Page 77 of The Grave Between Us
Three blond men, all in their late twenties to early thirties, each with brown eyes and defined jaws, easy, friendly smiles, open expressions. Each one could be a brother to Cole, or, in the case of the skier, a doppelgänger.
Noah turned to his computer and reran the search they’d run the night before: adult men reported missing between the day of Ian’s escape and today. He changed two search criteria, narrowing the search to men with blond hair and brown eyes.
From three thousand missing men, only seventy-nine remained, scattered across the United States, with definite clusters in North Dakota, Wisconsin, upstate New York, and Wyoming. And now, two in Iowa: Aiden Dumont and Brett Kerrigan.
“Fuck,” Sophie hissed. “Fuck, fuck. Noah. Fuck.”
Flashes popped before his eyes, images he hadn’t remembered before: his SUV, crashed in the ditch; Jacob bleeding from the side of his head, his face half in the mud. A man crossing the highway, striding toward him. He hadn’t been able to breathe then, and he couldn’t breathe now, like the world itself had landed on his chest. He clawed at his throat, tore at the buttons of his shirt. Jacob appeared in front of him again, shoving his big face into Noah’s, forehead to forehead, the way he and Cole liked to be.
Cole. Cole, my God.
Ian isn’t after me.
They’d done it: they’d found Ian’s victim profile. At least, the profile he’d switched to after his escape. After he’d met Cole and built an obsession around Cole, he’d hunted men who looked like Cole. Director King, the BAU, even Cole hadn’t considered what had changed in Ian’s life between his first string of attacks and those after his escape. He hadn’t simply gone back to the same life, to hunting any man who intersected his path at the wrong place and the wrong time. No, he’d focused his fantasy, distilled it to the man who now meant the world to him: Cole.
Eight years of fantasizing about Cole. Eight years of obsession, of reliving his memories of Cole, and of stalking and hunting men who looked like Cole in endless cycles, endless repetitions, the script to Ian’s most fevered daydream.
Eight years of replacements, of stand-ins, of runners-up.
Until suddenly he was right there. The iris of his infatuation contracting on Cole, on Noah, on their lives.
Had everything that happened from that moment on been because Ian had laid eyes on Cole that January afternoon and had seen him with Noah and Katie, happy and in love? Had his need sharpened, his hunger turned feral? Had he turned from men who looked like Cole to craving Cole himself?
He doesn’t want me to have anything in my life aside from him, Cole had said.
It had to have been that day. Fresh snow, Katie asking if she could learn to snowboard. They’d had so much fun as a family. He’d held Cole’s hand for hours, had kissed him as they waited for Katie to finish her first snowboard lesson. They’d laughed until their sides cramped, leaning into each other to stay on their feet. That night, they’d made love for hours, slow and languid and deliriously happy.
The memories were stained now, touched with the horror of knowing Aiden Dumont had been taken that day, from the same place. Seven Oaks wasn’t large. Every hill, every modest ski slope and cross-country trail emptied into the same base area. He and Cole had watched Katie at the bunny slopes, and ten feet away, there’d been picnic tables where others waited for their loved ones. Had Ian been right there, watching them?
It started that day, Noah was sure of it.
And he was certain, as certain as he was that Cole was the love of his life, that Ian was hunting Cole.
“It’s Cole,” he gasped, grabbing Jacob’s meaty arms. “He’s coming after Cole.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Cole drummedhis fingers against the steering wheel as he pulled off the interstate and turned up the county road that led to his and Noah’s neighborhood. They’d bought west of West Des Moines, someplace that felt quiet and out of the way but that was still close enough to Katie’s school and their office. The house was new, the neighborhood still mostly construction sites beyond a few built-up streets. Behind their house was farmland and a nature preserve. He’d loved the quiet, the peace of the place.
Now he wanted to drop an iron fortress around their home, dig a moat, erect a stone wall and portcullis. Drag Noah and Katie inside and lock the gates, barricade every door and window. Keep his family safe.
Powerlessness echoed inside of him. He’d cried in that Omaha conference room until something inside him had come undone, and then he’d leaped to his feet and bellowed at Michael like he’d never done before—not to Michael, not to anyone. He cursed Michael and the BAU and the FBI, told him to go fuck himself, that he wasn’t going to use Noah as bait. That this wasn’t how they were going to run the investigation, and he was done with Michael and his bullshit. That he was going back to Noah, and Michael couldn’t stop him.
Michael calmed him down eventually, and he got Cole down to his car and shoved a Xanax in his hand. They didn’t speak on the drive back to Des Moines, and when they pulled into the hotel’s parking lot, Michael asked him if he was sure.
“I’m going back to Noah,” he’d said. “Don’t try to stop me. Do whatever you need to do to catch Ian, but I’m not leaving Noah alone and unaware of how you’re using him. If Ian wants Noah, he’s going to have to go through me. I’ll die before Ian puts his hands on Noah again.”
Michael had sighed, but he’d nodded and passed Cole a set of keys. “Here. Take one of the cars your office gave me. I don’t even know where your car is right now.”
As Cole climbed into the Pontiac parked next to Michael’s SUV, Michael called after him, “I am trying to help you, Cole. And Noah. I know you haven’t always agreed with my methods over the years. But when you fight monsters, sometimes you have to make certain choices.”
“Maybeyoudo,” Cole growled. “But I’m not sacrificing the people I love. That’s not a choice I will make. I’m not lying to Noah, either.”
He wanted to call Noah as soon as he was alone. Wanted to tell him to come home, that he’d be waiting for him, that they were going to do this together. Fight Ian together, fight for their future together. Tell Noah he’d been right, and Cole was wrong, and forever meant forever. Hell, he couldn’t even manage twenty-four hours apart.
But his cell phone was dead, and the Pontiac didn’t have a car charger. He made the drive in silence, listening to the tires hum on the highway and his own thoughts echo, memories of Noah’s shattered, brokenhearted voice begging him to stay playing in his mind.
He’d call Noah from home. Then he’d clean the place up. Scrub the walls, the floors, the cabinets. Clean Katie’s room and their bedroom. Shove the mattress out the window, break the bed frame into firewood. He and Noah could blow up an air mattress, sleep on the floor until they got a new bed. Something that hadn’t been touched by darkness. Something that was theirs alone.
