The Grave Between Us by Tal Bauer

Chapter Six

When Noah’shospital door opened the next day, a ghost walked through.

Cole was far too hardened to believe in the Casper kind of ghosts, or the idea of the essence of a loved one lingering. After a few murder cases, his belief in spirits slipped away, and whatever faith he’d once had turned into a hope that there wasn’t an afterlife where people remembered their last moments, that gone really was gone. No one wanted to spend eternity reliving the cut of a blade or the feel of an evisceration. Blood emptying onto dirt and a person’s last glimpse of a man reaching orgasm as he dug his fingers into their frantically pumping carotid.

No. Ghosts, Cole had come to realize, were the consequences of life choices, aftereffects of decisions and paths taken. People and things left behind in the wake of a life.

He’d left Assistant Director Michael King in his past, a ghost. Or so he’d thought.

“Michael,” he breathed, watching as the older man and his entourage enter Noah’s room. Michael was a burly man, a barrel chest on spindly legs, with a ruddy complexion and the burst capillaries across his nose and cheeks that signaled alcoholism. He had deep lines on his face, creased around his eyes and across his forehead. His eyes were narrowed, like he’d spent a lifetime peering suspiciously at everything around him. He carried a manila envelope in one hand, and he looked like he was battling indigestion. “Cole.”

Cole’s heart pounded so hard he felt his pulse in his eyeballs. “Why are you here?” Why was the head of the BAU walking into Noah’s hospital room?

“How is he?” Michael didn’t answer Cole’s question, which was half of an answer on its own. Cole’s heart lodged in his throat.

“He’s okay,” he forced out. “They say he’ll wake up in the next few hours. They took him off the sedatives.”

Michael nodded. He wasn’t really looking at Noah. He was gazing through him, trying to see the monster who had put him in that bed. Cole recognized the look. He’d worn it before, a hundred, two hundred times. “Why are you here,” he repeated, putting steel into his voice.

Michael blinked. His entourage lingered in the background, trench coats and dark suits, classic federal strength in the shadows. Not one met Cole’s gaze.

“He’s back, Cole,” Michael said simply. “He’s resurfaced.”

Even after all this time, Michael didn’t need to use a name.

Cranes flying low over a still lake. Dark earth between his fingers. Puffs of breath clouding in front of his face.

Eyes following him, always following him—hungry, insatiable eyes. Cole had learned what graves smelled like that day, learned how to distinguish between wet earth and the sweet, sticky scent of decaying bone.

Years later, and he still never used pencils.

Waves rolled into his mind. An echo, memories crashing into a heart. Agony and questions and a body in the mud.

Cole shook his head, kept shaking it. “I’m not in the BAU anymore,” he choked out. “I’m not involved— I was removed from that investigation.”

“You are involved,” Michael said. He nodded to Noah. “Because of him. And because of this.” He held out the envelope.

Cole stared at it like it was a bomb. His eyes rose to Michael’s. He didn’t let go of Noah’s hand.

“We got these in the mail,” Michael said after a long, silent moment. “Addressed to you at the BAU. They’re pictures.”

There was a storm rising inside him, dark clouds and frenzied wind. Cole exhaled. “How do you know—”

“Fingerprints. He left three clear prints on the photos. The outside of the package was useless, but those were pristine.”

Eight years since Ian Ingram had turned Cole inside out. Eight dank, wet Februarys since he’d stood on the edge of a black lake and found a new edge to the frigid darkness. Eight years, and another lifetime.

How many days had passed since then when he hadn’t thought of Ian, in some way?

Zero.

A paper crane sliding through Noah’s cold, stiff lips.

“You need to see these.” Michael held the envelope over Noah’s legs, his eyes drilling into Cole’s when he refused to take it. Finally, Michael dropped the envelope, and it slid sideways across the blanket, toppling toward Cole and where his hand was clenched around Noah’s.

Waves rising, building inside him. “I’m a little busy,” he whispered. “I can’t help you on this.”

“Cole. I wouldn’t be here if this wasn’t important. Open it.”

Fuck, he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to know. For days, he and Sophie had wondered, had questioned who had done this, who had shot Noah and Jacob. He didn’t want to know the truth, not if it led to this.

He was going to drown when he opened that envelope.

He peeled one hand away from Noah’s and fumbled with the envelope’s clasp. Michael watched him, never blinking. Waves beat against his ribs, rose around his heart. He squeezed his eyes closed. The hiss of Noah’s oxygen became the cry of a crane skimming the surface of a lake, the sound of his boots sliding on leaves and loose earth right before he reached—

Hello, Cole. Would he ever forget that voice?

