Page 2 of Cole: Bloodlines
The man straightened his six-foot-two frame, vertebrae cracking after hours behind the wheel. He swept the Maglite's beam past the cruiser's blackened shell, illuminating a serpentine trail of gouged dirt and scattered gravel where the cop had been dragged. Boot prints flanked the disturbed earth—one set deep-heeled and purposeful. He followed the crude path to a glistening obsidian puddle and dropped to a weathered hunter's crouch, calloused fingertips brushing the soil. The blood felt tacky, still not fully absorbed by the thirsty desert ground, painting his fingertips like crude oil.
“See something you weren't supposed to see?” the man murmured, his voice a rough baritone that scraped against the silence like stone on stone.
He wiped his fingers methodically on a bandana from his back pocket, returned to the Jeep with long, measured strides, and fired up the engine. The tires spat gravel as he pulled away from the smoking wreckage, tires crunching over blackened bits of debris, the headlights carving twin tunnels through the darkness. His knuckles whitened against the steering wheel as he accelerated down the barren highway, the odometer climbing steadily, on the tail of a killer who had several hours' head start.
PROLOGUE: TRANSFORMATION
When a hand grabbed his shoulder,Henry wasn't sure if he'd been asleep or if his mind had simply checked out, but he snapped awake with a jolt of panic that raced through his veins like ice water. He emerged from the darkness so suddenly that bile rose in his throat, acid and burning. Henry gasped and cried out, instinctively pulling back from the touch as he scrambled across the cold cellar floor, his palms scraping against the rough concrete, catching on something sticky and half-dried. The hand grabbed him again and held on this time, its large fingers digging into his shoulder hard enough to leave five perfect bruises. Henry let out a painful whimper that caught in his throat like a trapped insect, but didn't try to pull away again.
“Go get washed up,” his dad's gruff voice boomed overhead, rough as sandpaper. “I'll clean up the mess—this time.” A crimson droplet slid from his father's latex-gloved hand onto Henry's cheek. “Next time, you help with cleanup as well. You don't just get to participate in the fun stuff; there’s real responsibility in what we do, and you will learn all of it.” He yanked Henry to his feet by the collar of his once-white T-shirt and shoved him toward the splintered wooden stairs. “Go on, now.”
For a moment, Henry couldn't move, his legs trembling like saplings in a storm. Then something glass-like broke inside him, and he scrambled up the steps, fingernails scraping wood, bursting through the open door at the top into the stale straw smell of the barn. The horror swarmed back over him like a thousand biting insects, and he raced for the house, crying and choking, hot tears blurring his vision into a watery kaleidoscope nightmare. When he reached the house, he threw open the doorwith a bang that echoed through empty rooms and ran straight to the bathroom, dropping to his knees on the cold tile and puking into the toilet, retching violently until his stomach felt like it would turn inside out, acid burning his throat raw.
Sobbing uncontrollably, Henry dropped to his knees and hugged the toilet seat, tears and snot forming a sticky web across his flushed cheeks as he pressed his face against his trembling forearms. The metallic, copper-penny smell of the woman's dried blood—rust-brown in the creases of his palms and black beneath his fingernails—made him jerk his head up and start puking again. His stomach had nothing left to give but bitter yellow bile that burned his throat like battery acid, yet still he continued to dry heave until his abdominal muscles screamed in protest.
Henry peeled off his bloody clothes—the cotton shirt making a sickeningunstickingsound as it pulled away from his skin—and crawled into the porcelain tub, cranking the hot water knob until it wouldn't turn anymore. Steam billowed around him as he sat hugging his bony knees to his narrow chest, his young body shaking with such violence that his teeth chattered like castanets. He shoved his face into the hollow between his knees, chest hitching painfully with each ragged breath. His eyes were wide, pupils dilated to black pools, staring at nothing yet seeing everything, leaking fat tears that mingled with the scalding water slowly rising around his pale, goosebumped skin.
Henry's skin began to redden and flush, the intense heat of the water creeping across his body, but he barely took notice. His hands moved mechanically, almost as if detached from his conscious mind, as he picked up the bar of soap. He started scrubbing his palms and fingers, the motion gentle and deliberate at first. But then, a frantic urgency took over, his fingers raking harshly against his skin, as if trying to erase something only he could feel. Sobs welled up within him,bubbling to the surface as he continued to wash his entire body and hair in a frenzied state. He gasped for breath, submerging his head beneath the scalding bath water, the heat searing his scalp.
Suddenly, the burning intensity of the bath struck him with full force, and he scrambled to escape, his movements clumsy and urgent. He tumbled over the edge of the tub, landing heavily on the worn and frayed bathmat below. There he lay, sprawled on his stomach, his face buried in the thin, threadbare fabric. His breath hitched, uneven and ragged, tears streaming down his cheeks as a suffocating wave of terror and despair pinned him mercilessly against the cold, unyielding floor.
