Page 70 of The Murder Between Us
“I guess it doesn’t matter anymore, does it?”
Cole hung up. The line went dead.
Noah dropped the phone and buried his head in his arms, and, finally, let the sobs pour out of him.
20
Fuck this hotel.Fuck this government-rate hotel with no lobby bar or room service. No way to get drunk when he Goddamn needed it.
He should have seen this coming. Damn it, he should have seen this coming from miles away. From fucking Vegas, in fact.
Noah had already run once. He made up his mind about Cole, about what would happen with them, between them, without any input from Cole, back in the Vegas airport.
And here he was doing it again.
This time, after Cole had gone and fallen that much harder, that much more, for him.
He’d started to imaginewhat if. And how to get towhat if. There was a nonstop flight from D.C. to Des Moines. He could request to not travel as much. He was one of a handful of single guys in the BAU, and he’d wanted to travel often to rack up the extra pay. But he didn’t have to. He could have a more stable, more predictable schedule. Something that lent itself to reliability and long distance. And towhat if.
But fuck those plans, apparently. Not plans, really. Daydreams. Fantasies. Things that weren’t to be.
Damn midwestern men.
He grabbed his workout clothes and changed, heading down to the closet-sized gym for a brutal session that left him jelly-legged and covered in sweat. The anger ebbed but left behind the pain. Moments from dinner—laughing with Katie, holding Cole’s hand—played in his mind. Memories from the days before: Noah smiling while he was driving, chuckling at something Cole said, or kissing him as they stood side by side in his kitchen and watching the golden morning sunlight dance on the heads of corn peeking over Noah’s fence. Helping Katie with her math homework while Noah watched.
Damn it, he’d wanted to try.
He showered back in his room and paced. He was still too keyed up, still wound too tightly. Too much whiplash, waking up with everything he wanted within reach only for it all to be snatched away before the end of the night.
Enough. He wasn’t going to change Noah or change Noah’s mind. What was done was done. Noah had had two chances, which was more than he gave anyone.
He dragged the case files across his bed and flipped them open. Instead of sleep, he’d tear through the files, figure out what had drawn Garrett to Kimberly Foster, to Jessie Olson, and to Molly Hayes. Why those three? Why, now, the leap to law enforcement families with Jessie and Molly? Was Garrett hoping to be caught after all this time?
Why had he annihilated Molly’s entire family?
He spread the photos of the Hayes crime scene over the bed, separating the upstairs and downstairs crime scenes. Swift execution upstairs and then brutal torture in the basement. What John had gone through to get to his daughter.
His stomach twisted. Nausea rose, nearly sent him to the bathroom. John reached for Molly’s painted toenails—so close, and yet he’d never touched her. Never saved her.
If that were Noah and Katie—
He barely made it to the bathroom before he hurled, vomiting the Italian dinner he’d shared with Noah and Katie. He heaved until it seemed like everything he’d ever eaten was out of his system, then lay his clammy forehead on the toilet seat.Don’t think like that. You can never think like that.
Distance. Objectivity. Katie might be close to the profile, but she was too young. She was in high school, not college. And she hadn’t been written up in the local papers, had she? Surely Noah would have bragged about that. Would have had the article framed in his office. Surely it would have come up if Katie were anywhere close to the victim profile Garrett targeted.
She wasn’t in Garrett’s victimology, but that didn’t stop Cole from picturing Noah in place of John, Katie in place of Molly, when he closed his eyes.
Damn it. He forced the bile down. Distance. Objectivity.
Don’t think about Noah. Or Katie.
He brushed his teeth, then padded back to the bedroom and flipped the crime scene photos from the basement over.Don’t think about it.
Instead, he pulled out Kimberly’s case file and flipped through the autopsy and the scene reports, then pulled out the photos. Kimberly, strangled on her bed, silently. Nothing disturbed. No marks on the wall, no lamps toppled over. Across the room, her broken closet mirror, the corner behind the door where her father was strangled with her belt.
Why did Frank come back to check on her? What made him rise from his sickbed on the couch and cross the house, at midnight, after cold medicine and a beer, to check on his daughter?
Parental intuition? Noah wouldn’t put the SUV into drive until Katie had her seat belt on.