He dumped the envelope on the bed. Four eight-by-ten black-and-white photos spilled out, slightly fuzzy, as if they’d been printed at home on store-bought photo paper. His gaze flicked from one to the next, not seeing, for a moment, the horror in front of him.

Then he jerked back, his chair slamming into the wall as his feet spun out on the floor. Agony roared in, swallowed by terror, before a pure, blinding rage crashed through him. He flung himself against Noah’s bed, as if he could protect his love and get them both away at the same time. As if he could grab Noah and flee, escape the photos and the wreckage of the past. His mouth opened, and he tried to breathe, but instead, he screamed. Bellowed.

Feet pounded down the hallway, and a team of nurses burst into the room. Michael’s agents blocked their path, and Michael turned and told them in his too-calm voice that everything was fine, Noah was fine, that Cole had just gotten some bad news. He’d shifted his body, blocking the photos on Noah’s bed from view.

Bad news. That was one way to put it.

Four photos. The foreground of the first showed the reticle of a rifle, the same type of .30-30 Winchester that had shot both Jacob and Noah. The view was through the open driver’s side window of a tractor trailer, based on the height of the shot and the nose of the cab. The shooter was aiming down the highway, across the center median, zeroing in on a dark government SUV. Cole could see Jacob and Noah side by side, one sun visor down. Jacob was smiling, looking at Noah.

The moment just before the shot.

The second photo: the crash. Burned rubber on the road, skid marks veering toward the ditch. The SUV on its side, nose angled down, broken glass and shredded steel littering the asphalt. He couldn’t see Jacob or Noah anymore. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought they were dead, that whoever was in the SUV couldn’t have survived.

The third photo. He forced himself to look, really look, to study the image as evidence, like he was looking at any crime scene photo, taking in the torture of any other victim. His vision blurred. His hands shook, and wet spots appeared on the image. He dropped the photo as if it had burned him, rubbed his palms down his pants.

“They’re copies,” Michael said softly. “I wanted you to see how he sent them. But don’t worry about contamination.”

If only that was what he was worried about. Cole shot a withering glare at Michael. He didn’t pick the photo up again. Instead he peered down at it, almost sideways, as if not really looking could somehow lessen the truth of it.

What could ever lessen the impact of seeing Noah, the man he loved, screaming his throat raw as someone hurt him? Dug three black-gloved fingers knuckle-deep into Noah’s shoulder wound. It looked like Noah was being lifted by his wound, as if he were a fish on a hook, something the man had caught—

The fourth photo. Noah, his eyes screwed shut, still screaming. No fingers in his shoulder this time. Instead, there was a gun shoved against his temple, burrowing into his skin.

Cole turned away. Paced to the wall. Rested his forehead against the cold, smooth paint.

“We can’t be certain, but we think the gun he’s holding to Agent Downing’s head is Downing’s own weapon. It matches. Glock .40, the same sights. It hasn’t been recovered, so we think Ingram took it with him.”

Dirt sliding between his fingers. Puffs of panicked breath in front of his face, obscuring the shape before him, appearing out of the ground. Black earth clinging to tear-soaked eyelashes—

“For two days,” Michael said, “everyone at the Bureau has been focused on finding out who shot Agents Downing and Moore. It doesn’t matter that it happened on a backroad in Iowa. Headquarters told everyone to shake their trees and see what came out. At BAU, we were trying to build a profile based on what Omaha was pulling out of the scene. And then this showed up. He didn’t leave any prints at the scene. He wanted to tell us it was him through these.” Michael shook his head. “None of us saw this coming. None of us even imagined.”

Cole laid his hands on the wall on either side of his head.

“We found a big rig in the back lot of a rest area at the Iowa-Nebraska border. State troopers noted it had been there for over forty-eight hours. When they got close, they smelled the decomp.”

“Female driver,” Cole murmured.

Michael nodded. “She was stabbed in the back over twenty times and dumped on the bunk in the rear of her cab. We pulled GSR from the driver’s seat, steering wheel, dash, and window. No prints, but Quantico says the shape of the windshield and the hood of the engine match those in the photo.”

He doesn’t care about women, Cole thought. He uses them and throws them away like napkins, like toilet paper. Something to shit on and discard, and never think of again. He only needed the truck.

“Given Agent Downing’s personal connection to you—and the photographs—we’re fairly certain he was the target of the attack. Agent Moore was collateral damage.”

Personal connection. That was one way to put it.

There was a beat, a hesitation before Michael spoke again. “Have you had any contact with Ian Ingram in the past eight years? Since the escape?”

