The Reunited

by Shiloh Walker

  Taige’s gut clenched. She didn’t ask what. It wasn’t like Jillian often asked to do this. How could she say no . . . even when everything inside her rebelled. Jillian saw things so much clearer than Taige ever had, felt things so much more acutely. If Jillian could live with that in her head, then Taige would accept what Jillian had to show her. Even if some part of her would rather hide from it.

  Screw being a coward . . . this was her child.

  Laying her hand in her daughter’s, she glanced around and then back at Jillian. They were alone, or as alone as they were going to be.

  “You do things that matter,” Jillian whispered. “You always have.”

  And with that, Taige fell into that bright, shining void that was her daughter’s mind.

  It wasn’t bright for long.

  In seconds, they were in darkness. Surrounded by screams. And pain. And death.

  * * *

  PATRICK eyed the skinny mess of bones Dontrez had pulled out of the holding cell.

  She’d been a lot prettier than this when they’d grabbed her.

  But she’d stopped eating.

  A lot of them did that.

  She’d start eating again.

  All it would take was the right incentive.

  He knew all about finding the right incentive.

  He gestured to Lydia and said, “Clean her up.”

  Lydia beckoned for Dontrez to bring the girl. There were screams and tears and struggles. Moments later, there was a slap. Patrick smiled. Lydia dealt with things efficiently. It was why he kept her around.

  “Are you certain he’ll be satisfied with her?”

  Glancing over at the man next to him, he shrugged. “She’ll do. He just wants a warm body for the most part. I’ve got my hands full with other matters. If he wants to be picky, the price will go up.”

  A soft, warm little head butted his ankle and he smiled, knelt down, and scooped up Demeter. The cat snuggled into his arms as he scratched it under the chin. It was odd, how attached he’d gotten to the little thing. He’d originally gotten her for his last fiancée. He’d thought perhaps having a kitten to mother would make her stop her constant blathering about a family. It hadn’t. It had just made her that much more moon-eyed and tiresome.

  He wondered what she thought of her new life now. He’d warned her more than once to stop it with the ceaseless prattling, but she hadn’t. He’d let his dick do the thinking with her. Grace had been lovely, there was no doubt about that, but she hadn’t been smart.

  Ella was much more suitable.

  He’d been considering discarding Grace anyway, but when he saw Ella, he’d simply known. It was like she’d been waiting for him.

  So Grace was done away with. She was the property of one of his associates over in Dubai. She’d mentioned wanting to visit . . . well, she had that wish. And she’d never leave.

  He kept the cat, of course.

  Maybe he’d give Demeter to Ella.

  As a wedding present.

  Something to consider.

  * * *

  IT took all of Taige’s control not to react when Jillian broke contact. All of her control not to cry.

  “I saw him, Mom,” Jillian whispered. There were tears in her blue eyes. Tears of horror . . . but behind the horror, there was rage. “I looked at him and I saw inside his mind and it’s . . . it’s awful. He buys and sells girls like they were books or shoes. He was going to marry one of them, but he got bored with her and he sold her. I could see inside his head and now all of that is trapped inside me and I can’t just . . . I can’t . . . I can’t . . .”

  Her voice broke and Taige reached out, pulled Jillian against her. “Hush.” She rubbed her cheek against Jillian’s soft curls. “Hush now, baby. I understand. It will be okay, got me?”

  “He won’t stop.” Jillian clutched at Taige desperately. “Even now, I can see him. He’s petting a cat and thinking about that girl he was gonna marry and he thinks it’s funny that she couldn’t take her cat when he sold her.”

  Taige closed her eyes.

  “It’s like they are just toys to him. He’s in my head all the time, and I can’t make him stop, because I can’t see him all the way . . . And even if I could, I’m . . .”

  Jillian’s voice broke and she started to sob.

  But Taige understood.

  Just a kid.

  She’d been there before.

  She knew what it was like to have something awful trapped inside her mind, a knowledge that something bad was happening. Something terrible. Sometimes she’d tried to help. But even then she’d been a little older than Jillian was now. And none of it had ever been anything like this.

