The Bride Collector

by Ted Dekker

  Paradise closed the book. “You see, normally the kind of people that can tell you that are savants, maybe autistic. They don’t often look like Texas beauty queens who can flirt like cheerleaders. So the boys see you, and they trip.”

  “What are you saying? That I’m just a monkey? You always say that they think we’re all monkeys, monkeys, monkeys!” Andrea paced, agitated. “Well maybe we are, Paradise, but I was trying to be nice. Maybe I was wrong, you know? Maybe the FBI man is really a nice guy and he really does like you. Maybe you deserve that. But now you’ve ruined it!”

  Paradise was about to snap at the girl, tell her that it was all a horrible fantasy. Her emotions boiled and she was reminded just why she hated men so much. In the end, they dashed hope. They were a curse.

  “He likes you,” Casanova said, staring up at Paradise from the couch. “All men want you.” They’d clearly given him more medication than usual, and his eyes looked only half lit.

  “Maybe Mr. Raines likes you,” Andrea said.

  “You can have him, Andrea. I can’t afford this. My mind can’t take it. Neither, for that matter, can my heart.”

  “So you like him, too,” Cass said. “I know what that’s like. Having my heart broken. It happens quite a lot.” He stared at them for a moment, then went back to watching the floor.

  “Nonsense. He’s all yours, Andrea. But it won’t matter, they’re gone.”

  That seemed to settle the issue, at least for the moment. Roudy was still trying to comprehend the nature of her suggestion that he was needed for a much more important case.

  “So, you really think this case is beneath me? Maybe you’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right. The FBI has moved on.”

  A voice spoke softly from behind her. “No, Paradise.” She turned to face Allison, who stood in the doorway. No, Paradise?

  “I’m afraid the FBI hasn’t moved on.” Allison walked in, watching Paradise with her ever-smiling eyes, and Paradise couldn’t help but think the director was up to something tricky.

  “I just got off the phone with Special Agent Raines.”

  Paradise found the air heavy to breathe.

  “After your help the other day, Mr. Raines and his partner have decided that you offer the Federal Bureau of Investigation their best chance of saving those young women. All four of you.” She looked at the others. “And I think you should help them. It will be good for you, and it could be very good for those young women who will probably otherwise die.”

  Roudy sprang forward, fist raised. “We can’t let them down! We must help them. Bring the body, bring the files, bring it all! We’ll put the vermin back into the cage where he belongs!”

  Brad Raines was coming back. Paradise stood immobilized.

  “Do you all agree, then?” Allison asked.

  “Of course!” Roudy shouted.

  “Andrea?”

  Her eyes were bright, and Paradise didn’t want to guess what was going on in her brain. “Yes,” Andrea said. “Absolutely.”

  “You said the beautiful brunette would join us?” Casanova asked, rising unsteadily, dumb grin already plastered on his expression.

  “Her name is Nikki. I’m sorry, Casanova, but I don’t think so. Not today.”

  His smile flattened. “No?”

  “No. But if she comes, you’ll be the first to know.”

  Casanova stared for a moment, then headed for the door in a drug-induced shuffle.

  Allison looked at Paradise. “Well?”

  Her chest was still frozen and a chill shot through her, but Paradise recognized both as excitement as much as fear. The kind of excitement that a person must feel looking over a cliff with a parachute strapped to her back. And the thought that she might be excited terrified her even more. She wanted to run from the room.

  A glance at Andrea chased away that desire. The girl had lit up like the stars. She was already smoothing her hair. Paradise already regretted her earlier words; she couldn’t let Brad face this monster on his own.

  She faced Allison and shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Good. I assumed as much. They’re already on their way.”

  “Now?” Paradise asked, terrified again.

  “Now.”

  15

  THE METHOD AND execution of a taking were equal parts God and equal parts Quinton Gauld, being the messenger from God empowered to carry out his bidding on earth. What so few humans knew was just how thrilling being God’s proxy could be. Some knew, in the haze of a trance brought on by some hallucinogenic tea in the Amazon, or swaying to heavy music at the altar in church, but even these poor souls could not travel fluidly from human to divine as Quinton could.

  Indeed, his hallucinogenic capacity was built in. What the medical community erroneously called illness was actually a fantastic gifting. He could as easily drift into what they called delusion as they could breathe.

  It wasn’t really delusion, as he’d once been led to believe. When the doctors had captured him and shot him full of drugs, then yes, he’d believed their lies. But now, having lived so long without the drugs, he’d learned to embrace his connection to God for the true gift it was.

  And now there was a devil hunting the messenger, a witch doctor bent on stealing the bride of Christ before Quinton could take her and deliver her to God. It was eerily similar to the movie Men in Black, in which monsters were out to stop highly gifted agents working for truth. Only in this case, the agent Rain Man was the monster, and he, Quinton Gauld, dressed in gray, was the gifted agent of God protecting his own.

  His bride.