Cole’s fingernails scratched down the paint, bending backward. Sharp stabs of pain sliced up each finger. “No,” he hissed. “Of course not.”

“He’s never tried to reach out to you any other time? Never at any field office or your home?”

“No.”

“How would he know that Downing is connected to you?” Michael asked. “If Ingram sent these photos to you at the BAU, then he must think you’re still there. But since it also appears he targeted Agent Downing—”

“He picked the man I’m engaged to,” Cole choked out. “We’re engaged, Michael.”

Michael said nothing to that. “Ingram had to have found out about you and Downing. But then why didn’t he mail these photos to you here, in Iowa? Why send them all the way to DC? It slowed his message by days.”

Cole turned and sagged against the wall. “Because you’re here, aren’t you? You saw the envelope. You opened it. You took action. If Ian had mailed those photos to the Des Moines office, Sophie would have tossed the envelope on my desk and I would have gotten to them whenever I went back. I’m not exactly working right now.”

“That still doesn’t answer how Ingram knows about you and Downing.”

Cole’s gaze slid to Noah, so still on his hospital bed, like he was floating on a cotton sea, adrift and alone. Cole had known for two days that Noah had been targeted, that someone had shot him on purpose, looked at Noah and Jacob and their FBI vehicle and decided to try to end their lives.

Targeted by Ian Ingram was entirely, unspeakably different.

Targeted because of me.

Cole shook his head. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “I thought he vanished.”

“I had hoped he died,” Michael growled. “Or made it out of the country, even.”

“To become someone else’s problem?” Cole snapped.

Michael stared. One of his flunkies, standing by the door, shifted.

“Has the Bureau been following him? Keeping track of his victims?”

“You know we were never able to find his victims after we lost him. You were the only one who ever got Ingram to admit to a dump site, and you were the only one who ever found any of his graves.”

Cole shook his head. “I wasn’t special.”

“You were to him.”

Cole swallowed. This isn’t happening this isn’t happening—

“Ian Ingram made an ass out of the FBI, not once, but twice. He fed us lie after lie after lie. Manipulated the system until we didn’t know which way was up and which way was down when we had him in custody—” Michael’s voice died abruptly.

“When we had him in custody,” Cole repeated. “When we had him. Don’t you mean, when I let him go?”

“You were cleared,” Michael said. His voice barely reached Cole’s ears.

“You know that’s not what everyone else believed.”

“And you know I went to bat for you. I salvaged your career.”

Salvaged, yes. And Cole became Michael’s right hand, at first out of a mixture of gratitude and necessity. Then, later, when he’d proved himself to be competent, as competent as they’d believed he was when they first ordered him to speak to Ingram, the Bureau repaid him by pretending Ian Ingram had never existed—all case files removed from circulation and classified Director’s Eyes Only. Ian Ingram had only ever been a whisper to the world, and the FBI was happy to strangle that whisper forever.

For eight years, it had seemed like Ian wanted to stay silent, too.

Why was he back now? The logistics of targeting an FBI agent had seemed gargantuan when Cole was considering a local, someone from Noah’s or Jacob’s past or having a bone to pick with the FBI in general. But Ian Ingram? For him to specifically hunt Noah. For him to know what Noah meant to Cole.

And now Michael was here. Showing Cole photos, asking him questions. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. This wasn’t the script he’d written for the rest of his life and his happy ever after with Noah. He’d said goodbye to the monsters, the hunters, the silent screams hovering on the edges of humanity. He’d said goodbye to Michael. House and home for him: picket fence, back porch, homework on the dining room table. Friday night football and laundry and doing the dishes side by side with the man he loved.

Not gunshots on backroads and a serial killer emerging from his past like a virus bubbling out of Cole’s blood and striking his lover down.

Not his former boss striding into Noah’s hospital room like Cole was back in Quantico and digging his fingers into Cole’s mind.

Cole was supposed to be the one flying in, reading a case file, noting the victims by last name or as victim number one—maybe, sometimes, the mother or the wife—and spitting out the answer to the riddles of arterial spray or the disembowelment of a family of four in a southern suburb. The victims were sides of a predator’s Rubik’s Cube. Cole studied their deaths, studied their suffering, inputted the factors into equations. And he was good, he was damn good at human calculus. He was good at death mathematics… when he didn’t know the victims’ names, or the taste of their lips, or how they felt at night when they pulled Cole close and snuggled against his body.

His knees buckled and he slid down the wall, falling to his ass on the cold linoleum floor. He buried his face in his palms and tried to breathe. “You’re saying,” he finally said, looking up at his old boss, his former mentor, “the FBI has no idea what Ian has been doing for the past eight years? You don’t have any potential hot spots? You don’t have any missing persons that could be attributable to him? You don’t even have a possible victim list?”

