The Missing

second.

    Dez had turned on her heel and stalked back into the house, grabbing Jones by the collar of his suit and jerking him away from the tech he was berating. “You want her to collapse out there?”

    If Taige were an optimist, she could have said that him leaving the scene to drive her into town was a sign that he was human. But she knew better. He saw it as an opportunity to go find Jillian’s dad—and Jillian. Which was how Taige had ended up in the waiting room of the county hospital. Jones had told her that she could get a hotel room and put it on her expense account, but since she didn’t have a car, she was stuck waiting for him.

    “Asshole,” she muttered, watching his suited back disappear through the doors. The triage nurse at the desk hadn’t wanted to let him back, but he’d flashed his identification from the FBI, and Taige had seen the woman’s eyes round in surprise. A second later, the door was buzzed open.

    If Taige hadn’t been so bone tired, she would have followed him back. She wanted to check on Jillian, and she wanted to see Cullen, but it felt like she had cement blocks strapped to her feet. She’d fallen asleep in Jones’s rented car on the way in, but that thirty minutes had done more damage than good.

    Now, though, in the quiet of the predawn morning, sitting in an armchair that was covered with that easy-to-clean fake leather, she was almost comfortable. The chair was a little harder than she preferred, but at least it was better than the straight-backed chairs or benches that were in most emergency rooms. The only sounds were the low voices coming from the staff at the triage desk and a sniffling child. The little boy’s face was flushed from a fever, and he had a nasty, deep cough that made Taige’s chest hurt in sympathy.

    The tired mom glanced at Taige, and Taige tried to smile back, but she was just so tired. The little boy started to whimper again, and the mom automatically rocked him, singing softly: “You are my sunshine . . . my only sunshine . . .”

    A sad smile curved Taige’s lips. Her mother had used to sing that song to her.

    “You make me happy . . . when skies are gray . . .”

    Taige felt her lids drooping, and she tried to move around. Body was too heavy, though, and as her head fell forward, the woman’s song echoed in Taige’s mind.

    “You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you . . .”

    Sleep didn’t ease up on her as it had in the car. It sucked her under like a leviathan emerging from the depths of the ocean, grabbing her, and pulling her down deep and hard. Although the mom kept on singing, Taige heard nothing, saw nothing, just the black oblivion of deep sleep. How much time passed as she slept, she didn’t know. It could have been hours. It could have been minutes. Then the darkness eased, and she knew she wasn’t alone anymore.

    Still caught in the grip of sleep, Taige sensed Cullen’s presence as he joined her in her dreams. He looked as exhausted there as she felt, standing at the door of the emergency room. He paused there, looked back over his shoulder like he didn’t want to leave, and then he came forward, his steps slow, almost clumsy.

    Straightening in the chair, she forced herself to smile at him. “How’s Jillian?”

    He shrugged. “Sleeping right now. They’ve got her on IVs. You were right. She was seriously dehydrated.” A scowl darkened his face, and he murmured, “That boss of yours is an ass. He wants to talk to her, but neither the doctor nor I are willing to let him wake her.”

    “Jones is definitely an ass,” she agreed, her forced smile fading away. “He will have to talk to her, Cullen. They need to know who hurt her.” But even as she tried to explain that to him, she wondered why she bothered. In real life, she needed to deal with reality. These were her dreams; she didn’t have to be logical here.

    A grimace twisted his mouth. “Yeah, I know. And if she can help, I want her to try. I don’t want another parent to have to go through this kind of hell if I can stop it. Just . . . not yet.”

    “Have you talked to her?”

    Cullen nodded. “She opened her eyes—”

    Hands closed around Taige’s shoulders and shook her. Still trapped in the dream, she stared at Cullen’s face, and he said something else, but it wasn’t Cullen’s voice. It was Jones. “Damn it, Taige, wake up. You know you shouldn’t sleep here.”

    “Wha . . .”

    She groaned and smacked at Jones’s