The Grave Between Us by Tal Bauer

Chapter Sixteen

“All right,I need dedicated workspace, someplace that I can secure,” Assistant Director Michael King bellowed as he strode into the Des Moines office, trailing five young agents behind him like ducklings. “I need cars. I need access to all of your files and your local interagency database.”

Noah came out of his office, frowning. His team rose as King kept shouting. He stopped at the break in the bullpen, beneath the welcome-back banner and the mostly empty box of doughnuts.

Assistant Director King was a legend in the FBI, not always for the best reasons. The Assistant Director in charge of the Behavioral Analysis Unit wasn’t going to be a warm, cuddly person, but King had earned a reputation for fierce belligerence, backed up by an awesome success rate. He could afford to be an asshole, unfortunately. He also had a reputation of bigfooting all over local offices when he and his team swooped in, sometimes at the local jurisdiction’s invitation, sometimes not. Noah hadn’t invited King to Des Moines, and Cole, no matter his history with King, worked for Noah now. Not King.

“Can I help you?” Noah asked, stepping in front of King. “I’m Special Agent in Charge—”

“Downing, yes, I know who you are.” King approached him, giving him a long, slow once-over, like he was profiling him in fast motion. “You know why I’m here. We’ve got a hot lead on this investigation, and we need to run it down now, so I need your full cooperation.”

“I’m happy to help you, Director, but barging in and barking orders isn’t how we do things here. My people are happy to work with you—”

“Let me be clear, Downing. I’m not working with you.”

Noah’s jaw dropped. He saw his team’s eyes widen, saw them glance at each other over the walls of their cubes.

“I’m commandeering workspace within your office. This is a director-level, eyes-only investigation, and none of you, with the exception of Cole Kennedy, have been cleared for this case.”

“This is my office. What happens here, I’m a part of. You can’t just come in here and take over. This case affects us personally.”

“Downing, I am briefing Director Harper on this case every hour, and my next briefing is in…” He checked his watch. “Thirty-seven minutes. Your name is going to be in that briefing, and I can say one of two things. One, SAC Downing was amazingly helpful, really pulled out all the stops to get us up and running with no hurdles, contributing to the success of this investigation. Or two, Downing was nothing but a hindrance, roadblocking me and playing political pissing games while lives hung in the balance. It’s entirely up to you what I say, but whatever you decide, the end result is going to be the same. I’m going to run my investigation my way, and you’re going to stay the hell out of it. So if you want to play games, it’ll be nothing but a waste of my time and a detriment to your career.” He checked his watch again. “Ticktock. Make your choice.”

Noah’s cheeks burned. He hadn’t been dressed down publicly since he was a recruit in the academy and made a foolish mistake on Hogan’s Alley that got his whole team shot and killed during their run-throughs. He’d deserved it then, but he didn’t deserve this. Not in front of his team, the people he led every day. He could feel his bones shriveling, alongside the urge to strike back, establish himself. This was his office, damn it. His people.

He clenched his teeth and spoke. “The conference room is the only room we have that’s big enough for what you need. Down the hall, on the right.”

“Good.” King nodded to the agents huddled behind him, sending them down the hall. They each carried file boxes and had three laptop bags slung over their shoulders. “I need cars. And access to your files.”

Noah grabbed a sticky note from Cole’s desk and wrote out the digits for the electronic lock on the file room and the password to the database the local law enforcement agencies maintained with the Des Moines FBI. “I’ll have someone pull a couple of cars out of the seizures for you.”

“And I need the Wi-Fi password.”

He pushed the sticky note against his palm and scribbled, pressing so hard the pen came through the paper and dug into his hand. He held it out silently.

King took the note, nodded, and marched down the hall. He was barking orders to his underlings before he hit the conference room door, ordering laptops be set up along one side of the table, maps and photos along one wall, charts and lists of names up on the windows. The door shut as he spoke, cutting off his voice, and a moment later, the blinds closed.

Noah turned and paced back to his office. His shoulders shook, and he stared out over Des Moines, hands on his hips. He heard heavy footsteps, and a presence filled the office behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Jacob leaning against the wall, scowling.

Sophie appeared a moment later, a frown creasing her face. She looked from Noah to Jacob and then back to Noah. He was still shaking in front of the windows. Goddamn it. King was right, but he was also wrong. It wasn’t the time for pissing matches, but it also wasn’t the time to be an asshole, turn FBI agents against FBI agents. His people would bend over backward for King if he asked for the help. They could find this Ian Ingram and stop him. There wasn’t a better group of agents than his team, no matter what King thought.

