Page 29 of Cole: Bloodlines
Like Dane, Devlin was running on pure instinct, helping the paramedics with Abel, who was asgoneas Angel. This didn’t feel like just a double loss tonight. They hadn’t only lost Savannah and Maddy… but Angel and Abel as well. And every scream, every cry, every tear—Cole was absorbing it all, taking the blame for every ounce of anguish and suffering, bearing a weight too great for any human being.
If we lose Gabe too…
There would be no Cole without Gabe. Maybe they hadalreadylost Cole, too. Fivebirdswith one stone.More than five.Their entire family would unravel, each loss like a dominoknocking down the next, and the next, until they all lay in a scattered heap of individual pieces… broken for good, this time.
And the madman wins… just like that.
Dane squatted before Angel and cupped his cold hands between his palms. The boy stared through him, seeing nothing.Nothingwould be a blessing. Because if he was seeingsomething…
“I won’t lose you, baby,” Dane whispered with a tremor, tears blurring his husband’s face. He pressed the boy’s chilled hands to his lips and closed his eyes, the tears spilling over. His warm breath shuddered against Angel’s limp fingers. “I won’t let you go… I won’t… I can’t.” Sobs shook him as he pressed his lips harder to Angel’s hands. “I can’t live without you… I wouldn’t know how anymore… I don’twantto know how.”
His arms slid around the young man, and he buried his face in his neck, crying. Angel sagged against him limply, tears streaming, but no sound emerging. Dane hugged him closer, so fucking scared that this time, thefracturewas too great, too severe, toomuch… that even God couldn’t heal it.
The coroner arrived, a grim silhouette against the cold, harsh night, accompanied by a plainclothes officer whose presence felt like a heavy shroud settling over the already suffocating scene. The officer approached Cole, his voice a low rumble cutting through the icy stillness. “Are you Dane Chambers?” he asked, his gaze piercing. “The one who called 911?”
“No,” Cole choked out, the word a whisper caught in his throat. His head spun, a dizzying void threatening to swallow him whole, and his stomach churned with a nauseating knot, each twist a fresh stab of phantom knives through his guts. Theworld tilted precariously, every nerve ending screaming in silent protest.
“I’m Dane.” The other man, leaving Angel at the car, walked forward with heavy steps, the air around him thick with unspoken grief. “I made the call.”
“I’m Detective Wil Jordan.” He surveyed the two men, voice dropping to a near whisper, a dark current of shared history flowing beneath his words. “We have mutual friends.”
Dane nodded.
“Clint informed me of the circumstances,” Jordan continued, his eyes holding a grounded sense of grim understanding. “When I heard your name over dispatch and the details of the situation, I figured it was best I handle this until the FBI arrives.
“Thank you,” Dane rasped, the word raw and filled with deep, aching distress that vibrated in the cold air. “Clint trusts you, and that says a lot.”
Cole’s focus, fragile at best, shattered completely, his eyes pulled with an agonizing, magnetic force past the detective, past everything, to the grotesque ballet of the bodies. They hung there, two broken dolls, swaying with a grim grace in the night breeze, their forms silhouetted against the pale, unforgiving sky. He watched, frozen by a horror that transcended thought, as the coroner moved with a solemn, practiced efficiency, instructing the officers to loosen the ropes and lower the children onto the icy ground. The two teens, so recently vibrant, now lay utterly still, defiled and exposed. The coroner, donning surgical gloves with a faint snap that echoed in the oppressive silence, knelt beside them, starting an initial, clinical examination that felt like a further violation.
The detective, his gaze tracking Cole’s, murmured, “That’s Frank. A very good friend of mine. He’ll take special care with your friends.”
Cole could only manage a choked nod, his throat tight with a suffocating knot of shame and revulsion. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. It felt as if the crushing weight of this entire nightmare—every agonizing detail, every shattered hope—was falling on Dane and Devlin, while he bore the searing, inescapable brand of blame. A sickening, corrosive guilt gnawed at his insides, a relentless self-loathing that kept him from stepping up, from articulating himself, from taking responsibility for what was undeniably, horrifyingly,hisfault. He was a hollow shell, crumbling under the weight of it all.
“Tell me what happened here,” Jordan said, his voice softer now, imbued with a quiet empathy that felt like a cruel irony against the backdrop of such savagery.
Dane, despite his own visible torment, managed to articulate the unspeakable, recounting how Abel and the kids vanished, the chilling contact with the serial killer, and the monstrous demands. Cole should have been the one, needed to be the one, providing those details — the killer washisfather. But his entire system was shutting down, a desperate, primal retreat from the unbearable reality. His mind rebelled, a thick fog descending, muffling the world, leaving him adrift in a sea of numb horror.
“You’re Cole?” Detective Jordan’s voice cut through the haze, directed at him.
Cole gave another jerky nod, like a puppet on broken strings.
“Is there anything you can tell me about this man that might help the investigation?”
“I don’t…” Cole’s voice was a ragged whisper, a threadbare sound. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the coroner, from the brutal, unholy display of the children’s bodies lying naked and eviscerated on the frozen ground. A fresh, icy film of tears blurred his vision, but no sobs came, only a silent, desperate leaking of his soul. “Just… if you find him…” he whispered, the words hollow, scraped from the deepest, darkest corners of hisshattered being, “… don’t arrest him…killhim… don’t hesitate.” The plea was a desperate, guttural command, an echo of the violence that had consumed his life.
Jordan’s nod was slow and laden with understanding as his gaze shifted to Dane.
“There might be two of them,” Dane said, his voice strained but clear. “A Deputy Roland. I don’t know if he’s still a real deputy, but he was back when Cole was a kid.”
“Can you describe him?”
“Yeah,” Dane affirmed, and with a chilling precision, he provided a detailed description of the man and the car he was driving when he was last seen with Gabe.
Frank, the coroner, approached the three men, his face showing deep weariness and a hint of grim sympathy in his voice that felt like a fresh wound. “I need someone to identify the bodies,” he said, his words a stark, unavoidable truth. “I know this is a difficult time for you, but…”
“I’ll do it,” Dane rasped, the words torn from his throat, raw and defiant. He reached out, his hand trembling slightly as he touched Cole’s arm, his voice softening to a desperate, aching plea. “I’ll do it.”
Cole stared at him, tears finally spilling over, hot streaks carving paths down his chilled face. He swallowed hard, a painful, dry rasp in his throat, but no words or sounds could escape the crushing weight in his chest.
