Page 17 of The Grave Between Us
The fourth photo. Noah, his eyes screwed shut, still screaming. No fingers in his shoulder this time. Instead, there was a gun shoved against his temple, burrowing into his skin.
Cole turned away. Paced to the wall. Rested his forehead against the cold, smooth paint.
“We can’t be certain, but we think the gun he’s holding to Agent Downing’s head is Downing’s own weapon. It matches. Glock .40, the same sights. It hasn’t been recovered, so we think Ingram took it with him.”
Dirt sliding between his fingers. Puffs of panicked breath in front of his face, obscuring the shape before him, appearing out of the ground. Black earth clinging to tear-soaked eyelashes—
“For two days,” Michael said, “everyone at the Bureau has been focused on finding out who shot Agents Downing and Moore. It doesn’t matter that it happened on a backroad in Iowa. Headquarters told everyone to shake their trees and see what came out. At BAU, we were trying to build a profile based on what Omaha was pulling out of the scene. And thenthisshowed up. He didn’t leave any prints at the scene. He wanted to tell us it was him through these.” Michael shook his head. “None of us saw this coming. None of us even imagined.”
Cole laid his hands on the wall on either side of his head.
“We found a big rig in the back lot of a rest area at the Iowa-Nebraska border. State troopers noted it had been there for over forty-eight hours. When they got close, they smelled the decomp.”
“Female driver,” Cole murmured.
Michael nodded. “She was stabbed in the back over twenty times and dumped on the bunk in the rear of her cab. We pulled GSR from the driver’s seat, steering wheel, dash, and window. No prints, but Quantico says the shape of the windshield and the hood of the engine match those in the photo.”
He doesn’t care about women, Cole thought. He uses them and throws them away like napkins, like toilet paper. Something to shit on and discard, and never think of again. He only needed the truck.
“Given Agent Downing’s personal connection to you—and the photographs—we’re fairly certain he was the target of the attack. Agent Moore was collateral damage.”
Personal connection. That was one way to put it.
There was a beat, a hesitation before Michael spoke again. “Have you had any contact with Ian Ingram in the past eight years? Since the escape?”
Cole’s fingernails scratched down the paint, bending backward. Sharp stabs of pain sliced up each finger. “No,” he hissed. “Of course not.”
“He’s never tried to reach out to you any other time? Never at any field office or your home?”
“No.”
“How would he know that Downing is connected to you?” Michael asked. “If Ingram sent these photos to you at the BAU, then he must think you’re still there. But since it also appears he targeted Agent Downing—”
“He picked the man I’m engaged to,” Cole choked out. “We’reengaged, Michael.”
Michael said nothing to that. “Ingram had to have found out about you and Downing. But then why didn’t he mail these photos to youhere, in Iowa? Why send them all the way to DC? It slowed his message by days.”
Cole turned and sagged against the wall. “Because you’re here, aren’t you? You saw the envelope. You opened it. You took action. If Ian had mailed those photos to the Des Moines office, Sophie would have tossed the envelope on my desk and I would have gotten to them whenever I went back. I’m not exactly working right now.”
“That still doesn’t answer how Ingram knows about you and Downing.”
Cole’s gaze slid to Noah, so still on his hospital bed, like he was floating on a cotton sea, adrift and alone. Cole had known for two days that Noah had been targeted, that someone had shot him on purpose, looked at Noah and Jacob and their FBI vehicle and decided to try to end their lives.
Targeted by Ian Ingram was entirely, unspeakably different.
Targeted because ofme.
Cole shook his head. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “I thought he vanished.”
“I had hoped he died,” Michael growled. “Or made it out of the country, even.”
“To become someone else’s problem?” Cole snapped.
Michael stared. One of his flunkies, standing by the door, shifted.
“Has the Bureau been following him? Keeping track of his victims?”
“You know we were never able to find his victims after we lost him. You were the only one who ever got Ingram to admit to a dump site, and you were the only one who ever found any of his graves.”