Slam. Noah’s raging was interrupted by the sudden bone-jarring slam of his office door. He jumped, spun around.

Sophie leaned against his desk, smirking as she folded her arms. “Well, you weren’t going to slam it,” she said. “But it needed to happen.”

Jacob grinned. Noah shook his head, but despite himself, a small smile poked free.

“Feel better?” Sophie asked.

Noah didn’t answer. “Sophie, can you pull a few cars for King and his team? No need to give him the Mercedes, but make sure whatever you pick is reliable.”

She snorted but nodded.

“It looks like we’re going to be hosting the BAU for a while, so let’s make this as painless as possible for everyone involved. Whatever they need, they get, and other than that, stay out of their way.”

Sophie and Jacob nodded again. “What’s going on, anyway?” Sophie asked. “Is this about your shooting? How come they snapped up that and shut us out? And why are they back now, all of a sudden, throwing their weight around? Who the hell are they looking for?”

Director’s Eyes Only. He couldn’t share what Cole had told him. Noah wasn’t supposed to know that Ian Ingram existed, that the FBI had him once and lost him, or that he’d popped back up again. Even though Ingram had shot Noah and Jacob, the details of that very investigation were classified above his pay grade. “I can’t go into the details. I’m sorry. But Director King is right: this is a major investigation, and the best thing we can do is give them our support.”

“What about Cole?” Jacob rumbled. “How’s he fit in with the BAU? Is he working for King, or is he working with us?”

“Cole is doing whatever needs to be done. One man is already in danger because we were too slow to realize what was in front of our faces. I’m not going to put up any roadblocks.” Noah grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair and shrugged it on. “King sent Cole out to work the ground case, and I’m going to go help him. For all Cole’s expertise in profiling and criminal psychology, he’s still inexperienced when it comes to the nuts and bolts of an investigation on his own. Jacob, can I borrow your car?”

* * *

He droveout to Oak Haven Meadows, retracing the drive they’d made on Saturday, so full of optimism on the way there and then so full of despair as they made their way home. Noah had been excited about taking the first concrete steps to plan their wedding, and when it had all gone sideways, he’d wanted, for a moment, to press pause on everything. Maybe it was a sign, he’d thought, them getting thrown out of the venue. Maybe they should wait. Maybe—

Why did it sometimes feel like complicated was their default, and the moments in between were holding patterns, waiting games until the sky opened up on them again, another deluge pouring down on their happiness?

But even if the skies did fall, and the world collapsed, and he and Cole were left in the ruins, he’d rather be with Cole than without him. There was no comparison. Before, it was like he’d been living in a fog, searching with his hands tied behind his back. Numb and scared, too afraid to stop and take a breath, look inside himself and see the truth. He’d had an idea what he wanted, but even the idea scared him senseless.

And then there was Cole, and his life changed from one moment to the next.

Now he could feel distance growing between them, inches that felt like miles. They’d never had that problem before—at least, not after they found their footing. It had been their commitment to each other, unspoken but lived, actualized: they were wholehearted, all in. He’d wanted forever so badly he ached for it, was certain he was screwing up every other day because he wanted it so deeply. Then Cole proposed, and again, they were all in, together, Noah’s fears about his ability to be the husband Cole deserved notwithstanding.

He didn’t want to lose Cole, and there were so many ways he could. But he always feared he’d do something to drive Cole away, he’d be the one who screwed up and who made Cole second-guess forever and their love story.

Forever, so certain only a short time ago, seemed precarious now. He could feel a looming shadow, something that made his heart race and his lungs seize, but he couldn’t see what was coming out of the darkness. Cole had left out pieces of the story he’d told, gaping holes Noah could feel but not see. Tears in his lover’s soul, places where Cole had been emptied.

Noah had never seen Cole terrified before. Even when Noah had been so fucking scared his heart almost gave out, even when he’d feared he wouldn’t survive past the next moment, Cole had been there, and he’d been the kind of strong Noah thought only existed in novels and Hollywood epics. Noah had clung to Cole and fallen to pieces, and Cole had patiently waited for Noah to glue himself back together again, better than he’d been before. Thanks to Cole.

He’d never seen Cole fall apart. He’d never seen him on the ragged edge before. Cole was never vulnerable in such a raw, agonized way. He was bleeding naked fear, the stink of it pulsing between them.

Noah had no idea what to do.

Stay away, like Cole seemed to want? Let Cole shut himself in the office, bury himself in the case file, fall into the past? Cole was relentlessly chasing his nightmares, beating his conscience until he nearly broke himself.