“Nearly two thousand people go missing in the United States every day, Cole.”

“He’s responsible for some of those.”

“Without an accurate profile of his victimology, we can’t say for certain who he’s responsible for abducting.”

“You have no idea where the most dangerous serial killer in the United States is. No idea at all.”

“Two days ago, he was on Iowa 141.”

Something ugly rose inside Cole. Something vicious, and dark, and slithering. He stared at Michael until Michael blinked and turned to look at Noah, still and pale in his hospital bed.

“I thought, all this time, there was some working group, somewhere, doing everything they could to track him down,” Cole hissed. “I didn’t think the FBI would cover their eyes and walk away. Kick dirt over their mistakes and pretend nothing ever happened.”

Michael’s stare seared into Cole. You were one of those mistakes, it said. “Funny, I thought the same about you. I thought there was no way you’d let Ingram go like the Bureau ordered you to. I thought for sure you’d have some side project going, some brilliant scheme to find him.”

Ian’s breath against his hair, hot and trembling up the back of his neck. Cole had wanted to get as far from the man as he could. He’d wanted to carve the memories out of his brain with his fingernails. He’d wanted to never see, or hear, or think about Ian again. And he’d hoped—trusted—that the FBI would take care of the monster prowling in the darkness, as they were supposed to do.

He’d been naive.

“What now?” he asked.

“I’d hoped you would have more for us, honestly.” Michael shook his head. “We don’t have anything other than these three prints of his. The package was processed out of the central Des Moines postal facility, and it came in on a bulk pickup from a postal drop. There’s no way to track back to when or who dropped it off. Most postal drops aren’t under surveillance. So here’s where we are: Ian shot Agent Downing and Agent Moore, he took photos of his crime, and then he mailed those photos to you at the BAU. Why?” Michael shrugged. “And where is he now?” Another shrug. “Do you have any thoughts at all?”

Noah groaned, eyelids flickering. He twitched, and the fingers on his unsplinted hand flared, as if reaching for something, someone. Two steps, and Cole was there, grabbing Noah’s hand and clenching so hard he felt Noah’s bones shift, saw a frown line crease Noah’s forehead. “Noah?”

Another groan, and then Noah’s eyes slitted open and his bleary gaze swam before landing on Cole. The tiniest smile curved the corners of his lips as he exhaled.

Cole beamed—the same smile, the same intensity he’d worn when Noah had said yes, yes, yes, to Cole’s proposal. The same smile he’d worn when Noah first told him he loved him, and when he’d made love to Noah for the first time and Noah had slept in his arms for the rest of the night. His heart beat so hard and fast he thought it was going to break his ribs. Everything other than Noah—the hospital bed, the edges of the room—wavered. “Noah.”

“What happened?” Noah breathed. “You’re crying…”

Cole cradled Noah’s cheek, brought Noah’s hand up to his own mouth. His tears ran down Noah’s cold fingers, drops collecting in his palm and snaking through the dark hairs on Noah’s forearm. “You were hurt,” he said. A monster from my past tried to murder you. “I was worried.” I’ve never in my life been more frightened than I am right now. Right this fucking moment.

“Agent Downing?” Michael stepped forward, standing opposite Cole at Noah’s bedside. He smiled down at Noah, his all-business, I’m about to ask you invasive questions, and the calculator in place of my heart will be evaluating your answers smile. It was too polite, too tight, too narrow. The corners of his eyes didn’t even change.

“Michael—”

“What do you remember from the attack?” Michael asked, ignoring Cole. “Do you remember who shot you?”

Noah’s gaze flicked from Michael to Cole and then back. He frowned.

Michael gripped the railing beside Noah’s head. He leaned in, closing the distance between him and Noah. “Did the man who shot you say anything to you, Agent Downing?”

“I don’t—” Noah shook his head. “I don’t remember.” His breath shook, and his chest heaved. “Jacob,” he said, suddenly trying to sit up. His arm trembled, and his eyes went wide, his face pale as the moon. “Jacob, fuck. Is he—”

“Jacob is fine. It was a graze. He was knocked out, but he’s fine. He has a bunch of stitches, but that’s the worst of it.” Stitches, and nightmares, surely. Cole pushed Noah back down, guiding his shoulders to the mattress. Noah stared up at him, hearing what Cole was saying but still searching his gaze for the truth. Cole smiled and kissed Noah’s knuckles. Finally, Noah relaxed.

“Agent Downing,” Michael began again.

