Eyes burning from the smoke, Taige turned away. Cul en fell into step beside her. They wound their way through the ma.s.s of rescue personnel and law enforcement. A few people tried to intercept them, but Taige flashed her ID from the Bureau, and they grudgingly stepped out of her way, usually with a muttered warning, "Stay out of the way."

After the fifth time, Taige swore. "d.a.m.n, it ain't like I'm up here trying to throw a party."

And that earned her an irritated, territorial look. Get the h.e.l.l out, was the general consensus. These people didn't want her here, but Taige honestly didn't give a d.a.m.n. She wasn't too thrilled to be there, either. And then it got worse. Somebody recognized her.

Although she'd tried to avoid it, somebody had connected her to Jillian's rescue. Old pictures of her had been dug up and plastered across several major papers, and she'd had to dodge a couple of reporters back home. Word spread as fast as the fire was spreading, and she felt the change in the air, going from disgruntled territorial macho c.r.a.p as the firefighters and cops thought the FBI was intruding, to curiosity, mixed with a little bit of outright hostile disbelief.

No thoughts were clear, but that wasn't unusual for her. Awful of her, but at that moment, she was glad the fire raged on, because it kept most of the people too d.a.m.n busy to come up and pester her. It also kept them from staring at her. For the most part.

She could see or feel several different gazes on her, measuring, evaluating.

It added to her already strained state of mind, and trying to block it out was getting harder and harder. Her control was always weaker when she was tired, and she had pa.s.sed the point of tired a long way back.

Halfway to the car, the exhaustion snuck up on her, and she tripped, stumbled. Cullen caught her right arm and steadied her. Another hand closed around her left arm, and a concerned voice said, "Ma'am, are you okay?"

All conscious thought fled. She lifted her gaze and stared at the stranger without seeing his face. The gray dropped down on her like a lead weight, and she could feel it pressing on her, crushing her. Only Cullen's hand on her right arm and the stranger's on her left kept her from hitting the ground.

She saw faces.

Dozens of faces flashed before her eyes. Grief-stricken parents, lost children, infuriated, frustrated law enforcement officials. Their thoughts formed a collective voice, and it echoed inside her mind in a refrain: Why?

There was another question, just as loud, and it was one that Taige had asked more than once. Who? Until that moment, the answer had been unknown. But now there was a flicker of knowledge.

Elusive, it danced away before she could fully understand it. Reflexively, she reached up, grabbed hold of the stranger standing in front of her. The connection-it had come from him. Tenuous at best, and if she faltered for just a second, it would slip away again.

Instinct almost had her forcing her way inside the man's thoughts, and she just barely managed to restrain herself, seeking instead to deepen that surface connection.

This isn't happening.

But it was. There was no denying it. From the corner of her eye, she could see the man who'd unknowingly brought this on. He was a paramedic, about her age, about her height, and when he'd been a kid, he'd lost his older sister. The girl had been in that stage where adolescence gave way to adulthood. They'd looked a lot alike.

The kil er had seen the brother, seen him-and remembered the sister. Remembered killing her. The killer had relived those memories with a pa.s.sion so intense it had left an imprint, like pressing his hand into fresh cement. And the cement, in this case, was the medic.

Son of a b.i.t.c.h. He'd wiped all traces of himself clean, then he'd run into this man who bore such a strong resemblance to one of his victims. This man didn't even realize he'd met his sister's kil er, however briefly. And the killer probably didn't realize he'd left such a strong imprint, either.

The little memory flashes, the psychic imprints worked to fall into place within her mind. All the answers danced just below the surface, moving closer and closer, shifting, realigning, until the answer was there.

All but glaring at her. Taige moaned and sagged to her knees, jerking away from the two men trying to keep her upright. Tears burned in her eyes, and she buried her face in her hands. Warm hands came up and cupped her shoulders. Without looking, she knew who it was: Cullen. He knelt behind her, sliding his arms around her waist and pulling her back against him as her mind fought to accept the knowledge before her.

Cullen's warmth, his strength, surrounded her as she knelt on the ground and fought not to be sick. Fought not to cry. If she started, she wouldn't stop for a good long while.

There'd be time for tears later. But not now.

Now she had to go. Had to find him and see if she'd really seen what she thought she'd seen.

