Page 1 of The Grave Between Us
Prologue
Cole scrapedat the dark soil, fingers sliding through the dirt. His breath fogged in front of his face, puffs that kept time with the frantic, terrified pants he couldn’t hold in. Mist hung between the thick tree trunks, wet, frigid claws that scratched down his spine. “Please, please…” he whimpered. “Please, no.”
His fingertips hit cold skin. He stilled, breath sliding from him like the blade of a knife.
His trembling hand brushed the loose earth away from the man’s face. He knew this face, knew it better than he knew his own. Dirt was clumped in the corners of the eyes and stuck to the cheekbones in long, slender lines, clinging to tear tracks. The blue lips were parted, the tip of the tongue jutting outward.
Cole held his breath and pushed two fingers into the man’s mouth. He knew what he’d find.
There. Pinching, he drew back. His vision blurred as he stared at the folded paper crane.
He screamed as he fell forward, crumpling the crane in his fist as rested his cheek against Noah’s cold lips. How many times had Noah lain against him, and he’d felt the rise and fall of Noah’s chest or his warm exhales against his face or his hair? Now, Noah was still, and nothing was coming out of his lips ever again.
Bugling honks broke through the woods. He turned his head and gazed right. Nestled in the fog was a lake, as still a mirror, almost black beneath the leaden fog. Cranes crossed the surface, flying in a V, their silent wings slicing the heavy forest air. He opened his palm and stared at the paper crane he’d crushed.
He turned back to Noah. Cradled Noah’s cold cheek in his palm. Wiped the dirt away from Noah’s tearstained temples. He pressed his lips to Noah’s, his tears falling on Noah’s frigid skin as he wished, with everything he had, that Noah would kiss him back, that his arms would rise out of his shallow grave and wrap around Cole, hold on to him like he used to.
Nothing.
“I’m so sorry,” Cole whispered against Noah’s death-pale skin. “It’s my fault—”
Cole’s eyes burst open as he sucked in a short, sharp breath. He was flat on his back, staring at the ceiling, at the slow circles the ceiling fan carved through the midnight stillness. He reached to the right, groping between the bedsheets and across the mattress for his lover.
Noah snorted as Cole grabbed his hip. He reached for Cole in his sleep, tangling their fingers together and tugging Cole toward him. Cole went, rolling and melting into Noah’s back, burying his face in the short strands of hair behind Noah’s ear. His heart was galloping, beating so hard he thought he’d wake Noah.
Noah murmured some nonsense and kissed Cole’s hand. A moment later, he snored, boneless in Cole’s trembling hold.
Cole waited, counting the seconds and then the minutes as he stared at their bedroom wall, not blinking. If he blinked, if he closed his eyes for even a moment, he’d see the grave again. The woods. The lake.
He lifted his hand, staring at his palm. He could still feel the paper crane tickling his skin.
Chapter One
It happened by accident.One of life’s coincidences, where inertia and circumstance connect people who are meant to be together. It had begun years before, when he’d first met Cole in a stifling interrogation room.
At the time, Cole’s visits had been the only bright spots in the dreary monotony of Ian’s incarceration. He’d stared at his cell walls day in and day out and felt them closing in. Not even replaying each of his kills in the darkness behind his eyelids had made his heart flutter. What was the point of fantasy if he could never wrap his hands around another man’s neck? Never feel the life fade away, see the panic in another man’s eyes spike and then dissipate, like mist burning off under the sun?
Then Cole had appeared. Agent Kennedy. So young he still seemed to fluoresce neon green. Ian wanted to crawl across the room and pin Cole back, knock him to the ground and kneel on his chest, get his hands in Cole’s hair and his nose and his lips on Cole’s skin, on the delicate, paper-thin flutter of flesh between jawbone and neck. He wanted to smell Cole, inhale the essence of him. The smell of his fear, beneath the soap and the deodorant and the laundry detergent. The smell the dogs tracked.
Young, eager Cole Kennedy, working on his doctorate, newly out of Quantico. So motivated to crack the mind of the FBI’s most intriguing serial murderer.
How many months had they spent together? Days and nights lost their meaning, and Cole’s eyes became the sun and the moon Ian’s world orbited around. Cole’s voice, replaying in his mind, his memories changing until Cole was whispering in Ian’s ears, saying the things Ian wanted to hear more than anything else. Things Cole would never say. At least, not willingly. What would Cole feel like under him? He’d wondered, so many, many times.
The only drawback to his escape eight years ago was that it ended his days with Cole.
Six months ago, he’d landed in Iowa. New hunting grounds, where he could pick and pluck the men he needed, the perfect ones, when he felt that buzz in his fingers, the hum in his veins. That hunger, a desperate, howling need, the kind he quenched when he had his hands wrapped around a throat and felt a body struggling beneath him.
Suddenly—like a lightning strike—there Cole was again.
It had been a perfect January Saturday, the air crisp and brittle, the taste of fresh snow from the night before on his tongue. He’d been at the base lodge at Seven Oaks, a postage-stamp-sized ski and snowboard hillside north of Des Moines. To others, he appeared to be people watching, maybe waiting on a wife or a child to finish their day frolicking in the snow.
He’d been hunting, actually. Watching the herds move on and off the ski lifts, careen down the snowy hillsides.
He let his eyes linger on the single men. Alone. Isolated. Ledges State Park was due south, a perfect place to take a man and a car. Ditch the car and take the life. Only the right man, though.
Ian heard Cole’s voice before he saw him.
He’d never forget that voice. It still echoed in all his empty places.
