Page 14 of The Grave Between Us
It wasn’t at the scene. And it wasn’t in the SUV. It was just gone.
Had the shooter taken it? Shot Noah and Jacob and then walked to the crash site, stepped into the mud, and taken Noah’s weapon? Then erased his footprints and walked away, leaving Noah and Jacob slowly bleeding out in the ditch? Why?
He stayed at the hospital with Noah, leaving only to take Katie home to shower and get ready for school. She hadn’t wanted to go, but he told her she needed to stick to routine, and that she could come right back after school. Katie did her homework on Noah’s bed, balancing her textbook against his shins as she worked math problems to the sound of his heart monitor. Noah would have been proud. If he opened his eyes and saw.
They were keeping him under, the doctor said, to help his lung heal. To give him as much time as possible to recover before the stress poured back in and life sank its claws into him again, demanding answers to questions likewhoandhowandwhy. For now, Noah’s job was to rest and be loved, while they tried to piece those answers together on their own.
Jacob woke, though, on the morning of the second day. Sophie texted Cole, and he kissed Noah’s hand ten times before slipping out of the room and padding down the hall. Jacob looked like an oversize doll lying on a cot, his feet and shoulders hanging off the sides of his bed. Even the gown was too small for him, more like a bib than any real kind of cover. Half his face was black and blue, and a line of stitches ran from his temple to the back of his half-shaved head, like someone had taken a hook to the back of his skull andpulled. Holly sat beside him, holding his hand in her tiny palms. Holly was a small, delicate woman, five foot two, maybe 120 pounds. Jacob could probably curl her one-handed. If they’d lived a hundred years ago, they could have made a killing as a circus act: the incredible strong man and his tiny bride.
He didn’t look strong then, though. He looked scared and hurt, and he clung to Holly’s hand until his big arm trembled. He answered Sophie’s questions with a voice thickened by pain meds and fear, his words catching on burrs of emotions lodged in his throat. He didn’t remember what happened, hadn’t seen anything. They’d been driving. They were talking, and then, nothing.
“What were you guys talking about?” Sophie asked.
Jacob’s gaze flicked to Cole, then away. “Marriage. What it was like. I was asking him—”
Sophie moved on, changing gears. “What was on the radio?”
“Classic rock. I think it was a commercial.”
“How were the fields on either side of you?”
“Cut down. Dead. It was just mud, really.”
Sophie nodded. She waited, letting the memories fill Jacob as much as possible, letting him slide back to the moment. Her questions bounced around in an effort to jog those memories, run him backward and forward in time, calling up sights and sounds and feelings to create a three-dimensional window into what had happened. “How many other cars had you seen on the road?”
Jacob shook his head. “Not many. Maybe half a dozen. We saw a few big rigs. Nothing special.”
“Pass anyone parked?”
Jacob shook his head.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Fear,” Jacob whispered. “And then… heat. Something wet. Then nothing.”
“Fear? Did you see the bullet coming?”
Jacob shook his head. “No. It was the conversation we were having. What we were talking about—”
“Marriage?” Holly asked.
Jacob swallowed hard. His big eyes were oh so bright, huge and gleaming under the hospital’s harsh fluorescents as he turned to her. “Holly, this isn’t how I wanted to do this, and I know it’s the worst timing, but—”
She cut him off, squeezing his hand in her own. “Will you marry me, big guy?” She smiled as soon as she spoke, lifting her hand and cupping his cheek in her tiny palm.
Jacob crumpled, falling into her arms as she climbed onto his hospital bed. He buried his face in her chest and wrapped both arms around her, wailing as she cradled his huge head against her and ran her fingers through his hair.
Sophie and Cole stepped out of the room, and Sophie collapsed against the hospital wall, sighing. She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. “We’ve got nothing. No leads. No idea who did this. It’s like he came out of nowhere and then vanished. If it weren’t for the dogs catching his scent, I might not believe he was real.”
“Aside from Noah and Jacob being shot.” Cole’s voice came out sharper than he intended, harsher. Thirty-six hours watching his lover breathe in a hospital bed could put a man on edge.
Sophie opened her eyes and stared at him, long enough to make him look away. She didn’t say anything she could have, things like “I’ve known them both longer than you have” or “I’m working my ass off, and I called in every team I could.” She was kicking ass, and it wasn’t her fault that there was nothing to find.
“He’s good,” Cole said to the tile floor. “If he’s cleaned up all his forensics, if he knows about keeping his fingerprints off bullet casings and smearing away his boot prints, then he’s good. Knowing where two feds are going to be, all alone, with their guard down at the end of a day? And then setting up a shot on an empty highway? He’s very good.”
“Okay, he’s good,” Sophie said. “But why did he go afterthem? Who the hell is he?”
Cole didn’t know, and that, more than anything, set him adrift. His thoughts were echoing, like the sound of a seashell pressed to his ear, emptiness amplified on itself until he thought he would drown in it. His whole career, he’d been the man who knew, who could stand in a killing field and understand a predator’s motivations, stare at a meadow and a forest and point out where the killer had buried his trophies. He’d studied crime scene photos and found the symbolism, the hidden sacredness to the brutality. He’d been the one who charged into the shadows and found the monsters, and he’d torn them from their perches and their lairs.
