Page 38 of The Grave Between Us
Noah was embarrassed, and the whole production wore him out. Katie insisted on making him dinner, and she shooed Cole out of the kitchen to “take care of Dad” while she worked. Cole almost went to check on her at least three times, when the clangs and crashes seemed overly loud, but she always shouted, “I’m fine!”
She’d made a fettuccini mac and cheese, something that Noah recognized on sight. It must have been a comfort food between them. Noah beamed as she served him, and the smile she gave him in return could have put the sun to shame. She held Noah’s hand as he ate, then cleared the table and did the dishes while Noah fell asleep in Cole’s arms on the couch.
He put Noah to bed, tucking him in and running his fingers through Noah’s hair until Noah was snoring before slipping out of the room. They’d converted their third bedroom into a shared office. It was set up like an old-school police bullpen, with desks facing each other and bookshelves lining the walls. It was a place to pay bills and read email, order things from Amazon and eBay, and track Katie’s grades and school announcements. Normally they didn’t bring their work home, but he wasn’t going into the office and leaving Noah’s side.
He couldn’t do this in front of Noah, either. He’d been on pins and needles all evening, the thought of what he had to do growing inside him, dark, rank, and foul. He smiled throughout dinner, laughed in all the right places at Katie’s exuberant stories about class and her friends and the cheer squad. He’d squeezed Noah’s thigh under the table, while his own leg had bounced and jittered out of control. He’d held Noah tighter than usual on the couch, until his shoulders were shaking.Whatever it takes. I’ll keep you safe.
Noah’s eyelashes had fluttered against his skin as he slept.
Cole opened a secure VPN to the FBI servers and then downloaded the case files Michael had unearthed from the Director’s Eyes Only vault. He had to work through forty pages of red-banded notices, classification alerts, and warnings that, should he read any further, he was subject to criminal prosecution. He clicked and clicked, and then, suddenly, there it was.
Ian’s booking photo was right on top.
He’d forgotten, somehow, how intense Ian’s eyes were. Brown, yes, nothing unusual to their color. But the power behind his stare, the shine to his gaze. The gravity of his presence. Cole almost tipped forward at his desk, eight years and a thousand miles away from where Ian’s photo had been taken, drawn into those eyes again.
He clicked forward, and more photos came up. Photos the cleanup team, sent by Director Harper, had taken of the conference room in Virginia before they’d torn everything down and boxed it away. The map McHugh had put together, working nonstop for days. Pushpins still covered the surface: black, red, orange, and a lone pin tied with white ribbon in West Virginia. Their one found grave.
More photos: Their whiteboard and the lists of potential victims. He remembered the way they’d categorized the missing men, reflected in stacks of file folders along the edge of the conference table: probable victim, fits the outline, need more information, and ruled out.
He was supposed to work through the probables with Ian, go through them one by one. Empty his graves somehow, someway, even if he had to dig with his bare hands.
His stomach turned, and he scooted back in his desk chair and hunched over, burying his hands in his hair as his vision swam and he sucked down a deep breath.Black dirt between his fingers. He’d scrubbed and scrubbed, but it felt like he could never get that ring of dirt and blood out from around his fingernails. Like he’d dipped his own hands in the same blood Ian had, like they were connected—
He forced his mind to blank. Forced himself to think of blue sky and golden fields. Oak trees in meadows and water towers in the distance. Horizons so far away he saw the curve of the earth. Not a mountain to be seen, not for miles and miles and miles. No corpses hidden in the woods, no skulls waiting to peek out from the earth and stare at Cole from their tortured graves.
Noah, in the sunshine, turning around and smiling at Cole. Holding out his hand.
He mentally took Noah’s hand. This was his life now. Sunshine and happiness. A good man who loved him.
Cole clicked through the rest of the photos of the conference room. The reports he’d written, the FD-302s he’d typed up day after day after day, came next. His impressions of each interview, his insights. A separate file contained the transcripts and video files of every interrogation. Then on to the reports the rest of the team had written. Evidence recovery, search teams, the forensic auditing of every aspect of Ian’s past. The timeline they’d built of his life, down to every Taco Bell, gas station, and video rental receipt. Parallel processing, the effect of a group of dedicated FBI agents against one evil man.
He clicked into the next subfile. Crayon drawings appeared, four to a page, shrunk to fit. They were Ian’s early ones, when he was still drawing Cole’s face. Cole dragged the slider forward, skipping a hundred pages in the file.
Crime scene photos. Yellow tape fluttering in the foreground, the dive team suiting up inside the white tent in the background. The mountain lake wreathed in winter fog, wet and sharp in the lungs. Ian’s voice in his ear, his breath on his neck. Dirt between his fingers—
He clenched his hands into fists over the keyboard. In the end, this was all they had, thanks to him. All those names, those stacks of file folders, the weeks and weeks of agonizing work, and they only brought one of Ian’s men home. The others were still out there, their bones restless in the dark earth. Waiting, waiting, desperate to come home. But they weren’t coming home, thanks to Cole. He’d let them all down.
He’d let so many people down.
How many more men had Ian taken? Who had he hunted, once he was free? After months in prison, he’d been starving for a kill. Who was dead today who would have been alive, if not for Cole’s mistake?
He scrubbed his hands over his face and backed out of the file, reversing until he had Ian’s profile pulled up.
Victimology. The men who caught Ian’s eye, who he couldn’t resist taking. The men he hunted. The men whose lives he stole.
Cole called up the missing persons database. He held his breath as he typed in the search criteria. Men reported missing within the past eight years. Over age eighteen. Ian had never taken anyone remotely close to being a minor. For the time being, he left the search open geographically to the entire United States. He needed to follow Ian’s victims to find the man, and this was the first net he had to cast.
How many men would it be?
How many lives was Cole responsible for? Every man Ian had taken since then was on him.
How could they find Ian’s victims? The men he’d taken since his escape were as lost to the world—and the FBI—as the men he’d taken before his escape. Cole had thought he’d been so close back then, but he was an idiot. He’d never really understood Ian.
I’ll find you, somehow, he whispered to himself, and to Ian’s men.I’ll bring you home.
He held his breath and hitSearch.
When the number came back, he closed his eyes and bowed his head again.