Was this the slide, accelerating? Friday night, he’d been so bold and hopeful, wanting to arrest the inertia of the collapse. Stand in the way of the fall. He’d thought looking at a wedding site would help them, and now…

Damn it, he’d empty the FBI’s closets for Cole, drag the skeletons Director Harper had buried out into the sunlight. He’d face down any monster for Cole, stand at his side against the darkness. He’d curse the shattered sky and cover Cole’s head from the rain, shelter him in his hold. He’d change Cole’s life, if he could, as much as Cole had changed his own.

If Cole would let him.

He pulled into the nearly empty parking lot at Oak Haven Meadows, parking beside Cole’s SUV. Well, Noah’s SUV, which Cole was borrowing. Cole normally drove one of the Bureau sedans. It had been parked in the driveway of their house for two weeks now, turning stale.

The last time he had walked up this path, he’d done so hand in hand with Cole. And then they’d been thrown out. Noah shoved that aside as he passed the barn, heading for the bed and breakfast. Bells jangled as he pushed open the door. He walked inside and came face to face with Cole, sitting behind the desk in the inn’s office, the same older man and woman who had thrown them out hovering over his shoulders and watching the computer screen.

The woman looked like she’d starting sucking lemon rinds at dawn. Her eyes were flint hard already, probably thanks to Cole and the news he’d brought about Brett Kerrigan, but turned to granite when she saw Noah. The man from yesterday, her husband, sighed, long and loud, and shook his head. “So you really were a fed,” he said. Defeat stained his voice.

“It’s a federal crime to impersonate an FBI agent.” Noah stood in the office doorway. Cole hadn’t looked up from the computer screen. “I’m very sorry to inconvenience you both again. We want to do everything we can to find Brett Kerrigan.”

“Those damn paper cranes.” The woman turned to the window and glared. It was overcast again, the world perpetually gray. “They were a part of this?”

“It’s possible,” Noah said carefully. “There are indications that they may have been part of a signal from someone we think might be responsible for Mr. Kerrigan’s abduction.”

“Noah,” Cole said softly. His eyes flicked from the screen to Noah and then back. “I think I have something on the surveillance cameras.”

Noah came around the desk and stood behind Cole. He set his hand on Cole’s shoulder. Cole was shaking, as tight as a bowstring.

“This is the parking lot,” Cole said, pointing to the upper right box on a four-split video screen. “Kerrigan is about to enter the frame. He gets into the Nissan sedan. Watch the man who moves in the right corner of the frame.”

“I see him. He’s keeping to the edges of the camera.” The man was more of an outline, a shadow. Middle height, middle weight, wearing what looked like jeans and a hoodie with a canvas jacket on top. He had on a ball cap, too, pulled low, obscuring his features. No profile view to snatch and blow up, run through the facial recognition databases.

“I’ve found him on three more cameras, moving around the main barn and then into the bar. He always keeps to the edges of the surveillance cameras, as if he’s purposely avoiding them. Keeping an eye out and keeping to their outside range, without being obvious about it.” Cole pulled up an exterior shot of the barn, the man walking obliquely by the camera. Another inside the bar, taken from behind the register, from the point of view of the bartender. The same unknown man kept to the edge of the bar, turned away from the camera. He was watching something, staring intently toward the front of the barn. Toward the restaurant.

Noah saw children flicker in and out of the frame, running too fast for the clipping snapshots of the low-budget camera. His stomach turned to lead. He gripped Cole’s shoulder. “What time was this?”

“Eleven forty-seven a.m.”

If Cole pulled up the surveillance footage of the restaurant area, the two of them would be front and center, flicking through the binders and sipping champagne.

“He was right there,” Cole breathed. “Right there.”

“That’s Brett Kerrigan at the bar.” Noah pointed to a couple, a man and a woman, sitting close together a few barstools down from the hidden man. Kerrigan fed his wife-to-be cheese slices and berries by hand. She kissed his fingertips before taking a sip of her wine. “Can we see a copy of their receipt? I want to know what they ordered.”

The woman nodded and turned to a different desk, rummaging through receipts and sales records. She brought a credit card slip to Noah and then took up her silent post by the window again.

The receipt had an itemized order list on it. Kerrigan and his fiancé had shared a wine flight, then ordered a bottle of wine to split, along with a cheese board. They’d been there for a couple of hours, arriving just after eleven and Kerrigan leaving first, a little after one.

“Why did Kerrigan leave without his fiancé?”

“Ms. Wenger had an appointment with our wedding planner. They were going over flower arrangement options. It’s not unusual for the brides to take the lead on those kinds of things.”