Reaching up, she covered one of Cul en's hands with hers. "We need to go."

One hand smoothed across her shoulder to cup over her neck. "What's going on, Taige? Where are we going?"

"Back home. He's there."

TAIGE wouldn't speak to him.

It was d.a.m.ned eerie having her sitting in the car with him right then, because she seemed more dead than alive. Her skin had a grayish cast, her mouth had a tight, pinched look to it, and she gazed out the windshield with an unblinking stare. Cul en doubted she saw anything, not the scenery whipping by and not the cars they pa.s.sed as they sped south down the I-65.

For the first hour, he'd tried to talking to her, but she hadn't answered anything he'd asked. She wouldn't speak at all. He shot the clock on the dashboard a glance. The d.a.m.n thing hadn't ever moved so slow. He was driving nearly ninety miles an hour. On occasion, a snarl in the traffic had him pul ing out on the shoulder to drive, and he only hoped that if they got pulled over, Taige's Bureau ID would get them out of trouble.

a.s.suming she could focus enough.

The miles seemed to drag by, even though he was driving so fast the scenery sped by at a blur. Finally, he saw the exit he needed for Highway 59, and he took it at sixty-five miles an hour. The two-lane highway wasn't as busy in the middle of a Monday morning, but the cars were still moving too d.a.m.n slow to satisfy him.

The silence got to him, and he glanced at Taige again. "Where are we going?"

Finally a response. "Just keep driving."

"Driving where, exactly?"

She didn't answer. The thick fringe of her lashes lowered, shielding her eyes. She looked-d.a.m.n, Cullen didn't even have the words to describe how she looked. Shattered.

Devastated. Shocked.

He wanted to hold her, wished he could pull the car off the road and say screw it. The need to do just that was strong.

Yet there was an equally strong need that kept him driving. A part of him that was hot with antic.i.p.ation and the need to get where they were going, find who they were looking for, so Cullen could kill him. Slow. Nice and slow. Cullen hadn't ever pegged himself as a bloodthirsty type. He'd never admit it, but when he was in the delivery room the day Jillian was born, he'd gotten d.a.m.n queasy when he saw the blood. His legs had gone all watery, and for a minute, he had been scared he was going to humiliate himself and pa.s.s out on the delivery room floor.

His dad loved to go hunting, but Cullen had gone with him exactly one time-one time, and he'd known that hunting was not his thing. The smell of blood, the sight of it, the feel of it. h.e.l.l, no.

But right now? He craved it. He didn't just want to find this man and kill him. He wanted to hurt him.

The b.a.s.t.a.r.d didn't know it, but he was already dead.

As they drew closer to Gulf Sh.o.r.es, the traffic from the tourists thickened until they were moving along at a snail's pace. At least it felt that way to Cullen. Blood roared in his ears so loud, he barely heard Taige's voice when she said, "Turn here." The narrow highway was just north of town, and it wasn't at all familiar to Cullen.

"Where are we going?" he asked as they started to head east.

"The church."

Cullen didn't want to ask which church. He had a feeling that he already knew the answer to that, just by that expression in her eyes: dazed disbelief and desolation. "What church? Why?" he asked shortly. She didn't answer. Just barely, he kept from growling at her. He took the turn onto that gravel road so sharply, the truck skidded, and the tires threw dust into the air. There was a sign set in a flower bed, surrounded by chaotic bursts of flowers.

Disciples of the Lamb, it read.

Under that, worship times. And under that . . . a name.

Leon Carson, Minister.

For just the briefest second, time seemed to stop. Cul en slammed on the brakes and read the name again, certain he'd misread it.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h!" he roared. Shoving his foot down on the gas, he sped down the winding little drive, pulling in front of the church and stomping on the brake. Tires squealed.

"He's not here," Taige murmured. Cul en released his seat belt and paused, looking back at her. She moved slowly, as though each movement hurt.

"Did he take my daughter?" he demanded.

She swallowed. He could hear it, and it sounded as loud as a gunshot. "I think he did."

Taige wasn't sure if she'd be able to stand up just yet. In the entire time she'd known Cullen, he'd always been so self-contained. Even when she'd seen him after his mother died, he'd been contained. Holding his grief, his rage, everything he felt so tightly inside, only the echo of it could leak through to spil onto her.

