Page 52 of The Grave Between Us
“I gave him one sheet of paper and a pencil to write everything down. I took them back after—”
“Oh, Cole.” Michael sighed like the world was ending. “What have you done?”
Chapter Fifteen
He was sobbingwhen he finished, his forehead digging into the steering wheel, his hands gripping the leather so hard his knuckles burned. He couldn’t look at Noah. His lungs ached and his throat was raw, and he kept sucking in giant, heaving breaths.
“It was all my fault. My fault he escaped. My fault he killed McHugh and Hillary.” The official investigative report, from the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General, laid the blame squarely at Cole’s feet.
FBI Special Agent Cole Kennedy provided Prisoner Ingram with a pencil during the interrogation, which Prisoner Ingram covertly bit shards off of, concealing them within his mouth. During transport, Prisoner Ingram spat the pencil shards into his hands and used the wood to pick his handcuffs and effectuate his release.
It was on the interrogation tape when they played it back. Ian had gnawed on the pencil right there in front of Cole, moving pieces of wood to the far side of his mouth as he wrote down his tortures. Cole never saw a thing.
In the car, Ian freed his hands and reached over the seat, strangling McHugh as he drove. They crashed, and in the chaos, Ian got hold of the shotgun. He put Hillary on his knees and shot him point-blank. McHugh had broken his ankle in the rollover, and he’d limped away as fast as he could, calling Cole as he did, before Ian tackled him.
He sliced McHugh open before he was dead. Showed him his own organs before strangling him.
There was something horrifically poetic about that, Ian opening up an FBI agent who’d tried to open him up. Cole understood Ian’s message immediately, and that made him want to tear out his own eyeballs.
The OIG recommended Cole be fired, but Michael had gone toe to toe with Director Harper on his behalf. If he’d asked Cole, though, Cole would have said he didn’t want his job to be saved, or his reputation, or even his life. He wanted to wallow in the stink of his own failure, in the knowledge that he’d gotten two good men killed and let an evil man escape justice.
He spent his month-long suspension in his apartment, staring at the walls.
At night he dreamed of Ian. He’d be on his back on the pavement like McHugh, or in the dirt like Brenden Roundhouse or Paul Mason, or on a boat, his head being forced into a propeller, like Shane DeGrassi. He saw Ian above him, his eyes like the dark side of the moon. Ian was the night sky, blocking everything over Cole, the blackness swallowing the world as his hands clenched tight around Cole’s throat. Cole would wake gasping, curling around himself and crying into his knees.
We belong to each other now, Cole. We’re united forever.
He heard Ian’s voice in every one of his thoughts. Felt Ian’s presence behind him every moment of the day. Saw him out of the corners of his eyes, in the shadows of his apartment and the stairwell and the back seat of his car.
The FBI collapsed the Ingram investigation, boxing everything up as if it had never happened. The failure was too huge, their failure upon failure upon failure magnified in the OIG’s confidential report. Director Harper had a choice: admit a serial killer had operated with impunity for almost two decades, the FBI unaware of him or his victims—and then admit that, after being arrested through sheer chance, the killer had manipulated the BAU, playing mind games until the FBI couldn’t tell up from down and hadn’t seen through his ploy to gain his freedom. That he’d escaped, unwittingly aided by an FBI agent, and was on the loose.
Or wipe it away as if Ian had never existed. Avoid the congressional investigations and the public censure. Rewind time, reset to before Ian had skidded out on that icy mountain road. Except for McHugh’s and Hillary’s deaths, of course.
Every scrap of information, every case note, every interrogation report, every video was classified Director’s Eyes Only. They buried Ian and everything he’d done, along with their failure, beneath the crushing wheel of the FBI bureaucracy.
Days turned into weeks turned into months and years. Cole went from being a pariah, trying to scrub off the stench of failure that clung to him like an open grave, to being told “Well done” and “Good job” again. Profilers came and went, and eventually, Michael was the only one left who knew about Ian and what Cole had done. Director Harper never spoke to Cole again, never shook his hand, never even looked his way when they crossed paths at headquarters or the BAU.
Ian’s voice eventually faded from Cole’s mind, and one day he realized he wasn’t just surviving anymore, he was living. And it felt good to live again. He’d worked hard, racked up the miles and the TDYs, and started spending some of the money he’d stockpiled. Better hotel rooms when he traveled, for one. And then, a few years after that, he went to Vegas for the FBI’s annual conference and saw a man on the other side of the bar who changed his whole world.
“Cole,” Noah breathed, when Cole’s hiccups slowed. Noah’s face was a mask, carved into a rictus of pain.
“All these years,” Cole whispered, “I thought the FBI was still hunting for him. I knew they boxed up the case, but still, I thought somewhere, someone must be searching—but no. No one was. He’s been out there, taking men. Killing men. And now he’s here. He’s targeted you. And I can’t—” A new wave of sobs choked him.
Noah held his hand and said nothing, just stared out the window.
At home, Cole pulled out the photos Ian had sent to the BAU and, hesitantly, showed them to Noah. First the rifle sighting on Noah’s car, then the crash. He almost didn’t show Noah the final two pictures, but he did, then buried his face in his palms as the tears came again. Noah stared at the photos for a long, long time, then set them down and walked away.
Noah was quiet and withdrawn for the rest of the weekend. Cole shut himself in their office, poring through the case file, through missing persons reports, through file after file after file of missing men over the past eight years. He didn’t eat. Didn’t even sleep Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon he collapsed in their bed and passed out.
He could hear thethump-crunch, thump-crunch, thump-crunchof Ian’s shovel as it slammed into the dirt, feel the cool fog enveloping his skin, sliding down his throat. He could see Ian’s shape in the mist, working the shovel, digging the grave. There was a human-sized lump by his feet, a man’s body lying on his side, a paper crane resting on his cheek. Cole tried to scream, but when he did, paper cranes fell out of his mouth instead. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything. He was frozen, watching Ian dig the grave and bury his secret victim, powerless to do anything to stop him.
He woke with his heart racing and his lungs burning, a scream lodged in his throat but unable to break free, like something was blocking his shout. Noah was wrapped around him, his face buried in Cole’s neck, arms around his waist, holding as tight as he could while he slept.
Cole stayed in bed for twenty minutes, counting Noah’s heartbeats, before he slipped away, back to his office and the men who waited for him to unearth their bones and bring them home.
* * *
“Didyou get any sleep last night?” Noah handed Cole his coffee mug as they buckled themselves into the SUV on Monday morning. It was their first day back at work, but Cole felt like he’d died, and Noah didn’t look much better. They were grumpy, close to snapping at each other. “I woke up at three and you weren’t there. I never got back to sleep.”