  “It will be okay, baby,” Taige said quietly, easing back and gently forcing the girl’s face up. “Look at me . . . we got this. We can handle this, I promise.”

  Jillian dashed away the tears and stared at her. “I’m just a kid. I know that. I’m just a kid. I don’t know what to do. But Taylor can fix this. You could fix it. Dez . . . all of you. You all can make things like this right.”

  Tipping her head back, Taige stared at the ceiling, wanting to rage. This wasn’t fair . . . this was too much of a burden to place on a child. Too much of a burden to place on her child, who’d already suffered so much.

  “Taylor can make it stop,” Jillian said, her voice soft and steady. “That’s why I wanted to come here. He knows the way to make it work. All of you know what to do. And I can do one thing that will help. One thing . . . I can do something that matters, too.”

  The girl eased back, staring at Taige with eyes that burned.

  And the courage in her young eyes was enough to lay Taige low.

  * * *

  IT was a good thing Cullen Morgan knew how to look before he swung, because the door opened to reveal Desiree . . . not Taylor. He smiled.

  She didn’t smile back.

  Maybe she saw something of what he felt on his face. Wouldn’t have surprised him. Keeping his smile firmly in place, he asked casually, “Can I come in?”

  “Well, I’d say no, but then Taylor would just change my mind for me,” she drawled, stepping aside. “I don’t see any point in delaying the inevitable anyway.”

  He arched a brow as he came through the doorway. Taylor was coming out of a sitting area to the right. Cullen stopped, still smiling his pleasant little Hey, I mean no harm smile.

  Taylor didn’t look fooled. “I take it you and Jillian finally talked.”

  “Oh. For hours.” Cullen watched from the corner of his eye as Dez disappeared through a door. “Speaking of talks . . . you had one with my wife . . . at our wedding. Recall that talk?”

  Taylor grimaced, touched his throat. Cullen had found out after the talk quite some time later . . . the talk had mostly been on Taige’s part—she’d used her gift to all but choke Taylor after the man had been poking at Jillian too much. With a telepathic child, all it took was loud thinking. And Jillian was very, very receptive. “I recall something along those lines, yes.”

  “You were told you weren’t recruiting her, as well. Recall that?”

  “Yes.” Taylor inclined his head.

  “Good.”

  Five seconds later, Cullen was standing over the cocky, arrogant son of a bitch, his hand hurting like hell, and there was blood trickling from a cut on Taylor’s mouth.

  To Cullen’s mind, it wasn’t enough blood. And Taylor didn’t look anywhere near scared as he got to his feet. His gaze was still blank, his face was still blank—the way he looked, he could have been out playing golf. He sure as hell didn’t look like somebody had just popped him one.

  “You son of a bitch, you didn’t even try to move,” Cullen snarled.

  “No.” Taylor stared at him, those cool blue eyes level and flat. “If I had a daughter, I’m pretty sure I’d feel the same as you.”

  “You fucking bastard. You have no idea how I feel, how I would feel.”

  “Cullen.”

  “You know how I f
eel? You fucking robot, you don’t feel, that’s the problem,” he roared, ignoring the quiet voice coming from his left.

  Taylor just stood there, hands at his sides, face blank. Cullen closed the distance between them, furious. Grabbing the man’s suit, he hauled him closer. “You too much of a pussy to fight me? You’ll drag kids into your world but you won’t face a man? Cowardly piece of shit.”

  “Oh, now that’s it.” Two strong, slim hands pushed between them. Cullen wasn’t about to let go that easily.

  “Back off,” he snarled.

  And those cool, unfeeling blue eyes blazed with heat. Gently, Taylor nudged Dez off to the side. Not that she was in any mood to be nudged, but the man somehow managed it.

  In a quiet, controlled voice, Taylor said, “You’re going to watch how you speak to my wife, or I’ll break you into so many pieces, they won’t have anything left to bury, you hear me?”

  “Oh, now that’s all nice and sexy, Jones, but the wife can speak for herself.” Dez shoved between them once more. Her eyes hot with fury, she looked from Cullen to her husband. “And you better think again before you try to nudge me aside, buddy, because if you do it? You and me are going to box, you hear me?”