Thoughts of Ezra consumed his mind, each memory cutting through him like a sharp blade, and he cried even harder, pulling the bathmat towards him with desperate urgency. He clutched it tightly, burying his face into the worn, frayed threads that had aged over time. His body convulsed with each sob, his back arching painfully under the relentless weight of his despair and fear.
In the depths of his mind, like a haunting film on endless repeat, he envisioned his father descending into the dark, musty root cellar at Ezra’s house. Realizing the monstrous truth about his father now, he was certain that Ezra hadn't simply left without a word... he hadn't leftat all. The chilling certainty gripped him: his father had killed him... He hadkilled Ezra... he had killedthem all.
Henry couldn't know that for sure, and he clung to a single fraying thread of hope that Ezra was still alive... somewhere. In his mind's eye, he pictured Ezra sitting on a sun-dappled porch, sipping lemonade from a sweating glass, his dark hair ruffled by a gentle breeze. But this mirage evaporated like morning dew, replaced by the image of Ezra's favorite blue sneakers with the worn-down heels, abandoned in some shallow grave beneath theautumn leaves. His father's latex-gloved hands, stained crimson to the wrists, loomed in Henry's thoughts.
The homeschooling prison his father had constructed brick by brick now made perfect sense—no teachers to notice his despair, no friends to hear whispered confessions, no one to witness Henry's slow transformation into something hollow-eyed and obedient, with hands that would someday wear those same latex gloves.
PART ONE: BLOODY HELL
“Enough Madness? Enough?
And how do you measure madness?”
— The Joker
CHAPTER 1: NOT DEAD YET
Savannah's blood was thick with terror.First, time stopped: Maddy’s body folding up, a burst of color from his shirt, a wet slap she would remember all her life. Then, time sped up: her own screams raw and animal, the man’s hands the size and weight of shovels, her shoes dragging over concrete, fingers clawing at seams in the air as if she could shred through to somewhere safe. The flashlight clattered and rolled, its failing bulb painting a mad kaleidoscope of shadows over the room.
He had the knife still, and the hand on her upper arm was unyielding, but the way he spoke was oddly gentle. “Breathe, sweetheart,” the man said, and she thought she’d vomit at the word, but her body obeyed. The first breath was a howl. The next few, hiccups. “I know you’re scared. I’d be, too. But it’s almost over now.”
He half-led, half-dragged her, and the darkness in the hallway seemed to press up against her skin. Her mind chased itself in circles: run, fight, beg, collapse. She did none of them, only stumbled over her own feet, and at the end of the corridor, he turned and looked down at her with a calculation so intimate she felt it like hot breath against her ear.
“You're a pretty little thing,” he said, his face bland as bread. “I could do you the way I did your boyfriend, but I'm not a brute.” He tilted his head. “Well, not always.” He ran a thumb along her cheek, smearing Maddy’s blood into her skin. “You can make this easy, or you can make it hard.”
Savannah gagged. The smell coming off his hand—raw iron and something sweet, like rotting fruit—made her knees buckle. She sank to the floor, her wrists still bound by rough nylon cord. She crumpled and started to hyperventilate, handsfluttering so violently they looked like they belonged to someone else. Something was happening inside her—her vision pulsed at the edges, everything taffy-stretched and dreamlike. She was suddenly, deeply cold, and her teeth started to chatter. She couldn’t stop them.
He crouched, bringing his face almost level with hers. His eyes were mild and flat like a pond. “You know, a lot of girls are so dramatic. All that mascara, those little notes they pass. But you’re so quiet.” He was almost whispering, as if they were kneeling together at the edge of a church nave, not in a concrete hallway. “That’s good. Quiet girls last longer. Don’t you want to last?”
He gripped her jaw, not harshly, but insistently, and tilted her head side to side. Her body was shutting down, a whiteout roaring in her ears like a blizzard. She could hear her own heart, frantic in her chest. When he let go, she dropped her head as if the strings holding it aloft had snapped.
Savannah’s thoughts folded inward, collapsed into the small, desperate flame of survival. All the stories she’d ever read about girls who got out alive, girls who bit down hard and tricked their captors or waited for a single mistake—none of those girls sobbed like she did, wrung out and trembling. She was not the girl who survived this. She was the girl for whom they held a candlelight vigil.
“Look at me.” A soft command. She looked. She felt the moment he decided: how his posture shifted, the weight of his hand, the calmness inside his gaze. “Such a pretty thing. So much better than the others,” he murmured. “Makes it worth the trouble, you know?”
He hauled her upright again by the crook of her elbow. She barely felt the pain, even when the tight, corded rope bit through her skin and raised a bruise. He walked her through another steel door, then another. Her legs worked without her; shemoved the way people moved in nightmares, slow and sticky, disconnected from everything but the knowledge of her own terror.