But that restraint was shattered now.

She could feel his rage so strongly, her hands trembled in sympathy. Her gut was tangled into a million knots, and adrenaline pulsed through her. When she took a deep breath, the connection deepened, so strong and sudden that for a moment, she couldn't tel where she left off and he began. When she looked around, it was with his eyes.

When she moved, it felt wrong, felt off, and it was because her brain was still mired in his. It took three tries to get the door to open, and when she slid out, she had to brace a hand against the side of the truck just to stay upright. Closing her eyes, she forced herself to erect some sort of shield between them. It was shaky and thin, not strong enough to block him out, but it was better than nothing.

Just barely. Enough that she could open her eyes and look at the church and the rectory and know that she was seeing it with her eyes and not his. To her eyes, the church looked simple, plain, just a pretty country church with a white picket fence, flowers, and stained gla.s.s windows.

But the house- "s.h.i.t." Taige swallowed the bile churning up through her belly. The house was new.

Over the past ten years, the church had grown, more and more members joining, and five years ago, those members had built the rectory. Five years old. Most houses that new didn't have much psychic energy inside them, especially not a house where only one person lived.

But this house was screaming with it. Chilled to the bone, she crossed her arms over her chest and started toward the neat little brick house. She could sense Leon's energy, an echo of his personality. All people left it behind, almost like a scent. When she'd lived with her uncle, she had kept her shields up so that she couldn't pick up anything random from him. It had been an effort to avoid feeling his hatred of her and maybe, because she had always blocked him off, she'd missed the clues.

He'd been killing for a long time.

Those little memory flashes she'd picked up earlier from the paramedic told the story in vivid detail. She saw dozens and dozens of faces, al of them differing in physical appearance and age. There were hairstyles that had to date back to the seventies, girls wearing the big hair and stirrup pants of the eighties, blue eye shadow almost up to the eyebrow. A boy no more than ten wearing the red fake leather jacket made popular by Michael Jackson.

So many of them-rage churned inside her like bile, boiling up her throat, threatening to spill out onto everything around her, hot, potent, and deadly. She swallowed against it, struggled to breathe past the nausea. It wasn't time yet. She couldn't break down yet, couldn't get sick, couldn't scream in denial or let herself wallow in the storm of guilt that waited.

Not yet.

Because there was another child. When Leon had seen the paramedic earlier, he hadn't just thought of the man's sister, he'd also thought of another child. Blue-eyed, blonde-haired, her body just beginning to show signs of womanhood. A demon child with a demon gift, and the time to purify the child was drawing near.

"Please, G.o.d." Taige closed her eyes and prayed. "Don't let me be too late."

On the heels of that soft prayer came a rush of energy. Adrenaline-induced, she knew, and once it faded, she was going to crash, and crash hard. But for now, it gave her the strength she needed to pull the Glock 9 mm from the holster at her side and hold it steady as she crossed to the house.

"I thought you said he wasn't here," Cullen said, his voice neutral. Neutral, but it couldn't hide the rage blistering through him.

"He's not," she said quietly. But she'd been wrong before.

Terribly wrong. Bitter, futile rage burned inside her as she thought back to how many times she'd told Rose that Leon wasn't dangerous to anybody other than Taige. She couldn't have imagined him hurting somebody other than her, not in a thousand years.

And she had been so very wrong.

Walking to the house, Cullen at her side, she took a few seconds to bolster her shields.

Bad, bad things had happened inside that house, and it had left a nasty, stinking cloud of death hovering, all but coloring the air. If she walked into that unprepared, she'd never emerge with her sanity intact.

"So, if you know he's not here, you got a plan for getting inside? Or are we even going inside?" Cullen asked. His voice was calm, almost level, but it didn't quite mask the fury she sensed inside him.

"Oh, we're going inside." The adrenaline crashing through her stil had her shaking minutely. "You feel like trying to break a door down? I've got some lock picks in the car, but I'm too shaky to use them." She held up her hand and stared at it, watching the fine tremors.

"You can't hocus-pocus it open?"

Taige shook her head. "No. Any telekinetic gift I have is limited to living things. I can't do jack with something inanimate." A door lock was about as inanimate as it got.

