The Grave Between Us by Tal Bauer

Chapter Four

Empty fieldspocked with dirty snow whipped by the SUV’s windows. The radio murmured above the hum of the tires. Noah and Jacob had talked for the first hour out of Sioux City but lapsed into silence for the past twenty minutes. Jacob was gazing out the passenger window as the horizon smeared onward.

“How did you know you were ready to get married?” Jacob’s voice rumbled through the vehicle, shaking Noah’s bones and the SUV’s chassis. “How did you know it was time to get that ring and ask the question?”

Noah inhaled, held his breath, and squeezed the steering wheel. “I’m not sure I’m the one you want to ask. I don’t know if my reasons for proposing to Lilly were the right ones.”

Jacob frowned. He stared at Noah, thick eyebrows angling downward behind his sunglasses. “But you and Cole—”

“Cole asked me.” Noah smiled. Some of the tension ebbed out of his shoulders as he laughed at Jacob’s shocked expression. “I know, I can’t believe it either. What on earth was he thinking?”

“He’s in love.” Jacob grinned. “And you can’t accuse him of being indecisive. He goes after what he wants.”

Noah shook his head. “I don’t really understand why he wants me, but…”

“What do you mean? He loves you.”

Noah’s lips pressed together. Doubts still lingered in his mind. Not about Cole’s love for him. No, his doubts, his anxieties, were firmly fixed on himself. Cole deserved a man who would be a great husband to him, not just an okay husband, like he’d been in the past.

“He loves you. It’s obvious. I mean, it was obvious from early on. It was like there was lightning between you guys from the moment he walked into the conference room. I knew you guys knew each other somehow, but I thought maybe it was something from headquarters, or the academy, or back east. Maybe you guys had some kind of feud, or some dispute on a case. History like that. I wasn’t thinking you and he had a relationship.”

“Relationship might be stretching it.”

“How did you meet? You’ve never said.”

Noah’s cheeks warmed. He slid his hands around the steering wheel, ran his tongue over his teeth. “Um, Vegas. We met in Vegas. He, uh. Picked me up in a bar.”

Jacob beamed. “No shit?”

“My first time ever going out and trying to… you know, be myself.”

“Damn. Cole really did go after who he wanted real quick.”

Noah barked out a laugh, his cheeks flushing further.

“I’m impressed. I’ve always liked Cole. I like him a little bit more now. You need a guy like that, Noah.”

“What, younger? A little dominant?” Noah glanced sideways, confused.

Jacob tipped his head back and howled. “Okay, that’s more than I needed to imagine about you two. No, I mean you need a man who makes you happy and who puts you first. He makes you happier than I’ve ever seen you. I don’t know your ex, and I didn’t know you when you were married, but I can’t imagine you ever being as happy as you are now. Honestly, I thought you were dismal when I first met you. Like you didn’t know how to be happy. I’m glad I was wrong.”

The tires hummed over the asphalt. Classic rock faded in and out on the radio. Even on a flat horizon, the signal could only go so far before the road and the curve of the earth interfered.

“Cole makes me very happy,” Noah finally said.

“Would you have asked him to marry you, if he didn’t do it first?”

“I don’t know. Not because I don’t love him. I do. But…” He exhaled. “I don’t want to be as bad a husband to Cole as I was to Lilly. What if I’m just a shitty husband, no matter who I’m married to? What if I’m no good at being married?”

“And what if you were miserable because you’re gay and you were trying not to be? I think that would have an impact on how good or bad of a husband you were.”

“Well—”

“You love him?”

“I do. So much it scares me.”

“Then you’re going to be fine.”

“Why do you ask, anyway? What kicked this off?”

It was Jacob’s turn to sigh, long and loud. Noah thought the SUV tugged to the passenger side, blown by the force of Jacob’s breath. Noah’s gaze flicked from the dash to the road to the tractor trailer rumbling toward them on the opposite side of the muddy median. The sun was sinking, glinting off the truck’s windshield. He lowered his visor.

“I want to marry Holly, but I don’t know if she wants to marry me,” Jacob said.

“What? Are you serious? Holly is wild about you.”

“Easier to see it when it’s not you, huh?” Jacob winked behind his sunglasses. Noah saw his eye crinkle, his eyebrow dip. “Holly loves me, yeah. But does she want to be with me for the rest of her life? Am I the guy she wants to be a father to Brianna?”

“You already are a father to Brianna. You’re the man in her life.”

Jacob gnawed on his lip. “I love that. I want to watch her grow up, and I want to be with Holly and her for the rest of our lives, but… I’m not sure if they’re as in love with me as I am with them.”

“Of course they are—”

There was a tinkling of glass, like a rock had hit the windshield, and then Jacob grunted, as if he’d taken a punch to the arm. He rocked back, his head lolling against the headrest, then hit the passenger window with a solid thunk as a spiderweb of cracks crawled across the windshield, surrounding a dime-sized hole in the glass.

“Jacob—” Noah turned and saw the blood streaming down the side of Jacob’s face, saw his slack features and the white of bone peeking through his dark hair.

He jerked the wheel to the right and slammed on his brakes, ducking low and trying to hide behind the dashboard. Shooter, but where? How? The highway was empty, nothing but mud and horizon.

A horn blared, the deep bellow of a semi. Rubber burned as Noah’s tires screamed across the asphalt, long, dark streaks trailing behind their SUV. He reached across the center console for Jacob, grabbed his wrist. Squeezed and held his breath, waiting, feeling. Please, please.

