Page 18 of The Grave Between Us
Cole shook his head. “I wasn’t special.”
“You were to him.”
Cole swallowed.This isn’t happening this isn’t happening—
“Ian Ingram made an ass out of the FBI, not once, but twice. He fed us lie after lie after lie. Manipulated the system until we didn’t know which way was up and which way was down when we had him in custody—” Michael’s voice died abruptly.
“When we had him in custody,” Cole repeated. “When we had him. Don’t you mean, when I let him go?”
“You were cleared,” Michael said. His voice barely reached Cole’s ears.
“You know that’s not what everyone else believed.”
“And you know I went to bat for you. I salvaged your career.”
Salvaged, yes. And Cole became Michael’s right hand, at first out of a mixture of gratitude and necessity. Then, later, when he’d proved himself to be competent, as competent as they’d believed he was when they first ordered him to speak to Ingram, the Bureau repaid him by pretending Ian Ingram had never existed—all case files removed from circulation and classified Director’s Eyes Only. Ian Ingram had only ever been a whisper to the world, and the FBI was happy to strangle that whisper forever.
For eight years, it had seemed like Ian wanted to stay silent, too.
Why was he back now? The logistics of targeting an FBI agent had seemed gargantuan when Cole was considering a local, someone from Noah’s or Jacob’s past or having a bone to pick with the FBI in general. But Ian Ingram? For him to specifically hunt Noah. For him to know what Noah meant to Cole.
And now Michael was here. Showing Cole photos, asking him questions. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. This wasn’t the script he’d written for the rest of his life and his happy ever after with Noah. He’d said goodbye to the monsters, the hunters, the silent screams hovering on the edges of humanity. He’d said goodbye to Michael. House and home for him: picket fence, back porch, homework on the dining room table. Friday night football and laundry and doing the dishes side by side with the man he loved.
Not gunshots on backroads and a serial killer emerging from his past like a virus bubbling out of Cole’s blood and striking his lover down.
Not his former boss striding into Noah’s hospital room like Cole was back in Quantico and digging his fingers into Cole’s mind.
Cole was supposed to be the one flying in, reading a case file, noting the victims by last name or asvictim number one—maybe, sometimes,the motherorthe wife—and spitting out the answer to the riddles of arterial spray or the disembowelment of a family of four in a southern suburb. The victims were sides of a predator’s Rubik’s Cube. Cole studied their deaths, studied their suffering, inputted the factors into equations. And he was good, he was damn good at human calculus. He was good at death mathematics… when he didn’t know the victims’ names, or the taste of their lips, or how they felt at night when they pulled Cole close and snuggled against his body.
His knees buckled and he slid down the wall, falling to his ass on the cold linoleum floor. He buried his face in his palms and tried to breathe. “You’re saying,” he finally said, looking up at his old boss, his former mentor, “the FBI has no idea what Ian has been doing for the past eight years? You don’t have any potential hot spots? You don’t have any missing persons that could be attributable to him? You don’t even have a possible victim list?”
“Nearly two thousand people go missing in the United States every day, Cole.”
“He’s responsible for some of those.”
“Without an accurate profile of his victimology, we can’t say for certain who he’s responsible for abducting.”
“You have no idea where the most dangerous serial killer in the United States is. No idea at all.”
“Two days ago, he was on Iowa 141.”
Something ugly rose inside Cole. Something vicious, and dark, and slithering. He stared at Michael until Michael blinked and turned to look at Noah, still and pale in his hospital bed.
“I thought, all this time, there was some working group, somewhere, doing everything they could to track him down,” Cole hissed. “I didn’t think the FBI would cover their eyes and walk away. Kick dirt over their mistakes and pretend nothing ever happened.”
Michael’s stare seared into Cole.You were one of those mistakes, it said.“Funny, I thought the same about you. I thought there was no way you’d let Ingram go like the Bureau ordered you to. I thought for sure you’d have some side project going, some brilliant scheme to find him.”
Ian’s breath against his hair, hot and trembling up the back of his neck.Cole had wanted to get as far from the man as he could. He’d wanted to carve the memories out of his brain with his fingernails. He’d wanted to never see, or hear, or think about Ian again. And he’d hoped—trusted—that the FBI would take care of the monster prowling in the darkness, as they were supposed to do.
He’d been naive.
“What now?” he asked.
“I’d hoped you would have more for us, honestly.” Michael shook his head. “We don’t have anything other than these three prints of his. The package was processed out of the central Des Moines postal facility, and it came in on a bulk pickup from a postal drop. There’s no way to track back to when or who dropped it off. Most postal drops aren’t under surveillance. So here’s where we are: Ian shot Agent Downing and Agent Moore, he took photos of his crime, and then he mailed those photos to you at the BAU. Why?” Michael shrugged. “And where is he now?” Another shrug. “Do you have any thoughts at all?”
Noah groaned, eyelids flickering. He twitched, and the fingers on his unsplinted hand flared, as if reaching for something, someone. Two steps, and Cole was there, grabbing Noah’s hand and clenching so hard he felt Noah’s bones shift, saw a frown line crease Noah’s forehead. “Noah?”
Another groan, and then Noah’s eyes slitted open and his bleary gaze swam before landing on Cole. The tiniest smile curved the corners of his lips as he exhaled.