What kind of flowers did he and Lilly have at their wedding? He couldn’t remember. Maybe they were orange? Lilly had put together so much of the wedding, telling him all he needed to do was show up on time and cleanly shaved. They’d laughed about it back then.

It was unimaginable to him now, not wanting to make the choices about his wedding with Cole. Where they married, what kind of flowers they had… If he closed his eyes and envisioned their wedding, he pictured… color. Lots of color, vibrant color, like the saturation of the world had been dialed up. Katie’s hair, long and loose, burnished mahogany and gleaming in sunlight. Cole’s eyes, worn leather and brandy, fathoms deep. He had no idea what the names of the flowers were, but he could see them all over, peppering the scene with so much color.

He had no idea what he was imagining, but he was imagining it. He wanted it. Kerrigan and his fiancé looked happy on the surveillance camera, as happy as he and Cole had been at the same time, cuddling thirty feet away at their own table. But Noah wouldn’t leave Cole to pick out flowers on his own.

Maybe it was age. He had over a decade on Brett Kerrigan. Maybe it was experience. Maybe it was the failure of a first marriage, the crumbling of what he’d thought, when he was that young, forever looked like.

He had the chance at a new forever with Cole, and, damn it, he wanted everything. There wasn’t a single moment in their life when he ever thought, You know, I don’t need to be here for this.

I wish you’d stayed to pick the flowers, Mr. Kerrigan.

“What time does Kerrigan head out to the parking lot?” Noah’s voice was tight. He cleared his throat.

“About 1:05.”

They’d already been kicked out by then. At that time, Cole was spilling his guts on the side of the road and Noah was trying to right his capsized reality, listening to his steadfast lover come apart in sobs and distilled horror as he spoke about opening hidden graves and a serial killer who drew hundreds of naked portraits of him.

“Pull up the parking lot footage again, Cole. Sir, ma’am, do you have cameras set up around your parking lot, or is this the only angle you have?”

“There’s a camera at the turn in from the highway. You can see the cars that head up and down our drive,” the husband said.

The driveway to Oak Haven Meadows was a long, meandering gravel road that passed three fields before rising over a gentle hill and crossing an old, rusted cattle guard. That was a long time to go without video surveillance. But if it was all they had… “Let’s see it.”

The husband worked the computer for a second, leaning over Cole, and a new video feed popped up. “It’s a separate system,” he said. “We put a little more money into this one. It’s a better picture. We wanted to be able to identify anyone entering or exiting the property if we needed to.”

He felt Cole’s shiver, the hitch in his shoulders from his sudden intake of breath. Cole fast-forwarded to the same time stamp as when Kerrigan entered the parking lot. They waited, watching the empty road for several minutes, until Kerrigan’s silver Maxima appeared. The camera angle was set so they could see inside the windshield, and they had a crystal-clear view of Brett Kerrigan, checking his phone as he signaled left to turn. A few seconds later, he pulled out, heading down the highway.

And then a second car appeared. Another sedan, a Honda. Blue. Noah scribbled down the license plate on a scrap of paper.

The driver had the visor down, even though the day had been overcast. He pulled to the intersection and stopped. Noah held his breath.

There hadn’t been anyone else in the parking lot, other than Brett Kerrigan and the man they thought was Ingram.

The driver leaned forward over the steering wheel, peering down the highway before making his turn. For a single second, he was visible in three-quarter profile, outlined through the clear glass, the dark Honda interior an impromptu backdrop for the pale expanse of his broad face. Square jaw, wide cheekbones. He had a goatee, salt-and-pepper hair. Broad shoulders. He was a powerful man, with a thick neck that was made of muscle, not fat. Same ball cap. Same canvas jacket. Same hoodie bunched behind his neck. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t even close to the clarity or quality of a booking photo. Noah couldn’t have used the image in a six-pack or asked a bystander to try to ID the man based on that shot. But Cole had gone rigid, his spine electric-straight, like he’d seen a resurrection.

“That’s him,” Cole hissed. “Fuck, Noah, that’s him.”

“Are you sure?” Noah asked softly. “It’s not very clear.”

Cole nodded. They watched as Ingram turned left, following Kerrigan’s Nissan.

“Time stamp?” Noah asked.

“One-seventeen p.m.”

“That’s the start of our timeline. How long is the drive from Oak Haven Meadows to Kerrigan’s home address?”

Cole checked his notes. “About ninety minutes, without traffic. There wasn’t much traffic on Saturday afternoon. He should have been back around two forty-five, then was supposed to meet his fiancé and friends at four thirty.”