Another plink, another spiderweb in the glass. And then another. Noah jerked the wheel again, and the SUV headed for the embankment, careening off the pavement and into the drainage ditch abutting the highway, a culvert of frozen mud, clogged with the debris of winter. Dirty snow came for him through the windshield as the SUV tipped on its side and plunged nose-first into the ditch.

He flinched, throwing one hand up and the other across Jacob’s chest, an automatic reflex, as if he could do anything against gravity and the force of three tons of crashing steel. Jacob fell into him like dead weight.

Noah slammed forward against his locking seat belt as the SUV screamed, metal tearing on frozen ground. Mud and snow soaked him, rocks and broken glass shredding his forearms and face. He reached for Jacob again, grabbing his shirt and hauling him back, getting his face out of the muck until they slid to a stop on their side, half buried.

Noah hung from his seat, falling forward against the restraint. Jacob was boneless against the passenger door and the broken window, slumped in the muck. Blood covered his face, obscuring his features, a mess of split tissue and bone against the mud. “Jacob,” Noah muttered. He fought with his seat belt, squinted against the sunlight arcing through the broken glass. The highway swam in and out, like a curling ribbon unspooling toward three different cracked horizons. “Jacob, we have to move…”

He got the seat belt undone and fell, landing on the shattered windshield. Snow burned against his cut palms. Broken glass dug into his skin. He rolled to his side and the world wobbled, spinning around itself. He breathed out, trying to hold on to his lunch. What had it been? They’d laughed about the old country music playing on the speakers. “Jacob,” he gasped again. “Jacob, I’m going to get us out of here.”

Silence.

He punched through the broken windshield, loosening it from the frame. It pushed free in a plastic-coated sheet. “Jacob…” he grunted, heaving himself through the opening and out of the warped metal, trying to look left and right. All he saw was mud, patches of filthy snow, cold asphalt, and streaks of burned rubber, rolling over and over in a kaleidoscoping circle. Was that… there, down the highway. Had the trucker stopped? Or was he driving away?

Noah tumbled down the SUV’s hood. He tried to tuck and roll, tried to duck and cover behind the front wheel well. He blinked, and the world went bloodred. Blinked again, and his eyes stung as if he’d poured salt into them. He rubbed his fingers over his eyelids. Glass clung to his skin. Blood smeared on his fingertips.

He reached for his gun, holstered on his hip. Keep Jacob safe. Call for help. Where was his phone? Damn it, why couldn’t he think?

There was a snap and then a burn, deep inside of him, as if someone had heated a poker and shoved it into his shoulder joint. Things seemed to stop in his chest, his lungs stuttering as his heart trembled. His hand went limp, and his gun tumbled into the mud. Blood ran down his arm, soaking his shirt and pooling in his limp palm.

He stumbled back and fell on his ass. He couldn’t move his hand. Couldn’t move his elbow. Why couldn’t he move his arm? Damn it, he couldn’t even breathe. There wasn’t enough oxygen, even though he was staring at the big, open, perfectly blue sky, as bright and clear as Cole’s eyes. Cole. Where was Cole? He had to call Cole. Why couldn’t he move his hand? Why couldn’t he grab his phone?

Who had shot him?

Were they going to finish the job?

Cole, I love you. I wanted the chance to be your husband. Good or bad, I wanted the chance. Why, why on earth did you pick me? How did you fall in love with me? I’ll never understand why you picked me up that night, why you picked me to love.

Footsteps crunched on the asphalt. Boots. He could see them, in triplicate, as he rolled to his side. Work boots, long legs, worn jeans. A man, dressed in a plaid shirt, a Carhartt jacket. A baseball cap. Sunglasses. Middle age. Middle height. Middle weight. Was he real? Or was he just a fragment of Noah’s mind?

“Please,” Noah croaked. “My partner is still inside. He needs help. Call an ambulance. Please.”

“Oh, Noah. If I did my job right, Jacob is beyond help,” the man said. Even his voice was middle of the road, nondescript. Deep, but not distinctive. No accent Noah could recognize—though it felt like he was listening to the world underwater.

The man knelt. He pushed two fingers into Noah’s shoulder, into the bullet wound that was too low to be a shoulder shot, too high to be a chest wound. Every inhale was like sucking in shattered glass. There was pressure building inside Noah, like he was a balloon filling and filling and about to burst. Collapsed lung. Air escaping into his chest. Pressing on his heart. He felt his heart fluttering, a caged butterfly beating out of control. Beating for freedom. Cole.

Noah screamed, and the man dug his fingers in deeper. He smiled. “What is it about you, Noah Downing, that captured his attention? What did you do that brought Cole all the way out here?”

Noah roared when the man twisted and hooked his fingers. He dragged Noah forward, lifting him from the ground by the crook of his hold inside Noah’s chest. Got his face right against Noah’s, until they were eyeball to eyeball.

It was like staring into a black hole. Beyond the agony knifing through him, every nerve on fire, every muscle clenching—even as he gasped for breath that wasn’t coming, Noah felt the cold slide of something slither down his spine. Every hair on his body rose.

He roared this time, more than a reaction to pain. This was different: horror put to sound. Conscious thought fled, and Noah had one image, one perfect moment left in his mind before terror blacked out all conscious thought: Cole and Katie, together, smiling at him, holding out their hands and beckoning him to join them. It was sunny, and they were outside, and Katie had white roses in her hand. Cole was whispering I love you, and Noah was whispering I love you, too, and he didn’t feel the man drop him back to the ground, didn’t see him lift Noah’s gun from the snow and push the barrel against Noah’s temple.

“Cole—”