“Michael, you need to leave,” Cole snapped.

Michael’s eyes flashed to Cole’s, bare shock on his face for a fleeting moment before he schooled his expression back to his customary annoyed impatience. “Cole—”

“Now,” Cole growled.

“There’s information we need to know.”

“Not now! I’ll call you.”

For a second, a burst of emotion flared in Michael’s eyes. Victory, or something like it. Michael pulled back, silent, and nodded at Cole. He gave Noah a perfunctory smile, Cole a glacial stare, and then led his entourage out of Noah’s room without a backward glance.

Noah tracked his exit, then turned to Cole. “Who was that?”

“My old boss.” Cole sat on the edge of Noah’s bed, holding Noah’s hand in his lap. He smoothed Noah’s limp hair, pushing the dark fringe off Noah’s forehead. “From the BAU.”

Noah blinked. Cole could see his thoughts struggling to form through the weariness in his eyes. “Why is he here?”

Cole couldn’t answer. Just shaping the words in his mind made him shudder, made his vision blur and his breath go ragged. He focused on Noah’s warm skin against his hands, Noah’s eyes gazing at him, Noah’s chest rising and falling, so easily visible now. Noah was alive, and he very, very nearly hadn’t been. If Cole could, he’d give up every breath he had left in his own life for Noah’s name to vanish from Ian’s mind, for Ian to never learn that Noah existed.

His gaze dropped to Noah’s mouth, to his lips, slightly chapped from the hospital’s dry air. Pulling a paper crane from between his cold, blue lips—

A million lacerations opened inside Cole all at once, as if he’d run his heart and soul through a cheese grater. The gashes joined into a single, searing pain so intense he hissed against the agony, doubling over and closing his eyes as he braced himself against the mattress. Noah’s hand landed on his shoulder, and once more Noah struggled to rise, calling Cole’s name. Noah’s heart monitor sped up, the beeps suddenly as fast as the cries of cranes or the beating of wings against the surface of a still lake.

Cole tried to hold it in, but he couldn’t, and a groan punched out of him as he buried his face in Noah’s belly. Alarms wailed as nurses burst into the room, and Cole grabbed hold of Noah’s arms and squeezed until he could feel Noah’s pulse. He’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive.

Don’t take him from me, he thought as the nurses guided him to sit in the chair beside Noah as they pushed Noah back into bed. Cole’s vision swam, but through the waves, the roiling of time and memories, he saw Noah’s eyes, felt them pierce his skin, slide into his heart. His beautiful, vibrant eyes.

A certainty he’d never felt before—deeper, stronger, greater than the sum of every longing he’d ever had—filled Cole. I’ll keep you alive, he swore, holding Noah’s gaze. I swear on my life, I will keep you safe from that monster.

His fingers sliding through cold, dark earth, uncovering Noah’s pale, still face, stained with tears.His lips trembling as they pressed against Noah’s, blue and locked in rigor. He could almost smell Ian, smell where his hands had touched Noah, where they’d forced his mouth open, shoved—

He curled forward, hands clenched into fists, and howled as the nurses turned and stared. He didn’t blame them. He couldn’t control himself. Not faced with the possibility of losing the man he loved. Worse—having him taken, ripped away and ravaged.

His scream echoed in Noah’s room. He wouldn’t be surprised if birds outside froze in flight, turned around and tucked tail, headed home.

I’ll take you home, I’ll keep you safe. You and Katie. I’ll keep you both safe. I swear it, I swear to God, I swear to fucking God.

Failure sank like lead inside him, dropping into an oily ocean of shadows. He’d already pulled that crane from between Noah’s lips, at least in the festering spaces of his nightmare. And he already lived in a totality of fear, in a paralyzing terror that lasted the eternity between his heartbeats.

Ian’s ecstasy, his triumphal orgasms, had always been rooted in tasting his victims’ perfect, exquisite fear. In their suffering. He was a sadist, and to him, that wasn’t as simple as getting off on inflicting pain.

Criminal sexual sadism relished the suffering, taking a person down to their primal, base terror, without regard for that person’s life, or their desires, or their wishes, or their pleas. It didn’t matter if someone said “stop” or “please” to Ian. Desperation, his victim’s loss of control, brought him to the apocalypse of highs, the supersonic orgasms. His ecstasy was in anguish, in watching another person come apart all the way down to their atoms. Because of him.

Ian had known, mailing those photos to the BAU, that they’d get to Cole. That Cole would see what Ian had done, how he’d had Noah’s life in his hands. And wherever he was, near or far, he was orgasming in white-hot joy as he imagined Cole’s terror, his fear.

He’d already won.