“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