“But he never made it home. That’s our window. Those ninety minutes are when it happened. Now we know when. We need to find out where and how.” Noah took a deep breath, steadying himself. “Let’s check the routes Kerrigan could have taken home. If there’s any traffic cameras, we can pull the footage, and we can ask gas stations along the way to see copies of their road-facing video surveillance. We’ll drive each route and retrace his steps.”

Cole nodded. He spun in the chair, turning wide eyes up to Noah. Gratitude fell from him in waves, and Noah ached to take his hand, promise him they would figure this out, that they would do it together.

He stepped away from the computer, nodding to the couple as he strode out of the office. “Sir, ma’am, thank you very much for your cooperation. I’m sorry, again, for the disturbance we caused on Saturday. In fact, we left before we had a chance to settle our bill, and I’d like to do that now—”

She waved him off with a curt dismissal. “Please find Mr. Kerrigan and bring him home to his fiancé. That’s all we want.”

“We’ll do absolutely everything we can to bring him home, ma’am.”

Cole looked as pale as a corpse, like he was blowing away from the inside out, and Noah gave in and reached for his hand. It wasn’t the most professional moment of his career, but the first time they’d been at Oak Haven Meadows, they were looking for a wedding site. That cat was already out of the bag.

Cole took his hand and squeezed.

* * *

“Jacob,I need you to run a plate for me. We’ve got a lead from the surveillance camera at the wedding venue.”

Noah heard keys tapping and Jacob’s chair groaning over the line. “Go ahead, boss.”

Noah read out the license plate numbers. In the front seat of Cole’s SUV, he and Cole hovered over an atlas of Iowa’s roadways.

Jacob whistled. “That’s a hot ride, boss. It was reported stolen two days ago.”

“From where?”

“Ames. Iowa State University parking lot. For a car thief, university parking lots are like shopping malls. Campus police took the report, but they already knew the car was long gone. I’m surprised it’s shown up. Usually those things are taken to chop shops within an hour.”

“Our suspect needed wheels that couldn’t be tracked back to him.”

“Should I pass this along to our BAU guests?”

“Hold off on that for now,” Noah said carefully. Cole’s gaze slid sideways to him. “We might be coming back with more, and I think Director King is the kind of guy who likes all his information in one lump, rather than parceled out in increments.”

Cole chuckled and nodded. He turned back to the atlas, and his smile vanished.

Noah thanked Jacob again and hung up. He pulled up a satellite map on his phone and compared it to the atlas spread between their laps. “Kerrigan had two routes he could have taken home. He could have gone north and picked up the interstate, taken that all the way through Des Moines. Or he could have taken this county highway”—Noah traced a route that paralleled the interstate to the south by twenty miles—“and wiggled his way home on the backroads. This stays two-lane all the way until it intersects with I-35. He could have picked up 35 and headed south until he hit Route 5, then taken that across to the east side.”

“The interstate is the most direct route.”

“It is, but”—Noah held out Kerrigan’s receipt from the bar—“he’d been drinking. Half a bottle of wine in a couple of hours wouldn’t put a man of his size over the limit, but a lot of Iowans will stick to the backroads when they’ve had a few. They think they can avoid the highway patrol, and they take their chances on the county sheriff’s being anywhere else.” He ran his finger along County Highway F90, the southern route back to Des Moines. “I think he went this way.”

Cole gnawed on his lower lip and followed the path of Noah’s fingers with his own. The southern outflow of the Raccoon River veered toward the county road. He traced the winding waterway eastward to Raccoon River Park, threading between Walnut Woods State Park and Blue Heron Lake. “Ian likes lakes and rivers. And woods. We’re pretty sure he buried the remains of his victims near bodies of water.”

“Like that body you told me about finding.”

“Right. He tried to misdirect us into the lake. It was a game to him. If we searched the lake and never found the grave in the woods, he had the satisfaction of knowing he put one over on us. If we did find the grave, then he’d get to see his victim again when we brought him up. He, uh…”

Noah waited.

“He liked how the grave smelled. He liked how the decomp smelled. Especially on me.”

Cole’s hands trembled on the atlas, his fingernails scratching against the paper. Noah wrapped both his hands around Cole’s, curling Cole’s fingers into his palms.

He didn’t know what to say or what to do. If the situation were reversed, Cole would have some perfectly timed insight, some psychological wisdom that would calm him down, reorient him in the now, pull him out of the whirlpools of the past. Noah wasn’t that smart, and he never seemed to know the right thing to say, especially when he never seemed to know the right thing to say when it mattered the most.

The only thing he knew how to do was be there for Cole.