  Taylor apparently didn’t. “You aren’t going to speak to her that way, Morgan.”

  “Jones . . . you worry about him punching you. I’ll worry about how he speaks to me.” She wedged herself between and elbowed her husband in the gut until he moved back. Then she shoved against Cullen until he, too, fell back a step.

  “Back off, Dez.”

  “Don’t you go telling me to back off, Morgan. Not unless you want me to rearrange that pretty-boy face of yours, and trust me, right now I really want to do it,” she said, taking a step in his direction, her chin jerking up. “Oh, you’re an idiot, you know that? A first-class moron. He didn’t drag Jillian into shit, and if you know a damn thing about that daughter of yours, you could probably figure that out. She called him. He didn’t call her.”

  “He’s using a child.”

  “She’s not a child,” Dez said, shaking her head. “I know that hurts you and I’m sorry, but she hasn’t really been a child since the day she was kidnapped, and if you could let yourself admit it, you’d see the truth of it. You blind fool, what is she supposed to do—ignore the fact that she knows there are women out there . . . some of them as young as she is, being held prisoner? Girls that are going to be sold off to the highest bidder? Girls she can help? She’s got a nightmare trapped in her head. You want her to go crazy or something?”

  “That’s enough, Dez.” Behind her, Taylor sighed heavily.

  She swung her head around, glaring at her husband. “The hell it is. He wants to call you a coward, call you out for using his daughter, when that’s not what this is. She was brave enough to come to you, Jones. She’s got more courage than he does, for fuck’s sake.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with courage,” Cullen growled. “And everything to do with protecting my child.”

  “And how can you protect her from what’s haunting her?” Dez asked quietly. “Because I’ve got a good idea what she has trapped inside her head. You can’t chase those ghosts away. It’s not like it’s a monster hiding under her bed, for crying out loud. And it sucks, but you can’t fix this. You can’t. Neither can Taige. Hell, if you’d taken five seconds to ask Taige, she probably would have told you that.”

  “Leave Taige out of this,” Cullen rasped.

  Spinning away, he covered his face with his hands. Some of them as young as she is . . . being held prisoner . . .

  Daddy . . . I can’t ignore this . . .

  She’d whispered that to him. On the plane, as they flew in from Alabama. He’d come, mostly because he’d wanted to hit Taylor and convince the son of a bitch to stay away from his daughter. From his little girl. Because he’d thought he could protect her . . .

  They need me, Daddy . . .

  “What exactly are you expecting her to do?” he demanded. “Jilly’s just a kid.”

  SEVEN

  NO, there hadn’t been any information in that forest of paper and file folders and pictures, but he’d picked up a few stray images from Dez’s brain.

  A warehouse.

  So Joss had left and was driving around.

  Following his gut, he found himself in an area of town he doubted many tourists ever went. It was on the outskirts and he suspected it had seen better days. The warehouse had a For Sale sign on the side, but it had so much graffiti covering it, the only letters he could really make out were part of the F and the L and E.

  Nothing back at the hotel had jumped out at him . . . except the images Dez had tried to keep trapped inside her brain.

  They’d made his skin burn.

  Made it hurt.

  And it was even worse now.

  There was death here.

  He didn’t know how long ago it had happened, but people had died here and it tarnished the air, a vicious black stain that would never fully fade.

  It was fucking cold, too. The lingering echo of those trapped here. Which was why the place was so heavily imprinted on Dez’s brain, why he’d followed the trail to it so easily. Probably all but infested with ghosts.

  He couldn’t see them but he felt that eerie echo . . . heard it. Like somebody was whispering just behind him, but it went silent every time he turned around.

  Circling around the warehouse, he came to a stop when he caught a glimpse of the moon glinting off the water somewhere in the distance.

  It was one of the numerous lakes. No telling which one . . . He’d have to dig out a map just to figure it out. But for some reason, standing there and staring at it hit him like a fist.

