Part 9 (1/2)

In case an attempt at ransom was made, they needed a family member at the house.

Since Morgan had pulled his disappearing act, the grandfather was the only option. At the moment, Jones was d.a.m.n glad he had the grandfather so readily accessible. It answered several of Jones's more pressing questions.

”No coincidences,” he murmured as he disconnected from his conversation with Robert Morgan. Sitting back, he studied the board before him while his fingers beat out a tattoo on the table. It had an eight -by-ten picture of Jillian Morgan and below it, pictures of her father, grandfather, and the Paxtons, the people who'd been watching Jillian before she disappeared.

Murphy ended her conversation with Birmingham, and Jones looked her way as she put away her phone. ”They found him-well, at least they found out how he ditched them.

Guy's clever, we got to give him that. Disguised himself. They're faxing the pictures now.

We'll have to . . . What?”

”Morgan had nothing to do with his daughter's disappearance.” He glanced down at his notes and then flipped them around for Murphy to read. ”The Morgans purchased a condo in Gulf Sh.o.r.es, Alabama, sixteen years ago. They went down there fairly regularly until Cul en's mother was killed twelve years ago, and then the condo was used as rental property for a time. Past few years, the grandfather has taken to going down there more often. They've got great fis.h.i.+ng,” Taylor mused.

Murphy continued to stare at him, not following. Jones pushed his notepad closer to her and said softly, ”Would you like to guess who Cullen dated on his summers in Gulf Sh.o.r.es, Murphy?”

She looked down at the pad, and her eyes widened. ”Branch.”

Jones nodded. ”Taige Branch. He has a history with her, and I'll bet you anything that he's gone looking for her.”

SO d.a.m.n restless, Taige slept fitfully, tossing and turning. She couldn't sleep for the life of her and hadn't been able to for nearly two months now. Ever since Chicago, but Chicago didn't seem to have anything to do with her insomnia.

It was something else. Something new. She was waiting, but she didn't know what for.

Mumbling in her sleep, she rolled onto her belly. A jarring pain shot up her arm, and she groaned, automatically cradling her injured right wrist against her chest.

The soft cast that went from her hand halfway up her forearm immobilized her wrist and hand, but it didn't keep it from hurting when she moved wrong. The pain was enough to bring her completely out of sleep, and she lay on her back in the dark room, staring up at the ceiling. She could finally open her left eye again, but it still hurt like the devil. Taige lay there debating between getting up and finding one of the bottles of pain meds the doctors had prescribed or just finding a book and reading until morning.

Wasn't like she was going to be working for the next few days. Before that thought even made a complete circle through her mind, a chill streaked down Taige's spine. Her breathing hitched. In a smooth, unconscious movement, she rolled out of bed and grabbed the jeans lying on the floor with her left hand. She s.h.i.+mmied into them without hurting her hand much, but she had to lie back to zip and b.u.t.ton them, and that hurt.

She shrugged the pain off and grabbed a tank top from the basket of clean clothes she hadn't ever gotten around to putting up. Hurry hurry hurry. The words seemed to echo all around her, whispering to her in the dark. She didn't turn on any lights as she moved through her house. Instead, she took up position staring out the huge picture window that faced the front yard.

When the headlights cut a swath through the darkness, Taige held herself stil . She didn't recognize the truck, but that was little surprise. Very few people had ever come looking for her. Jones with the Bureau, Dante, Rose before she died; once upon a time, her uncle had sought her out, but that was out of a desire to hurt and torment her just a little more.

But it wasn't any of them.

Taige couldn't have explained how she knew any more than she could explain quantum physics. But she knew. Her breathing went shallow, her heartbeat started to pound, and although she didn't possess much vanity, she ran a hand over her hair. She generally didn't spend too much time messing with her hair, just securing it in a French braid or a ponytail, but with her hand messed up, she wasn't going to be doing too much on her own, and braiding her hair was definitely a two-handed task. So yesterday, tired already of trying to keep it halfway neat, she had spent hours getting the curly mess woven into a series of tight braids. That would keep her from having to mess with it for a while.

Still, she couldn't help but wonder how her hair looked as she stood there, fiddling with her shapeless tank top and fighting the urge to go and change. She pressed gentle fingertips to the nasty bruise ringing her left eye and grimaced. After all these years . . .

she'd known she'd see him again. Even when she drove away from Cul en Morgan's home in tears, she'd known it wasn't over between them.

Why he was coming to her now, she didn't know and honestly, just then, she didn't care.

She was so desperate to see him again, it was almost pathetic.

No, it was pathetic. It had been twelve years, and she was all but panting at the thought of seeing him, of staring into those amazing eyes and standing close enough to smell him.

How much had he changed? Taige wondered. Instinctively, she knew that Cullen would be as devastating at thirty-three as he'd been at twenty-one. The truck came to a stop close to the house. She couldn't see anything beyond the back b.u.mper, and when the tail-lights went off, she jerked as though somebody had used a Taser on her.