And he knew investigations, the boots-on-the-ground legwork that solved cases. Soybeans or suspects, he knew the questions to ask, the paths to tread that carried an investigation from an initial inquiry to a collar narrowing around a prime suspect.

Ian Ingram might be a monster from Cole’s past, but he was Noah’s suspect now.

“We’ll find him.” He squeezed Cole’s fingers, and Cole squeezed back. “Let’s drive F90 and see if we can find any sign of Kerrigan’s car, or any sign that he and Ingram might have interacted on the highway. How did he attack other drivers? Did he run them off the road?”

“No, he would blitz attack. Come through their driver’s side window. Break the glass and incapacitate them. He had a few different ways to abduct men, but when the abductions involved cars, more often than not, they were blitz attacks.”

“To do that, he’d have to get in front of Kerrigan, then stop and somehow lie in wait for him. There’s no stop signs between where Kerrigan picked the highway up and the I-35 interchange. If Ingram came at him the way you’re describing, he had to get Kerrigan to stop his car.”

Noah studied the atlas, compared it to the satellite view on his phone. Ingram needed time to speed ahead of Kerrigan. That meant a long stretch of open road, along with a few bends for Kerrigan to lose sight of him. For an attack, he’d need a ruse. Something to make Kerrigan stop his car.

Kerrigan was the kind of guy who would stop to help a stranded motorist. He zoomed in on the map, moving fifty feet at a time as he studied the roadway, the shoulder, the embankments in the satellite view. Fields and clustered trees, thick with tangled undergrowth. There was a train coming south alongside the highway, and the Raccoon River curled in a loop-de-loop, teasing the road and then veering north before coming south and crossing beneath a bridge—

“Cole, look.” Noah pointed to the atlas and held out his phone. “There’s a boat ramp south of the highway.”

A gravel road, jogging off F90 and snaking into the dense underbrush and trees along the riverbank. It went straight into the river, an old country ramp stamped out of hard-packed gravel. Noah could see the ruts from years of use. Locals used it, taking out fishing boats or small craft. It was quiet, out of the way, and hidden.

“That is definitely something Ian would be interested in,” Cole said softly.

“Let’s start driving.”

* * *

Brett Kerriganand Ian Ingram came face to face between the railroad tracks and the boat ramp. There was an eleven-foot-long strip of burned rubber on the highway, as if someone had braked hard and skidded. Based on the widths of the tires, it was a sedan that had slammed on its brakes. At the end of the tire tracks, shattered safety glass lay in a puddle on the asphalt. Judging by its placement on the roadway, it had come from the sedan’s driver side window.

They both parked on the shoulder, watching the road as Noah popped open Jacob’s trunk and pulled out an evidence collection kit. He passed a pair of gloves to Cole after he put his own on. They hadn’t seen a car pass by in over five minutes. “Keep an eye out while I take photos,” Noah said. He stood in the road, using his phone camera to snap shots of the skid marks, the broken glass, the empty highway.

He had to call the Dallas County Sheriff, too. Sheriff Clarke was an old-school sheriff, the kind who’d been elected and reelected for decades. He had a barrel chest and a white walrus mustache. He was beloved by his department, and for all the immediate assumptions someone could make about Sheriff Clarke, he was one of the best local law enforcement partners Noah had ever worked with. A year before, he’d led one of the investigative teams on the Coed Killer case.

“Sheriff Clarke, it’s Noah Downing. I’m out on County F90 near the Booneville boat ramp. And I’m pretty sure I’ve got a crime scene for your missing man, Brett Kerrigan. Skid marks, broken glass. If you run the tire tracks and the glass, I think you’ll find it’s a match to Kerrigan’s Nissan Maxima. You’re going to want to send a deputy out here to process this.”

Sheriff Clarke was quiet for a long moment. “Does the FBI have an interest in Brett Kerrigan? Is there an indication he’s been abducted and taken out of state?”

Abductions were the FBI’s jurisdiction when the abduction happened on federal land or the abductee was transported across state lines. “There might be an intersection with one of our cases,” Noah said carefully. He was on thin ice, dancing across a blurry boundary. Brett Kerrigan’s disappearance was, jurisdictionally, a Dallas County Sheriff investigation. King hadn’t told Sheriff Clarke the FBI had taken over, and they were supposed to share information—as much as they legally could—with their local partners.

And if Director King was as abrasive with the Des Moines law enforcement community as he had been with Noah, he’d be iced out of any mutual assistance—which he would need, at some point, guaranteed—faster than he could sneer.

Noah didn’t work that way. He liked to keep the local community close, police departments, sheriffs, and feds alike. They were all on the same team, just bringing different strengths to bear.

