Read The Missing for Free Online

wouldn’t go. Said somebody here’s a paramedic . . . ?”

    Rose jerked her chin toward the man who still hulked in the shadows like he was ready to rip Cullen’s arm off and beat him to death with it. “Yeah. My boy, Dante, does emergency rescues. He can look her over well enough—if he’d get his butt moving.”

    Dante’s lip curled in a snarl, and without saying a word, he turned and stomped off down a dark hallway. The woman reached up and patted Cullen’s arm. “Don’t you worry about him. He’s just protective of Taige. We both are.”

    Rose shouldered Cullen aside, tucking her small body up against Taige’s and leading her through an arched doorway. “Get that light on the wall for me—what’s your name?”

    “It’s Cullen.”

    “Get the light on for me, Cullen, and then you sit right down there and tell me what happened.” She eased Taige’s body onto the couch and gave her the same look Cullen had gotten from his mother a time or two before. “Because I know this girl, and she ain’t going to tell me a damn thing.”

    Dante slid into the room, moving quieter than a man that big ought to be able to move. In his arms he held a box that looked more like a tackle box than any first aid kit Cullen had ever seen. But he didn’t turn it over to his mother; instead, he crouched down by Taige’s head and started looking her over. Cullen knew the man was listening to every word Cullen said, but Dante didn’t say anything until Cullen had finished speaking. “You should have taken her on into the emergency room, no matter what she said,” Dante said. He had a deep, gruff voice, and when he glanced at Cullen over a big shoulder, Cullen saw the fury simmering there.

    Fortunately, it didn’t seem like it was directed at Cullen now, and he breathed a little easier. “I tried to. But I don’t know where it is, and she wasn’t too interested in telling me. She said she’d have you look her over, and if you insisted, she’d go.”

    That made Dante laugh. Then he looked at Taige, shaking his head. “Yeah, like she’s ever done a damn thing just cuz I told her she ought to.” Dante sighed and opened the box at his side. “Let’s get you cleaned up. And Taige, if I tell you that you need a doctor, you’re going, even if I have to throw your skinny ass over my shoulder.”

    Rose smacked Dante lightly on the arm. “You watch how you talk to her, boy. And don’t worry. You say she needs a doctor, she’s going to a doctor, and there isn’t a damn thing she can do about it, either.”

    “SO did she make you go to the hospital?”

    The shadow fell over Taige, and she opened her eyes, squinting up at Cullen. The sun was at his back, and she couldn’t make out his face very well, but she recognized his voice. He crouched down beside her, and she lifted her sunglasses onto her head, meeting his eyes. He winced and touched his fingers to her swollen left eye. “Ouch.”

    The touch was gentle. It didn’t hurt at all. But Taige wished it would have. Hurt would have been a little better than her reaction. Heat. Just that gentle touch had her heart pounding in her chest. Taige had always snorted when she read things like that, how just some guy’s touch could do that, but until now, she hadn’t ever had it happen, hadn’t ever believed it could happen.

    But with her heart racing away in her chest, she had little choice but to believe just that. “It’s just bruised. Dante tried to make me go, said there could have been scratches on my cornea or something.” Then she shrugged. “I waited until the doctors’ offices opened and went to the clinic. Dante’s got a friend that works there, and he took a look at me. Made Rose happy, and it got Dante off my back.”

    “They family?”

    Taige shook her head. “No, at least not by blood. Rose knew my mom and dad, though. I’ve known her since I was a baby.” She grimaced and added, “And the way Rose acts, you’d think I still was a