She took a deep breath and then groaned as her s.h.i.+rt dragged against her nipples. They were stiff and erect, throbbing under the thin layer of cotton. Embarra.s.sed, she folded her arms over them and wished she could manage to get a d.a.m.n bra on. Her hand hurt too much to manage it, though.

Facing Cullen braless and in her bare feet: how much more disconcerting could it get?

She held herself stiff as the knock came, pounding on the door as though he wanted to tear the door from its hinges. It came a second time, and third. Finally, she made herself move, shuffling through the dark living room with her arms crossed over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the wrap on her cast abrading the bare skin of her left arm and rubbing against her nipples.

Nerves jangled in her belly. No b.u.t.terflies; this felt more like she had giant gryphons taking flight inside her, gryphons with knife-edged wings. She reached out and closed her left hand around the doork.n.o.b and slowly opened it, half hiding behind the door. She kept her gaze focused straight ahead so that all she saw was the way his white T-s.h.i.+rt stretched across his wide, muscled chest.

Through her peripheral vision, she saw that he held something in his hand. Something clutched so tight, his knuckles had gone white. She hissed out a breath and forced herself to look upward, up, up, up until she was staring into his eyes. It took a little longer than it should have; he was taller than he had been. At least by an inch. She was five foot ten-she didn't have to look up to many people, and she decided then that she didn't care for it at al .

”Taige.”

She didn't say anything. She couldn't. Her throat felt frozen, and forcing words past her frozen vocal chords seemed impossible. She just stepped aside to let him come in, and when he did, his arm brushed against hers. She flinched and pul ed away, backing away until a good two feet separated them. Once he was inside, she closed the door and leaned against it, resting her left hand on the doork.n.o.b and holding her right hand against her belly and studying the floor.

He turned to stare at her. From under her lashes, she watched as his shoulders rose and fel , his chest moving as he blew out a harsh breath, almost like he'd been holding his breath the same way she had.

”G.o.d, Taige . . .”

His voice sounded almost exactly like it had in her dreams-no, exactly. In the dim light, she couldn't see his face very well, but she had a bad, bad feeling that her dreams had been pretty d.a.m.n accurate in that aspect, too. Shoving away from the door, she kept her head down as she moved around him and headed into the living room. He followed behind her slowly. She heard a click, and light flooded the room. She shot him a look over her shoulder, just a quick glance, enough to tell her just how dead-on her dreams had been.

It was almost too spooky; even his hair looked right. It was shorter than it had been when he was younger, almost brutally short. His shoulders strained the seams of his s.h.i.+rt, and she had a flashback to her last dream, when he had crowded her up against the couch, demanding she tell him how she'd gotten hurt. She'd shoved him, pus.h.i.+ng one hand against one wide, rock-hard shoulder, and she imagined if she reached out and touched him, he'd feel exactly like he had in her dreams.

”So, are you going to look at me or just let me stare at the back of your head all night?”

he asked softly.

She shot him another quick, almost nervous glance over her shoulder, and Cullen blew out a breath.

When he spoke again, his voice was closer. ”Aren't you going to ask me why I'm here?”

Aren't you going to speak to me at all? Cul en wanted to ask. Instead, he waited until she finally turned around and faced him. In the brightly lit room, he noticed two things.

The first was that she had her arm, her right arm, in a cast that went halfway up to her elbow. A chill raced down his spine. The second was that her left eye was puffy and nearly swol en shut, a dark, ugly bruise that Cullen suspected was every bit as painful as it looked.

Those dreams-s.h.i.+t.

She spoke, and her voice sounded just as it had in all those dreams. ”I already know why you're here. You need my help.” A bitter smile curved her lips as she stared at him.

”Why would else would you be here?” She glanced at the file in his hand and held out her hand.

Cullen swallowed and lifted it, staring at it with the metallic taste of fear thick in his mouth. ”You don't owe me a d.a.m.n thing, Taige. I know that. I've got no right being here, and I know that, too.”

She sighed and dropped her head, covering her eyes with her uninjured hand. ”Cullen, stop. You want something. Out with it. I've got better things to do than stand here and have you brooding all over me. So just spil it.”

”I . . . look, if I didn't have to have your help, I wouldn't be here. But it's not me that needs you-just . . . just don't-”

Taige c.o.c.ked a brow. ”You don't have much of an opinion of me, do you, Cul en?

Whatever brought you here in the middle of the night twelve years after kicking me out of your life has to be pretty d.a.m.n important, and considering the kind of help you probably need, I'm going to a.s.sume there's somebody else involved.” She stared at him, her gaze shuttered. ”You think so little of me that I'd refuse to help whoever this is just to make you suffer because you and me got some history?”

History . . . Is that what we had? That seemed such a simplified statement. Still, said like that, Cullen felt very much the fool. He looked back down at the file and then at her, watching as she once more held out her hand. Careful not to touch her, he held it out. She took it and moved to sit behind the big iron and gla.s.s coffee table before she opened it.