He didn’t like keeping the truth back from Sheriff Clarke, but a Director’s Eyes Only classification wasn’t something to ignore. That was jail time.

“We’re taking a look at a few angles here, Sheriff. Kidnapping is one of them. Interstate crime is another. I’ll keep you in the loop as much as I can. Cole and I found this scene about ten minutes ago. We’re not holding anything here back.”

“You’ve always been a straight shooter, Downing. Can I trust you to read me in on this when I need to know the details? I have to protect my county and my people.”

“Sheriff, you’ll be the first one I call. You always are.”

“I’ll send a deputy out there right away. You guys want copies of our evidence processing?”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“Consider it done. I’ll have it faxed over as soon as it’s complete.”

Noah hung up. Cole was staring at the pavement and the shattered glass. His jacket ruffled, bouncing open on the cold prairie wind. The ends of his hair danced, the strands brushing his eyebrows and the tops of his ears.

“We’ve never found one of Ian’s abduction sites before.” Cole’s voice was thin, strained. “I’ve heard him describe the abductions, but I’ve never seen it. He took him, right here—” He looked away, squinted into the gray horizon. “How do you think he did it?”

“Ingram pulled ahead of Kerrigan in his car, and then he most likely set up a ruse to get Kerrigan to stop, before storming his car. Based on the skid marks, I’m guessing he faked some kind of car trouble in the middle of the road. Whatever he did, it looks like he came at Kerrigan through the driver’s window, just like you said.”

Cole nodded. “Michael is going to want some of that glass and the photos of the tire marks. He’ll want the FBI labs to process it. He’s a snob. He doesn’t trust locals.”

“I never would have guessed,” Noah said. He went back to Jacob’s trunk and grabbed a paper evidence envelope, then had Cole watch the road again as he scraped up a few shards of glass. He sealed the envelope, signed it, dated it. Had Cole countersign and then watched Cole tuck the envelope into his jacket pocket.

“What happened after this?” Cole gazed up and down the highway, a lost look settling over his face. “Where did they go? How did Ian take Kerrigan and his car?”

“He had two cars and one victim.” Noah looked east, down the highway. Half a mile, maybe a little less, by his reckoning. “This way,” he said. “I think I know where he dumped the extra car.”

They walked side by side, silent. Tension rolled off Cole, so much it made Noah’s head ache. He watched his lover out of the corner of his eye. Cole’s fingers tapped against each other. Fluttered over his thigh. This was a different man than the Cole he knew.

Noah guided Cole to the gravel turnoff that led to the underbrush-choked boat ramp. Winter rain had filled the river, and it was wide and swift, eddies circling underwater boulders and reeds in shifting green-and-brown swirls. Algae and moss clung to the rocks along the bank. Water rushed over the gravel and cracked concrete slope of the narrow ramp, splashing Noah’s shoes when he walked to the edge. Twenty feet to their left, County F90 crossed the river on a flat bridge. Trestle train tracks ran beside the road to the north.

“There,” Noah said. He pointed to a deep current of water around an unseen mass, flowing left and right and whirlpooling in little drafts, as if outlining an eight-foot oval. He could just see the small shark-fin bump of a radio antenna on the back of the roof. There was a dark blue sheen where the water ran thin over the top of the car. “That will be the stolen Honda he was driving.”

The breath punched out of Cole.

“Do you think Kerrigan is inside?” Noah asked softly. “Would he have dumped the body along with the car?”

“No.” Cole shook his head. “Ian keeps his victims for as long as he can. He likes them to suffer as much as possible. He lives for their terror. Ian took Kerrigan with him. Somewhere he could torture him in private.”

“It makes sense he would ditch the stolen car, then. He was running the risk of a sheriff or a state trooper running the plate every time he drove. But if he took Kerrigan’s car, he could drive undetected, safe from triggering any red flags until Kerrigan was reported missing.”

“And he wasn’t reported missing until ten p.m. The sheriff’s department probably took an hour to get the alert out and the APB on Kerrigan’s car pushed out to all units. The report went to the county, right?” Cole asked.

Noah nodded. “The reporting county, Dallas, and neighboring counties. They wouldn’t have pushed the APB statewide in a first incident report.”

“Ian had eight hours of drive time, then. Almost five hundred miles.”

Noah did the mental math, drawing a big circle around Des Moines. “He could have gone all the way to the Canadian border. The Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, or Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri… or even as far as northern Arkansas or Oklahoma, almost to the Texas state line.”

“He’s familiar with Arkansas. With Oklahoma, too. He buried victims in the Ozarks. He lived in Oklahoma a long time ago.” Cole scrubbed his hands over his face and groaned. “They could be anywhere.”

