The Missing

If Neptune really existed, he would have had an army of mermaids serving under him, and they’d all look like this girl. Then Cullen shook himself out of that fantasy, tucking it away so he could remember it later—might be a story there.

    IT hurt to breathe. Taige stood there, shaking with rage and fear and confusion. She felt weak, and her head felt muffled, like it did after a particularly intense dream. But so much worse.

    Something had happened. Taige wasn’t sure what, but something had happened. Whatever weird ability let her see events before they happened was mutating. Going from a weird tool of sorts to a weapon.

    Just frickin’ great. She stood staring down at Joey, and she could feel it forming inside her head again. That odd awareness, almost like a physical presence. It wanted to hurt Joey, hurt him worse than he already was. Joey lay on his side, clutching his right knee and whimpering like a baby. He had a series of mottled bruises around his throat. It almost looked like fingerprints. But she hadn’t actually touched him.

    Yes, you did. She could remember the feel of his throat, but not under her hands. She’d touched him, somehow, and left those bruises on his neck, choking him as he tried to rape her.

    Then the hottie had shown up and taken Joey’s knee out. Joey didn’t look like he knew who scared him more: Taige or the tourist. She crouched down beside him just long enough to punch him in the nose, a short, straight-armed jab. She heard bone crunch, heard Joey’s scream, and she watched as blood fountained. “You ever touch me again, I’ll cut your dick off. We clear?”

    She didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she stood and looked at the other guy. He looked familiar, and she ran faces through her mind until she placed where she’d seen him. On the beach in front of the Dunes, and later. She just barely remembered it, but he had followed her away from the crowd at the beach after she’d pulled boy out of the water.

    The white sands, the turquoise green waters, and the endless stretches of beach drew tourists all year around, but in the summer, Gulf Shores, Alabama, often had more tourists in residence than locals. She had seen this one a few times, and he had stood out in her mind because he was so damn cute.

    Cute and decent. Decent enough to help out a girl he didn’t know.

    “Thank you.” She wished she could think of something else to say, but the ache in her head was getting worse, and her belly was knotting. She had to get to Rose’s and lie down before she fell down. She turned away, but she only made it a few feet before he was at her side.

    “Where are you going? You need to call the cops.”

    Taige shook her head. Oh, no. No cops. She didn’t even want to think about the trouble she’d get if they took her to the station and called her uncle. And they would, too. She was a minor out late, and she’d nearly been raped. If she looked half as rough as she felt, then she’d be lucky if they didn’t try to cart her off to the hospital.

    But she didn’t need the attention from that on top of what she’d done earlier. No, absolutely no cops. “Sorry, but I’m not calling the cops.”

    “Are you nuts?” The question slipped out of him before he even seemed to realize what he’d said, but he didn’t take it back. “You got any idea what they were going to do?”

    She stopped and looked at him. Yes. She knew exactly. She probably knew better than he did. The ability that had let her save that boy earlier had also led her to girls who had been grabbed off the highway and raped until they bled. When she was twelve, it had led her to the partially decomposed corpse of a nine-year-old boy who’d seen his mother’s boyfriend selling cocaine.

    “Yeah, I know,” she said, unable to curtail her sarcasm. “I figured it out when he was trying to rip my shorts off. But I’m not going to the cops. And I think he’s probably going to think twice before he grabs another girl like that.”

    “They were going to rape you. They need to pay for it.”

    Taige grinned then. “Then go take care of it. I’ll let you handle the bill. Hell, I’ll even tell you where to find the other son of a bitch.” She would, too, and the thought of what Sir Galahad might do was enough to have her grin widen. Then it faded. “But I’m not calling the cops. I need to go.”

    The ache in her head was getting worse, and Taige had a bad feeling she might puke. The