The Missing by Shiloh Walker

with a hot poker. She shook her head and tried again to pull away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

    “You never do.”

    She sneered at him. “You’re nothing more than my imagination, you know. Since I imagined you, wouldn’t it make sense that you’d already know what happened?”

    Slowly, Cullen’s thumb passed over her lower lip. “I’m not your imagination, darlin’. Tell me.”

    But she didn’t want to talk about it. Her gut tied itself into ugly, slippery little knots every time she thought about the videos she’d found and all those girls and boys she had talked to, kids with chunks missing out of their lives, pieces of themselves taken away in the night. That the bastards had recorded it so that every last detail was floating around for the enjoyment of sickos everywhere made it so much worse.

    Taige hated the perverts that had paid for the kids for what they had done to them, everything from the drugging to the assaults and the rapes. She hated that the oh so lily-white and pure soccer moms and their fine upstanding husbands had made videos of it, recording the way those kids had been victimized.

    Taige wasn’t active law enforcement, but she had made sure she was there when the arrests happened, and she had threatened Jones within an inch of his life if he didn’t let her observe the questioning. She had left after the first two hours. There had been three couples involved, and most of them wouldn’t say a word. Their lawyers had shut them up but good.

    One woman though, Deidre Sanger, hadn’t seemed to realize how much trouble she was in. Or why. “It’s not like they remember it,” she’d said. “It’s not like they know what happened.”

    Taige had wanted to go through the mirrored glass and choke the bitch. Deidre had the nerve to act as though they had done the kids a favor by drugging them. Few people could understand how, sometimes, those drug-induced states made it so much worse for the victims. A piece of their life stolen . . .

    “Taige.” A warm hand curved over her neck, and then a hard mouth pressed a gentle kiss against hers. She shivered and then opened her eyes, stared at Cullen. His lids were low over his eyes but that couldn’t hide the frustration she saw there. His hand tightened on her neck, but he didn’t say anything else. He just eased her body back up against his, holding her tight. She buried her face in the front of his shirt and wished this was real.

    If it was real, she could tell him. She could cuddle up against him and cry herself dry, and maybe the ache in her heart would ease a little. Maybe if she cried hard enough, maybe if she told him all the vile crap she had been forced to wade through for the past decade, she could breathe without feeling like there was a band around her chest. She could sleep deep and easy without nightmares, without guilt.

    But it wasn’t real. Cullen’s presence in her dreams came from years of loving the bastard, even after he’d kicked her out of his life. These dreams were a sham, something brought on by her weak, needy heart, and she hated them.

    Suddenly desperate to wake up, to get away from him, she shoved against him, hard and fast. She ended up flipping the hammock over, but she landed on her hands and knees, away from him. He swore under his breath and reached for her, but Taige scrambled away. “I don’t want you here, Cullen,” she said, squeezing the words through her tight throat and wishing she could scream it at him. Wished she could hit him and do something to ease the pain inside her.

    “Yes, you do,” he whispered, striding toward her. She brought her hands up, ready to punch him if he came any closer. Cullen was ready to risk it, apparently, because he just kept coming. She swung toward him, and he blocked the first punch. The second one caught him on the chin, but he still reached for her, pulling her up against him.

    Taige struggled, kicking at his shins. But her bare feet weren’t