Page 10 of The Grave Between Us
Not even—or maybe especially—Noah.
Maybe that was why he’d bailed from the BAU. Maybe it wasn’t the weekly flights to Des Moines, the exhaustion of trying to maintain the frantic pace of a profiler while also giving his all to the man and daughter he loved with a ferocity he hadn’t known he was capable of. He’d stood at the doorway of that silent cave inside himself, seen the moonlight shining on still, blackened waters, and turned away.
He was young enough to, still. He’d seen a lot, but he hadn’t seen the end, not like other profilers he’d known had. Sometimes it was the twelfth, or the thirtieth, or the four hundredth murder, just one too many times they’d seen theafterleft behind when bone-deep rage and a pair of pliers met a woman’s breast and the killer decided he liked the sound that combination made. Some agents walked away when they hit the line, and some spent the rest of their lives trying to walk away. Into booze bottles or pills or traffic, or even the barrel of their gun. One profiler he’d worked with had spent days meticulously transcribing audio recordings a killer made of his torture and murder of eleven young women in the back of his van. She filed her report, drove home, did the laundry, made lunches and dinners for the next week so her husband wouldn’t have to worry about feeding their sons, and then ate her handgun in the shower so she’d be easy to clean up. She said so, in the sticky note she left on the closed bathroom door.I’m sorry. I can’t stop reliving it.
She’d gone too far out, gotten lost in the darkness, and become the murderer’s last victim. She hadn’t been able to turn off the sound of his voice, wall him out with silence and distance, leave him in that grave inside herself. He’d infected her psyche until he was everywhere, the sly, ugly weight of him dominating her from the inside. She’d put a bullet in her head to exorcise him. Cole understood why she’d done it. He could even see himself picking up his own weapon if the day came when his own silences no longer held the world and evil away.
There was no way to explain all the different shades of black, all the degrees of horror, all the different smells of death and murder, or how dark the night truly could get, to Sophie and Miya. Or to anyone. Hunting monsters wasn’t fun. It was listening to screams on unspeakable recordings, tasting decay in the back of your throat, digging your fingers through wet earth and into the hollow orbital openings of a long-discarded victim’s skull. Listening, in the stillness, for the murderer’s ecstasy, and trying to hear the whispers of their movements as they glided like dark echoes through society. The worst murderers twanged like tuning forks struck against brimstone, and the only way to stop them, to catch them, was to harmonize with their discordance, if only for a moment. Feel as they felt, see what they saw. Get inside their eyeballs and the vacuums of their desiccated souls, look at your own hands and see their fingers moving. Feel the gnawing of their hunger, their need, inside you. The craving was Sisyphean: there would never be an end to that burn-the-world-down bloodlust. A good profiler had to take that stone on their own shoulders. Step into those shadows. Feel how far from the rest of humanity you could go.
He couldn’t imagine that life anymore. Couldn’t imagine a life that didn’t include Noah. Couldn’t imagine not wondering if he was having a good day or a bad one. Even now, his fingers itched to text him, ask him about soybeans and whether he’d managed to keep a straight face during the deposition. He wondered how Katie was feeling at school, if an injection of friends before first period had jolted her awake better than caffeine. How chemistry was going, and if she was understanding the new unit in pre-calc. These were the thoughts he wanted in his head: living things, mundane things. Was there enough bread for Noah’s toast or cereal for Katie, or did he need to stop for more? What would they have for dinner tomorrow? Would Noah hang up his damp towel or fling it on the end of their mattress for the seven thousandth time? Signs of life, of home, of a comfortable, warm contentment. Happiness. He didn’t have to think about burials in the woods or how the flesh on a skull decays faster than the rest of the body when it’s left in the open. Beetles through eye sockets, ants crawling over teeth. Cheerleading, shoes left to trip over, the crinkles at the corners of Noah’s eyes.
He made some kind of comment, something pedestrian that moved the conversation along, and the rest of the team started in on their career goals, what they wanted out of the Bureau, and where they would be in ten years. They all agreed: none of them would be in Des Moines with Jacob, Cole, and Noah. Cole smiled. Said nothing.
He slid his phone out of his pocket and texted Noah, a single heart andhope the soybeans haven’t been the end of you. He checked the time. Four hours until he picked up Katie, another two after that until Noah was due home. Until then, he’d be the one tapping his foot, looking at the clock. Watching, and waiting, for the man he loved.
Chapter Four
Empty fieldspocked with dirty snow whipped by the SUV’s windows. The radio murmured above the hum of the tires. Noah and Jacob had talked for the first hour out of Sioux City but lapsed into silence for the past twenty minutes. Jacob was gazing out the passenger window as the horizon smeared onward.
“How did you know you were ready to get married?” Jacob’s voice rumbled through the vehicle, shaking Noah’s bones and the SUV’s chassis. “How did you know it was time to get that ring and ask the question?”
Noah inhaled, held his breath, and squeezed the steering wheel. “I’m not sure I’m the one you want to ask. I don’t know if my reasons for proposing to Lilly were the right ones.”
Jacob frowned. He stared at Noah, thick eyebrows angling downward behind his sunglasses. “But you and Cole—”
“Cole asked me.” Noah smiled. Some of the tension ebbed out of his shoulders as he laughed at Jacob’s shocked expression. “I know, I can’t believe it either. What on earth was he thinking?”
“He’s in love.” Jacob grinned. “And you can’t accuse him of being indecisive. He goes after what he wants.”
Noah shook his head. “I don’t really understand why he wants me, but…”
“What do you mean? He loves you.”
Noah’s lips pressed together. Doubts still lingered in his mind. Not about Cole’s love for him. No, his doubts, his anxieties, were firmly fixed on himself. Cole deserved a man who would be a great husband to him, not just an okay husband, like he’d been in the past.
“He loves you. It’s obvious. I mean, it was obvious from early on. It was like there was lightning between you guys from the moment he walked into the conference room. I knew you guys knew each other somehow, but I thought maybe it was something from headquarters, or the academy, or back east. Maybe you guys had some kind of feud, or some dispute on a case. History like that. I wasn’t thinking you and he had a relationship.”
“Relationship might be stretching it.”
“How did you meet? You’ve never said.”
Noah’s cheeks warmed. He slid his hands around the steering wheel, ran his tongue over his teeth. “Um, Vegas. We met in Vegas. He, uh. Picked me up in a bar.”
Jacob beamed. “No shit?”
“My first time ever going out and trying to… you know, be myself.”
“Damn. Cole really did go after who he wanted real quick.”
Noah barked out a laugh, his cheeks flushing further.
“I’m impressed. I’ve always liked Cole. I like him a little bit more now. You need a guy like that, Noah.”
“What, younger? A little dominant?” Noah glanced sideways, confused.
Jacob tipped his head back and howled. “Okay, that’s more than I needed to imagine about you two. No, I mean you need a man who makes you happy and who puts you first. He makes you happier than I’ve ever seen you. I don’t know your ex, and I didn’t know you when you were married, but I can’t imagine you ever being as happy as you are now. Honestly, I thought you were dismal when I first met you. Like you didn’t know how to be happy. I’m glad I was wrong.”
The tires hummed over the asphalt. Classic rock faded in and out on the radio. Even on a flat horizon, the signal could only go so far before the road and the curve of the earth interfered.
