Page 16 of The Grave Between Us
Years later, and he still never used pencils.
Waves rolled into his mind. An echo, memories crashing into a heart. Agony and questions and a body in the mud.
Cole shook his head, kept shaking it. “I’m not in the BAU anymore,” he choked out. “I’m not involved— I was removed from that investigation.”
“You are involved,” Michael said. He nodded to Noah. “Because of him. And because of this.” He held out the envelope.
Cole stared at it like it was a bomb. His eyes rose to Michael’s. He didn’t let go of Noah’s hand.
“We got these in the mail,” Michael said after a long, silent moment. “Addressed to you at the BAU. They’re pictures.”
There was a storm rising inside him, dark clouds and frenzied wind. Cole exhaled. “How do you know—”
“Fingerprints. He left three clear prints on the photos. The outside of the package was useless, but those were pristine.”
Eight years since Ian Ingram had turned Cole inside out. Eight dank, wet Februarys since he’d stood on the edge of a black lake and found a new edge to the frigid darkness. Eight years, and another lifetime.
How many days had passed since then when he hadn’t thought of Ian, in some way?
Zero.
A paper crane sliding through Noah’s cold, stiff lips.
“You need to see these.” Michael held the envelope over Noah’s legs, his eyes drilling into Cole’s when he refused to take it. Finally, Michael dropped the envelope, and it slid sideways across the blanket, toppling toward Cole and where his hand was clenched around Noah’s.
Waves rising, building inside him. “I’m a little busy,” he whispered. “I can’t help you on this.”
“Cole. I wouldn’t be here if this wasn’t important. Open it.”
Fuck, he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to know. For days, he and Sophie had wondered, had questioned who had done this, who had shot Noah and Jacob. He didn’t want to know the truth, not if it led to this.
He was going to drown when he opened that envelope.
He peeled one hand away from Noah’s and fumbled with the envelope’s clasp. Michael watched him, never blinking. Waves beat against his ribs, rose around his heart. He squeezed his eyes closed. The hiss of Noah’s oxygen became the cry of a crane skimming the surface of a lake, the sound of his boots sliding on leaves and loose earth right before he reached—
Hello, Cole. Would he ever forget that voice?
He dumped the envelope on the bed. Four eight-by-ten black-and-white photos spilled out, slightly fuzzy, as if they’d been printed at home on store-bought photo paper. His gaze flicked from one to the next, not seeing, for a moment, the horror in front of him.
Then he jerked back, his chair slamming into the wall as his feet spun out on the floor. Agony roared in, swallowed by terror, before a pure, blinding rage crashed through him. He flung himself against Noah’s bed, as if he could protect his love and get them both away at the same time. As if he could grab Noah and flee, escape the photos and the wreckage of the past. His mouth opened, and he tried to breathe, but instead, he screamed. Bellowed.
Feet pounded down the hallway, and a team of nurses burst into the room. Michael’s agents blocked their path, and Michael turned and told them in his too-calm voice that everything was fine, Noah was fine, that Cole had just gotten some bad news. He’d shifted his body, blocking the photos on Noah’s bed from view.
Bad news. That was one way to put it.
Four photos. The foreground of the first showed the reticle of a rifle, the same type of .30-30 Winchester that had shot both Jacob and Noah. The view was through the open driver’s side window of a tractor trailer, based on the height of the shot and the nose of the cab. The shooter was aiming down the highway, across the center median, zeroing in on a dark government SUV. Cole could see Jacob and Noah side by side, one sun visor down. Jacob was smiling, looking at Noah.
The moment just before the shot.
The second photo: the crash. Burned rubber on the road, skid marks veering toward the ditch. The SUV on its side, nose angled down, broken glass and shredded steel littering the asphalt. He couldn’t see Jacob or Noah anymore. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought they were dead, that whoever was in the SUV couldn’t have survived.
The third photo. He forced himself to look, really look, to study the image as evidence, like he was looking at any crime scene photo, taking in the torture of any other victim. His vision blurred. His hands shook, and wet spots appeared on the image. He dropped the photo as if it had burned him, rubbed his palms down his pants.
“They’re copies,” Michael said softly. “I wanted you to see how he sent them. But don’t worry about contamination.”
If only that was what he was worried about. Cole shot a withering glare at Michael. He didn’t pick the photo up again. Instead he peered down at it, almost sideways, as if not really looking could somehow lessen the truth of it.
What could ever lessen the impact of seeing Noah, the man he loved, screaming his throat raw as someone hurt him? Dug three black-gloved fingers knuckle-deep into Noah’s shoulder wound. It looked like Noah was being lifted by his wound, as if he were a fish on a hook, something the man had caught—