"In that case, I'd love to break the door down." He had a mean smile on his lips, and she suspected he'd like to break al sorts of things, a door being fairly far down on the list.

But considering the real target of his rage wasn't handy, he'd make do with the door. For now.

A shiver raced through her on the tail end of that thought.

Cullen was going to kill Leon.

She understood his murderous rage all too well, and she couldn't blame him. She'd want to do the same thing, or worse, if she were in his place. h.e.l.l, she wasn't even in his place, and she wanted to kill Leon.

But Taige was also aware of the consequences of that. Dicey situation here. She couldn't blame Cul en, or rob him of his need to avenge his daughter and protect her, but she also wasn't about to let him do something that could end up with his a.s.s in jail.

He deserved better than that. Jillian deserved better.

The sound of a door being busted off its hinges jerked her out of her reverie, and she looked up, staring at the front door. The door was half off its hinges, and the wood of the doorjamb was busted, little splinters and slivers of wood littering the pretty white tile inside the house and the wooden planks of the porch. Cullen glanced back at her and then pushed the door completely open. For a minute, they both stood there in the doorway, looking into the house.

The walls were painted a soft, pale blue, almost soothing. The hardwood floors gleamed a mellow gold, and there was a pretty blue throw rug with an abstract, geometric pattern. That very first glance was of a well cared for, pretty new home. There was a big cross hanging on the wall at the end of the hall, painted a pristine white. Under it was a table, and there was a huge Bible on it that lay open.

That sight bothered her, very deeply bothered her. As pretty and warm as the house looked, it stank with a miasma of death and pain. The sight of a holy book inside this house was so wrong. If she could bear touching something that Leon had touched, she'd grab the Bible and get it out of there.

Instead, she looked away from it and stepped inside the house, scanning and cataloging every sight, every sound, every little memory flash. There were a d.a.m.n lot of those. Too many. Some of them even dating back to his childhood. The entire house was stained with them, although he'd only lived there five years. This place, it might never be clean again.

Three feet inside the doorway, the first memory flash a.s.sailed her: a girl, older than Jillian had been, but not quite on the cusp of womanhood, with big, pretty blue eyes and a sweet smile.

The girl saw things. Heard things. Believed in ghosts. Her mother thought she had a devil inside her, and she'd brought the girl to Leon. That had been the beginning. It hadn't happened here, but that girl, what he'd done to her, had left a mark on the man. She'd been his first, the first girl he'd tried to purify. The first girl he'd killed.

The first girl he'd raped. He'd killed her because of that rape, told her that she'd bewitched him, tempted him beyond what he could bear, and that her punishment for those sins was to die.

He hadn't raped every child he'd kidnapped. Most of them, he had grabbed with only the intent to purify them of their unclean thoughts, of the demons that controlled them.

Demons-that was how Leon explained away the gift. It was something from Satan, and he was only doing his duty as a man of G.o.d by destroying that demon. But destroying the demon, in Leon's mind, required killing the infected soul.

It had been his own gift that led Leon to his victims. He'd considered it a sign from G.o.d, that sure and certain knowledge, but it had been a gift. An affinity for picking out the gifted people from the ungifted. He'd known when Taige was sent to live with him that she'd been gifted-another flash. Another. Another. They hit her like gunfire, one right after the other. Nights when he had gone into Taige's bedroom and stared at her while she slept, thought of killing her.

"Why didn't you?" she murmured, not even aware that she had spoken.

She drifted through the house, looking more like a ghost than anything, Cullen thought as he watched her. There was something eerie about the way she moved, more like gliding than walking. In the office, she stopped in front of the desk and held out a hand over it, her palm hovering just an inch away. She flinched. A harsh breath hissed out from between her teeth. "He knows that I found Jillian. He wants her back."

Cullen's blood turned to ice. "Is she . . ."

Taige shook her head. "She's safe. He knows she has people watching her. And there's another." Her fingers flexed. She swallowed. Then, taking a deep breath, she laid her palm flat against the surface of the desk. "Oh, G.o.d . . ." The words fell from her lips in a soft, tormented moan. She slumped forward, her hair fal ing down to shield her face. "d.a.m.n it, Cullen. He has some other girl. I can see her face."

"Is she okay?"