Page 67 of The Grave Between Us
Ian laughed. “I’m not calling to talk about me. We spent a long, long time talking about me. Now I want to talk about you. You once told me you had no interest in killing, but that isn’t true, is it? No, you’re quite the killer when you want to be.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Last summer, Cole. You shot and killed a man in cold blood. I read all about it. How you put a bullet through his skull before he even raised his weapon at you.”
Cole stilled, and the world narrowed to a pinprick. He stared at the ground, at a single leaf rustling across the dirt, blowing in the frigid February air.
“I used to wonder, at night in my cell, what it would take for you to kill a man. You seemed so righteous back then, so certain. You’dnevertake a life, you said. Now we know that’s not true, don’t we?”
“I’m not a murderer. I’m nothing like you.”
“You killed a man. I killed a man. We’re exactly the same.”
“I didn’t enjoy it—”
“Oh, I think you did,” Ian purred. “I think youlovedkilling that man. You loved putting him down. Didn’t you?”
Cole inhaled, held his breath.
“Eight years ago, you tried to open me up and look inside me. You tried to peel back my skin and look into my mind, tried to understand what neurons fired in which ways that made me behave the way I did. You tried to understand me. But you never realized that I was doing the same thing. And you know what I learned?”
Rage tunneled through him, boiling the blood in his veins. The world was narrowing, the edges getting fuzzy. The woods were wavering lines, the horizon coming at him too fast.
“We became the same, after all that time we spent together. We’re echoes of each other now. You looked into the abyss inside me, and the abyss looked back into you. The abyss opened inside you, and you kept looking into it every time you touched something that belonged to me. My graves. My men. I told you we’d be together forever, and I was right.”
“We’re not the same,” Cole hissed. “And you don’t know anything about me.”
“I know everything about you. I know you’re low on milk. I know Katie doesn’t ever pick up her shoes. I know you’re low on soda and someone—Noah, right?—likes his toast well done. I know you have indigo towels in your guys’ bathroom, but Katie has seafoam green ones in hers. I know Noah leaves his wet towels on the end of the bed and that you haven’t done your laundry in a few weeks.”
He’s in my house. Oh my fucking God, he’s in my house.
Cole took off at an all-out run, tearing back to the parking lot. The woods seemed to elongate, stretch like a rubber band, an endless forest he could never escape. His feet were stuck in molasses, every step seeming slower and slower as he gasped for oxygen that wasn’t there.
“I’m so close to you,” Ian breathed. “So close I’m almost inside you. God, I love the smell of you in these bedsheets.”
He stumbled, fell. Rolled in the dirt, came up on his hands and knees, and puked over a decaying log. He shouted back to the search team, to the sheriff’s deputies who were approaching him like he was a spooked horse. “He’s in my house! He’s in my fucking house!”
He still had the phone in his hand, and he heard Ian’s laughter floating up from his fist.
“I knew you liked your men older,” Ian said as Cole scrambled to his feet and pushed the phone back against his ear. “Didn’t I? Back then? I’ve always known so much about you. Noah looks like a decent guy. He photographs well, I’ll give him that. You got the photos that I sent you of him, right?” There was the sound of glass breaking, a picture frame shattering. “I’ve taken more photos for you. I wonder what he tastes like. Of course, I already know what he sounds like when he screams.”
“You stay the fuck away from him!” Cole shrieked. He was an animal on the edge, his heart racing, palms sweating. He’d never felt this much adrenaline in his life. “You stay away from Noah and Katie!”
“I have no interest in her. But him…”
There. There was his car. Get to the car, get home. Stop Ian. Keep Noah safe. He was thinking in primary colors, big blocks of bold letters. No higher thought, nothing deeper thanNoahandSafetyandKill Ian stop Ian kill him!
“I can’t wait to see you again,” Ian said. “I can’t wait for us to be together forever.”
“You motherfucker!” Cole spat. “I’ll fucking kill you! I’ll kill you the next time I see you! Do you fucking hear me?”
Ian chuckled, and the line went dead.
* * *
He didn’t rememberthe drive back to their house. He didn’t remember going over 110 on the highway, or the lights and sirens flashing. He didn’t remember screaming as he floored the accelerator, or beating his palms on the steering wheel, or punching the dash with his bare fist. He didn’t remember the radio calls or the alerts of a 10-62 at his home address.
He arrived before the West Des Moines police or the Dallas County sheriff’s deputies did, and he jumped the curb and drove his Bureau sedan all the way onto the front lawn before diving out and racing up the porch. It was just like that night eight months before, but back then it was Noah’s house he was storming, and this time it was theirs. The alarm was blaring, a high-pitched scream that stabbed his eardrums.