  A pang of deep, gripping sorrow. Joss could feel his damn throat closing up on him as the wave of grief struck him.

  Cold danced along his skin. It was almost the way it hit him when he was picking up a ghost—except he had to have the right gift for that. He didn’t have the ability to see them right now. Sense them, maybe, but this . . . this was different.

  Pain swelled inside him, stealing away the ability to breathe, to see, to think.

  And still, Joss didn’t know what this was. What he was feeling. Under the weight of the grief, his shields trembled, shuddered.

  The grief pressed closer. Weighed in heavier.

  And he thought he heard the faintest echo of a sob. A woman’s sob—

  Amelie—

  Just thinking her name was like a crushing weight had been dropped on his heart, and he slumped, almost went to the ground. The sound of crying grew louder and louder . . .

  And then, the loud, raucous blast of his phone sliced through the night, shattering whatever it was that gripped him.

  * * *

  THE drive back to the hotel, thanks to traffic, took a good forty minutes, and Joss relished every single second of it. It had been Jones on the phone. The other psychic had arrived.

  It was time for Joss to get his mind-fuck on.

  Yippie ki-yay. Now if he could have stalled for another two hours. Gotten smashed. Yeah, shit-faced drunk might make this easier to get through, he thought as he stepped off the elevator.

  The tension slammed into him, a brutal, double-fisted punch. All around, he could pick up on other thoughts and they were everywhere, but none were as chaotic as those coming from Taylor Jones’s room.

  It wasn’t thoughts, either.

  Wasn’t just tension . . . anger. Chaos. Fear. Worry. Regret. An ugly miasma that he didn’t even want to step into, but he had no choice.

  Who in the hell had Taylor found to . . .

  The door opened and he found himself face-to-face with a child.

  “What the fuc . . .”

  He bit his tongue to try and hold the cuss word back, tasted blood.

  She smiled at him. Black curls fell in crazy corkscrews and spirals all over the place. Her eyes, a bright and vivid blue, practically glowed as she smiled at him.

  She was a p
retty kid. A memorable one, especially considering the wallop of the power he could feel coming from her.

  “Hi, Joss!” She grinned at him, a smile that displayed a set of braces with purple rubber bands that matched the purple sweater she wore.

  He’d never met that kid before in his life.

  * * *

  “YOU’RE fu . . . shi . . .” Joss almost choked to keep from swearing in front of her—again. Judging by the look on the kid’s face, she knew exactly what he was thinking . . . she knew. She was amused. She wanted to laugh.

  Ha, ha, kid. So glad I amuse you, he thought sourly, looking away from her and glaring at Jones. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said.

  Jones just stared back at him.

  “You’re kidding,” Joss said, his voice getting rougher. Shoving back from the table, he stood up and stared at the girl, unable to believe he had to sync his mind to a child’s.

  “You ever known me to have that much of a sense of humor, Crawford?”

  Joss wanted to swear. No, what he really wanted to do was hit something, and then head out of there, find a bar, and have a few drinks. Instead, he continued to stare at the girl.

  She was strong. He could feel the buzz of her in his mind, even through his shields. Strong, hell. That was kind of like calling a Category 5 hurricane strong. The power he sensed in her was devastating. But was she controlled? They hadn’t even started scraping at the surface of what he was supposed to be getting into, but anything that involved human trafficking was dangerous. He didn’t really want to get involved in that sort of shit when he had an uncontrolled gift—

  “I’ve got more control than you do,” she said, wrinkling her nose at him.

  Crossing his arms over his chest, he cocked a brow at her. “Yeah? Then you oughta know you shouldn’t go poking your fingers into my brain without asking me.”

  “I can’t help that you think loud.”

  “I don’t think loud,” he said, narrowing his eyes.

  “You aren’t thinking quiet enough for me.” She didn’t look bothered by the glare.

  It was a glare that normally made people back up about ten paces. She was either too young to have developed that common sense or she’d already figured out the basics of Joss Crawford—he was a mean-ass bastard, but certain groups were safe from him. Namely animals and small kids. They were about the only groups that were off his list.