The Missing

.” The words fell from her lips in a soft, tormented moan. She slumped forward, her hair falling down to shield her face. “Damn it, Cullen. He has some other girl. I can see her face.”

    “Is she okay?”

    Taige started to shake. Her entire body trembled like a leaf, and a soft, keening moan escaped her lips. “I don’t know—damn it, I don’t know. Oh, shit. He’s hurting her. Damn it, he’s hurting her, and he loves it.”

    Outside, they both heard the sound of a car approaching, moving fast down the gravel driveway. Taige flinched, jerked hard back into awareness, and she moved with Cullen to stare out the window as the beat-up, ancient station wagon came roaring up the lane. Woodenly, she pulled the phone from her belt and punched in a number. Jones answered, and Taige said, “I’m going to need a team down here, Jones.” She didn’t elaborate, and she didn’t mess with giving directions or an address. Her phone was GPS enabled, and he’d track her via the phone. Details were a waste of time and energy at this point.

    After that short, terse message, she disconnected and then tucked the phone back into the holder at her waist. “It’s not Leon,” she said softly, although she didn’t recognize the car.

    “Do we need to get the hell out of here?”

    Technically, they had no business being in this house. There was no physical proof inside these walls, and there was no endangered child there, either. The answers that Taige had weren’t the kind that could be presented to a jury or a judge. By all means, she was violating Leon Carson’s rights, and if she had any sense, or a little less compassion, then they should definitely get the hell out of Dodge.

    But Taige didn’t give a damn about Leon’s rights. She didn’t give a damn about technicalities, legalities, and the ins and outs of the justice system.

    She cared about all the children who had died at her uncle’s hands, and she cared about stopping him.

    “No,” she murmured in response to Cullen’s question. Shivering, she folded her arms across her middle and then rubbed her palms up and down her upper arms, trying to warm herself. “We came for answers. We’ll leave when we have them.”

    But it wouldn’t take long.

    Even from the distance, Taige could see the darkness that painted a dark, ugly void around the woman in the car. She stopped in front of the house and climbed out, paused to look at Cullen’s big black truck, and then she looked back at the house. Taige felt the impact of her gaze from there, although a hundred feet easily separated them. Taige could feel him .

    Leon had left a mark on this woman. She could feel it as clearly as she had when she looked into the paramedic’s eyes earlier and realized who she was hunting. “It’s Penny Harding,” she said quietly. “My uncle’s assistant.”

    Dragging in a deep breath, she closed her eyes and blocked the woman from her field of vision just long enough to ground herself. Leon had kept himself blocked from Taige, and she hadn’t helped by keeping her own blocks in place, reinforcing them any time she came close to Leon. His hatred of her had been the initial reason she’d shielded against him, and over the years, her own dislike of him had added to the urge to keep him out.

    But there had been no attempt on Leon’s part to keep his emotions contained around Penny. And damn, but he must spend a lot of time with this woman, because his psychic presence had all but eradicated Penny’s personality. Muffled it, tamped it down, and kept it hidden under the force of his own.

    It was a godsend.

    Taige could follow a psychic imprint the same way a blood-hound could follow a scent. If Leon kept his presence muffled, there wouldn’t be much of a trail for her to follow.

    But Leon acted on instinct. His gift, strong as it probably was, was untrained. He probably didn’t realize how much of himself he spilled into his home, onto people that spent a lot of time with him. He probably didn’t realize that unless he kept himself shielded all the time, he was going to leak all over somebody like Penny, somebody who spent their days seeing to his needs and running his errands and buying his groceries.

    Penny was like a homing beacon and a journal all wrapped into one.

    At least for somebody like Taige, somebody who read a psychic imprint. When Penny entered the house, as she drew nearer to Taige, it was like she was working pieces of a puzzle into place,