Page 84 of The Grave Between Us
Cole’s face scrunched up, and he tried to smile. It was like looking at an echo of a smile in a cracked mirror.
“I can know what you’ve seen and what you’ve been through, but I can’tfeelwhat you’ve been through. I can’t share that experience. And a part of me is dying that I can’t, that I can’t be right there with you to help you through—”
“I don’t want you to.” Cole’s voice had dropped, gone rough and ragged. “I don’t want you to feel this darkness.”
He stroked Cole’s hand. Pulled it to his lips and kissed Cole’s fingers. Kissed his engagement ring, like Cole had kissed Noah’s when he said he was leaving. “You’re not alone. I’m here,” Noah breathed. “I’m always going to be here.”
He watched the tears spill over Cole’s eyelashes, watched him search the night sky through the windows. “There’s this hole inside me,” Cole said after long minutes of silence. “I call it my grave. It’s where I put the things I’ve seen that can’t be described. Things I can’t talk about or share. The grave sits between me and the rest of the world. Between you and me, even.” He breathed in. Shuddered. “Sometimes it’s really small, so small I can reach across it like it’s not even there. Sometimes it feels like there’s nothing between us at all.”
He rolled to his side, facing Noah. The firelight burned in his pupils. “And other times, it feels like a Grand Canyon, a chasm that cuts me off from everything and everyone. Even you. Especially you. I never want you to see what’s in there.”
“I don’t have to. But I’m here with you, no matter what.”
Cole nodded. He laid his hand on Noah’s cheek. “Even if sometimes I can’t talk about it, if you’re there with me, I’m not facing it all alone.”
“Silence together isn’t the same as silence alone.” He kissed Cole’s knuckles again. “I’ll never leave you.”
“And I’ll never leave you again,” Cole whispered. “I swear it, Noah.”
* * *
In the morning,Noah drove Cole back out to the northern arm of the Raccoon River. Sheriff Clarke had sent a dive team in to scour the bed and the banks for miles, searching for Ian’s corpse. Noah got the text at four a.m. They’d hauled Ian out of the water south of County 44, where he’d gotten tangled up in brush and debris around the bridge pilings.
Noah walked hand in hand with Cole to the water’s edge, where Sheriff Clarke had set up a white tent to shield the corpse from the media and any onlookers. The body was covered in a tarp, and Dallas County Medical Examiner personnel waited nearby.
Sheriff Clarke nodded to Noah and Cole and stepped aside. Noah took hold of the corner of the tarp and flipped it back. He was still holding Cole’s hand, and he felt Cole’s full-body flinch, saw him close his eyes and look away. He waited, stroking Cole’s hand with his thumb, until Cole turned back and stared into the pale, water-logged, dead face of Ian Ingram.
“That’s him,” he said. “It’s Ian.”
“Positive ID,” Sheriff Clarke said, noting it on his records. “Doc, you can take the body now. Get the son of a bitch out of here.”
* * *
When Noahand Cole got to the office, Director King and his team had already cleared out. They’d left a stack of whiteboards on the conference room table, the maps rolled up in the trash, and a pile of car keys on the seat of one of the chairs.
“Not even a thank-you card,” Sophie groused. “Your ex-coworkers are assholes, Cole.”
“He’s already on to the next murder.” Cole, despite everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, managed a small, sad smile. “Still want to work for the BAU, Sophie?”
Sophie screwed up her face. “You know, I’m having second thoughts about that one.”
“Maybe Iowa isn’t that bad?”
“Maybe,” she said, winking.
Cole sat in Noah’s office as Noah tried to clean up his office after their all-nighter. Cole was quiet, withdrawn, but he took Noah’s hand whenever Noah reached for him.
Midmorning, Noah got a phone call from a blocked number. “Downing,” he answered.
“I know what you did to my laptop,” King said. Noah could hear airport announcements in the background, final boarding calls and offers to gate-check baggage. “Destroy the copy you made.”
King didn’t have to verbalize the rest. If he wanted to turn Noah in to the OIG, he already would have. He wouldn’t have bothered calling. “I will.”
“You and your team did good work. I’m glad you found him.” King ended the call.
Found Ian, or found Cole? Noah shook his head as he hung up.
At noon, Dale poked his head in, telling Noah he had a caller on line two who was frantic to speak to someone about the man on all the news channels. That he’d employed the man, a guy he’d known as Charles, for the past six months.
