Till Death(77)

Should’ve known better than to believe in coincidences.

Now a nightmare from the past was back, and I had to believe this was happening. Someone was out there and they’d already killed one woman, most likely two, and I knew that if the person was following the behaviors of the Groom, he already had someone else.

Stomach churning, I closed my eyes. It could be anyone. Not necessarily even someone who’d lived here ten years ago. You could find anything on the Internet, including sites dedicated to serial killers, where they were talked about as if they were celebrities. Their sick predilections discussed with enough information that you could recreate every murder down to the last detail. Someone from anywhere in the world could’ve decided they were going to introduce the world to the Groom, round two.

But why—why the Groom out of all the serial killers with higher body counts and who were more well known? Why did it start when I returned? Actually, it had started right before I returned with the woman from Frederick. Did it—

So caught up in my thoughts, I gasped when I felt strong arms circle my waist from behind.

“Sasha.” Cole’s deep voice rumbled in my ear. “How long have you been out here?”

I relaxed into his embrace. “Not too long. I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Babe.” His chin dragged along the side of my neck. “If you can’t sleep, you wake me. I’ll help you get back to sleep. You talk to me about what’s on your mind that’s keeping you awake, and if that doesn’t work, then I can get creative.”

That last part brought a smile to my face.

Lifting his head, he rested his chin atop mine. “What’s on your mind?”

“A lot of things.”

“Tell me.”

I sighed. “Cole, it’s late. You have to work in the morning. You should be asleep.”

“Yeah, I got to work, but my girl is standing in front of a window in the middle of the night watching the snow with her mind most likely full of terrible shit,” he said. “And that’s more important than getting a full night’s sleep.”

My girl. Those two words. I loved the sound of them. They also made me think of what Agent Myers had said. “Do you think it’s . . . weird that we’re . . .”

“We’re what?”

“That we’re here right now. That ten years have passed and we’re this close after a handful of days?”

He didn’t answer for a moment. “It’s uncommon. Doesn’t mean it’s weird. But you know what it does mean?”

I leaned my head back against his chest. “What?”

“What I said before. We’re lucky.”

I liked the sound of that better than the weird part. “I’m not sure we’re so lucky right now.”

“We will be.” Lowering his head, he kissed my cheek. “We will get through this.”

He’d said that with such confidence, I almost had to believe him. The only hang-up was that I knew life didn’t care about how much confidence you had or how badly you wanted to believe in something.

“Did someone say something that’s got you asking a question like that?” Cole asked.

I raised a brow, wondering if he’d developed some kind of mind-reading ability. “That agent—Agent Myers said something.”

He cursed under his breath. “He’s a dick and doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about.”

“You two don’t get along, do you?”

“Not particularly.” His arms tightened around me and then he loosened them, sliding his hands to my hips. He turned me around so I was facing him. “He used to work in my department. When I was a new recruit, we had a case that came across our desk because the perp had gang ties. Was just a kid, only sixteen, but already deep in the streets,” he explained. “But the crime he’d committed had nothing to do with the gangs or running drugs. He’d shot his father.”

“God,” I whispered.

“He’d shot his father because that bastard was beating the shit out of him and his mom,” Cole added, and that was even worse to hear. “Myers didn’t give two shits that it was an act of desperation. Don’t get me wrong, not like I’m saying violence is the answer to violence, but you can understand how someone eventually snaps. Everything is black and white with Myers, but the world doesn’t operate that way. We didn’t see eye to eye on that case.”

I cocked my head to the side. “What happened to the boy?”

“Went to prison.” He took my hand. “Got life.”

My brows knitted. “You didn’t think he deserved that?”

One shoulder rose. “The kid was a product of a shitty home and streets that suck them in. He grew up in an environment where violence is answered with more violence. Where a bullet to the chest is the end-all. That’s all the kid knew. Sometimes people do wrong and they need to be punished for it, but there are times when you can understand what drove their actions.”

“True,” I murmured. “You see a lot of stuff that isn’t black and white, don’t you?”

“Sometimes.” Cole led me over to the couch and when he sat down, he pulled me into his lap so I was sitting sideways. “But most of the time it is black and white.” He paused. “You up thinking and not sleeping because of Myers?”