“Do you think he would have driven that far? With what you know of him, how far does he usually travel with his victims?”

“We never found enough of his victims to really know, or to put together a predictive profile. He kept so much to himself. But of the victims he did discuss…” He paled, turning as green as the algae on the bank. “No, he didn’t travel far. A hundred miles at most, I think.”

“We start with that. Our timeline has narrowed. This is about eight miles from Oak Haven Meadows, which means they would have gotten here within ten minutes of leaving the parking lot. Kerrigan was abducted at or before one thirty p.m. Ingram overpowered him, subdued him, dumped his stolen car in the river, and then took off in Kerrigan’s car, with Kerrigan, we’re assuming, as a hostage. And you believe he would have taken him somewhere within a hundred miles.”

Cole paced away, his hands on his hips. His shoes crunched on the gravel with every slow step. “Yeah,” he finally said. “Yeah, I think he would have stayed close. He loves the torture. The killing. He wouldn’t want to postpone that.”

“That narrows our search to about half of Iowa. An hour and a half to two hours’ worth of driving. Now we look for him in those hundred miles. What draws him in? You said rural, private. Lakes, rivers. State parks?”

“State or national parks. Forests. Mountains.”

“Not a lot of mountains around here.”

“Then I’d look at all public lands with woods and water. The more isolated the better.”

“Let’s get back to the office and start putting together a list.” Noah peered at the darkening sky. “It’s getting late, and we don’t have much sunlight left to mount an all-out search of the area parks. But we can check the maps and come up with a plan for first thing in the morning.” He tried to smile. “Okay?”

“Okay.” Gravel crunched again until Cole was face to face, forehead to forehead, with Noah. His breath was hot on Noah’s lips. He took Noah’s open jacket in his hands, tugging him even closer until they were pressed together from knees to chest. “Thank you,” he whispered. “I wouldn’t have found any of this on my own.”

“I’ve been known to solve a case or two in my day.” Noah smiled softly. “Not all of them, but my clearance rate is pretty high.”

“You’re a great investigator.”

“I was always good at Clue when I was a kid.”

Finally, Cole smiled. Noah kissed him sweetly and squeezed his hips. Cole stepped back as red and blue lights flashed on the highway, the Dallas County sheriff’s deputy coming out from Booneville, heading west on County F90. They walked back to their parked cars, shook the deputy’s hand, pointed out the tire marks and broken glass, and then told him about the car sunk in the river and how it matched the description of a stolen blue Honda from Ames. The deputy’s scowl got deeper and darker, his pencil scratching over his notepad faster and faster as they spoke.

The deputy had questions about how the Honda was linked to Kerrigan’s disappearance, how the tracks on the road were made, and who they thought had ditched the Honda and driven Kerrigan’s car away. Noah answered carefully, giving him the FBI deflection as politely as he could.

“Sheriff Clarke is going to want to know more about this,” the deputy said, snapping his notepad shut.

“I know. Have him call me. I will share what I can. Right now, we need to get this scene processed, and hopefully that will help us find Mr. Kerrigan together.”

“Is the submerged car retrievable from the river with a tow? Or will we need to hoist it from the bridge?”

“A tow should work. It looks like it was left to roll in and drifted with the current.”

The deputy glared at the fading light and the darkening sky. “We’ll be working until midnight at least. Won’t get it out of the river for hours.” He fixed his gaze on Noah. “You recovering all right from that shooting, Agent Downing?”

“I am, thank you.”

“Mr. Kerrigan’s abduction wouldn’t in any way be related to your shooting, would it? We don’t have a highway attacker operating on our backroads, do we?”

Noah’s smile turned brittle. “I’ll check in with Sheriff Clarke first thing in the morning, unless he wants to give me a call tonight. Good evening, deputy. And good luck with your scene processing.”

The deputy gave Noah a two-fingered salute from his brow, then waited for Noah and Cole to pull onto the roadway before he set up his flares and his cruiser to reroute the few cars and trucks whirring down the highway. Cole flashed his brights behind Noah, Noah tapped his brakes, and they set off, making their way down County F90 to Interstate 35, where they turned north and headed to West Des Moines, back to the office.

Noah constantly scanned the sides of the road, the shoulders and embankments, the ditches shrouded in darkness, and the fields fading to shadow. His heart hammered as he remembered the sound of glass breaking.

Rifle shots coming through windshields, kidnappers breaking sideways through the window. Glass shattering, and Ian Ingram slamming into his life.

He watched Cole’s headlights behind him, all the way to the office.