. Focused on the feel of him—not physical, but him, the ethereal part of a person that remained long after death. The soul. All she had to do was keep the soul inside him until she could make him breathe on his own.

    She felt it, that tiny spark, as his breathing kicked in, and she shoved him onto his side and stroked his back as he vomited up salt water.

    He was crying and choking by the time he was done, but he was breathing. He was going to be fine. Taige whispered a prayer of thanks, and then she stood.

    If she could just get out of sight before she collapsed, she’d be okay.

    AS the boy wrapped his arms around his mom’s neck, crying and whimpering, everybody around them breathed out one huge, collective sigh of relief. Cullen turned to look for her, the girl who had saved the boy’s life.

    “Miss, there is no way . . .” The father turned to look for her about the same time that Cullen did.

    But she was already gone. Down the beach, where the land curved inward, he could see her, walking with long, fast strides. Quietly, Cullen separated himself from the mass of people and started jogging down the beach. His legs felt damned heavy, and the fine, sugary sand seemed to turn into quicksand, pulling at his exhausted legs, but he kept going.

    There was no way he wasn’t going to talk to her this time, not after that.

    He hadn’t even realized she had been on the beach, and he had been looking. How could he not have noticed her? He’d been waiting for another glimpse of her since he’d seen her that first time three days earlier. He wasn’t going to sit around hoping for another one.

    He caught up with her just as she reached the boardwalk. “Hey, wait a minute.”

    She barely paused. “Go away.”

    She didn’t even look at him, just kept walking along the sand with her head down and her arms crossed over her belly. She looked sort of sick, her dusky skin a little gray. She was walking fast, but now that he was close to her, he could see she was wobbling a little. She stumbled, and he reached out to try to steady her, but she jerked away. She tossed her wet hair back from her face and gave him a hard, cold glare. “I said go away,” she snarled again.

    Didn’t seem possible, but her voice was every bit as sexy as the rest of her, even as hot and angry as it was. He stared into her eyes, hardly even aware of what she had said. Gray eyes, a pale, almost surreal silvery gray that glowed against the soft caramel color of her skin. Her lashes were long, thick, and curly.

    Cullen was still staring at her, almost dumbfounded, when she snorted. “You got a hearing problem? I told you to go away.” She shook her head, mumbled under her breath, and turned on her heel, stalking away from him.

    “Hey, I just wanted . . .” His voice trailed off. Wanted to what? Tell her that he had dreamed about her? Tell her that what she had just done was amazing? Ask her out? All of the above? But she just kept walking on, her body stiff.

    Over her shoulder she called out, “Yeah, I know what you want.”

    He heard the innuendo in her voice as clear as day, and oddly, it stung. Yeah, that sort of thing had crossed his mind. How could he look at a girl who looked like that and not think about it?

    But it wasn’t just that. There was more to it.

    Considering the way she kept moving away from him, like she couldn’t stand to be on the same stretch of beach, Cullen suspected he wasn’t going to get a chance to find out what it was.

    “YOU damned that boy.”

    Wearily, Taige opened her eyes and saw her uncle standing in the doorway. “I saved him from drowning, Uncle.”

    “God wanted him, and you stole that child from His arms with that evil inside of you.”

    Baldly, Taige responded, “If God wanted the boy, then He would have taken the boy.” She wanted to roll over and go to sleep. Her entire body ached, and she couldn’t get warm. It was like that anytime she did this, reaching out to another person using her mind. It was a hell of a lot easier to pull a drowning person to shore than it was to pull a fading soul back into life, and saving a drowning person wasn’t all that easy.

    If you’d been faster, he wouldn’t have been so far gone, part of her whispered. That boy almost died because of you.

    “That boy was meant to die! He cheated death, and now all his life, evil will follow him. Just like it follows