Page 78 of The Grave Between Us
He turned right and pulled up to the last stop sign before their neighborhood. There was a creek on the right, burbling past a little stone bridge. Sometimes deer would be at the water’s edge, making their way out of the thick trees, the basswood and aspen and oak. There’d been two does there the day he and Noah came to look at houses, and Noah had fallen in love with the neighborhood immediately. Cole smiled, remembering Noah in the seat beside him. Buying a place in both their names, putting ink on forever. “Noah,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry—”
Glass shattered on his left. Cole twisted, jerked. Arms reached through the broken window, grabbing his face, slamming him forward. His vision went white as his forehead smashed against the steering wheel once, twice, a third time. Hands around his throat, squeezing, choking off his breath. He grasped at the thick forearms, the muscled wrists that seized him. He tried to look sideways, tried to see, but a fist slammed into his head and the world went black.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Noah calledDirector King three times in a row before King answered. “Downing, I don’t want to hear it,” King said. “I heard it all from your fiancé, believe me. Save your anger. Cole already gave it to me.”
“Whatever you think I’m calling about, I’m not.” Noah paced in front of his desk, shaking one hand in front of him like he was trying to walk off pain. Jacob hovered in his doorway, a bear ready to pounce. “Director, where is Cole? I can’t reach him.”
“He left here about an hour ago.”
“Where’s here?”
“My hotel,” Michael said. “He was going home, he said. He was going to meet you there. Talk to you.” There was a long pause. “Haven’t you heard from him by now? Your house isn’t that far from here.”
“No,” Noah choked out. “I haven’t heard from him, and I can’t reach him. Director, I’ve been looking into the Ingram case with my people—”
“Youwhat?”
“—and we uncovered Ian’s victimology. His new victimology. It changed after his escape. Before he was arrested, his profile was broad, but after his arrest, after he met Cole, it narrowed. Now he’s hunting men who look like Cole. Early thirties, blond hair, brown eyes. We’ve found clusters of missing men matching those demographics in five states, and their vehicles had been moved from their last known location. Those vehicles had shattered driver’s windows. It all matches Ian Ingram’s methodology, Director. His profile has evolved, and you guys didn’t see it. Cole didn’t see it. You thought that Ian was hunting me, but he’s not. He’s huntingCole.”
One, two, three seconds passed. “Get to your house, Downing.Now. Find Cole.”
Noah hung up on King and turned to Jacob in one move. “Car, now.”
They grabbed their jackets and ran, taking the stairs three and four at a time, then burst out of the building and tore across the parking lot. Noah’s SUV was closer, and he threw himself into the driver’s seat as Jacob bulldozed his way into the passenger seat. Jacob turned the lights and sirens on as Noah started the engine and threw the car in reverse.
He left a thirty-foot-long strip of rubber in the parking lot.
It was thirty-six minutes door to door from the office to his and Cole’s house. Noah made it to the entrance to their neighborhood in less than twenty. Every bump in the road sent them airborne. Noah took the left turn at the light at the bottom of the off-ramp on two wheels. Jacob braced himself with both hands throughout the drive, his right on the oh-shit handle and his left on the dash.
Noah flew around the roundabout, blazed past the field on the left. The creek was ahead, and then it was three turns, and then their street—
“Noah, stop!” Jacob shouted.
He slammed on his brakes and skidded, the SUV drifting left. The antilock brakes pumped against his foot. He saw field, woods, gray sky.
And glass on the pavement, scattered like glitter.
He was out of the car before it had stopped, running across the road and falling to his knees next to the patch of shattered safety glass. Car glass, scattered over the yellow median, broken from the left-hand side of a car. The driver’s side. As if someone had shattered a driver’s window.
No, no, no.
“Jacob, go to our house. King said he was going home. Check and see if Cole is there.”
Jacob, who’d jogged after him, turned around and clambered into the driver’s seat. He drove off before the door was shut, tires squealing as he made the three turns to Noah and Cole’s home. Noah heard the engine growling, the brakes squealing, over the silence of their neighborhood.
He closed his eyes and dug his fingers into the asphalt. Quiet. Rural. They’d wanted peace, something out of the way. Damn it, they were living in Ian’s profile. Woods circled their neighborhood, ringed the farms that backed up to their home. Damn it.
His phone rang. Jacob. “Is he there?” Noah shouted. “Is Cole there?”
“No one’s here,” Jacob said. His voice was lead. “No one has come inside since the police sealed it yesterday.”
Noah screamed, his face to the sky, spine arched, knuckles scraping over the glass-and-grit-strewn pavement. He heard tires squeal, heard the SUV’s engine roar. Then Jacob was back, coming out of the vehicle and falling to his knees beside Noah. His big hands grabbed Noah’s elbows.
“He’s taken Cole,” Noah whispered.
Blond men with brown eyes, taken from five different states. Cars dumped in secondary locations. They had one body in North Dakota, maybe, and Brett Kerrigan. Not much to go on to build pattern recognition. But it was all he had. “The maps. Get the maps, and get Sophie on the phone.”