  For his mission today, Quinton had taken the black Chrysler 300M. His abduction would occur during the day, and the FBI likely knew that he was driving a truck, based on the tire marks left in the soil at the scene of each killing. The 300M would glide along the highway without being noticed.

  Quinton followed the police cruiser south on I-25, headed toward Castle Rock, careful to keep at least one, usually two cars between his own and the target. She wasn’t alone, which added a complication, but this didn’t mean he wasn’t up to the task. God was testing him. Seeing just how good he was before he walked the true and most beautiful bride down the aisle. The rest were a kind of prenuptial ceremony, preparing the way. A bride price offered to Father.

  It was uncommon to find such a beautiful woman as this in law enforcement. He’d taken such a range of women, the last being a flight attendant, showing that he could snatch them from the sky as well as the ground. And now from the authorities, from right under their noses.

  Quinton had long ago selected another woman who lived in Boulder, a college student in her twenties named Christine. But the Rain Man had inserted himself into the equation, and God had changed his mind. It was important that people learn their place in the pecking order. Rain Man was near the bottom of the pile, far below the favorites he was trying to save. Certainly far below the sunshine, being the rain.

  A drizzly little pretty man.

  Quinton whistled the old “You Are My Sunshine” tune, but he only got seven or eight notes in when the police car’s turn signal began to blink, indicating their intention to turn off the highway into the rest stop ahead. He held the tune and spun through his options. All of them. So many he couldn’t count them, but only a couple interested him much.

  Of those that did, one rose as a solid possibility. They were making an unscheduled stop, likely to relieve a bladder or two. He needed only thirty seconds of quiet time with Theresa and her partner. Depending on how many other cars were in the rest stop, this might be the perfect thirty.

  The cruiser broke right and angled up the ramp into the tall pine trees. Cover, plenty of it. Quinton’s pulse built steadily. The two cars between his and the cop car drove on, and he clicked on his right turn signal.

  The silenced Browning nine-millimeter semiautomatic lay on the passenger seat, and he placed a gloved hand over the steel. He disliked guns because they were blunt, impersonal tools that were u
sed to kill, and he wasn’t a killer. But they were sometimes useful as tools of motivation.

  The 300M’s steel-belted radials glided over the asphalt up the ramp, like a blade on ice. Generally speaking the Americans made junk vehicles, but the 300M suited Quinton well. The tinted windows prevented passersby from seeing the occupant, and any person looking directly through the front windshield would see a dark-haired man wearing aviator sunglasses and black leather gloves, but beyond imagining Tommy Lee Jones from Men in Black, they would think nothing of it. Yet another common man trying to look suave was far less noticeable than a big farmer-boy type hauling around a meat cleaver.

  The police cruiser pulled between two parking lines next to the restrooms. Quinton scanned the rest area and saw that they were two of only three cars and one eighteen-wheeler that looked bedded down. He let his pulse surge. He could not pass up this opportunity. God had sent him a gift.

  Both doors on the cruiser opened. Quinton slowed his approach. Theresa got out first, a woman with a small bladder. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail, easy to tuck up under her hat when she wore it. She looked stunning in her uniform. Casting a glance backward, she headed to the restrooms, followed immediately by her uniformed partner, name yet unknown to Quinton.

  He pulled the 300M into a parking spot two down from the eighteen-wheeler and waited. His only prayer now was that their bladders would empty as quickly as they’d filled. The conditions were good at the moment, but that didn’t mean they would remain optimal.

  Theresa, being the first to head in, was the first to head out. Working as smoothly as Tommy Lee Jones now, Quinton slipped out, shoved the pistol behind his belt, retrieved his case from the backseat, and locked the doors. Bleep.

  After one last look up and down the driveway to be sure no one was pulling in, he headed toward the police cruiser. Theresa, being a cop, watched him. Watched her enemy approaching head-on, powerless to stop him. She likely assumed he was a salesman headed into the facilities.

  Her partner, a bullish-looking man with red hair, came out, walking fast, eager to catch up with her. He probably had a thing for her and didn’t want to miss an opportunity to offer a witty come-on. Perhaps he wanted to take her back for a quickie.

  Both saw him. Both watched him. But he acted nothing like anyone who’d want to harm a flea, much less them. And he didn’t have to act, because he really didn’t want to harm them any more than he’d wanted to slap Joshie in the restroom at Elway’s restaurant.

  Quinton timed his approach, allowing them both to slide into their seats before he pulled the silenced weapon from behind his back and stepped up to the passenger door.

  He shoved the barrel in Theresa’s face. “Get out, please.”

  BRAD RAINES STOOD back and watched Roudy make quick work of the photographs, pinning each on a large map of Colorado he’d insisted they hang against the wall. Each time he pushed in a pin, he uttered a soft, “There we go. There we go.” Each of the five victims was already affixed to the map, surrounded by a dozen photos from each crime scene. The pictures formed a large symmetrical shape, but Brad had no clue what that shape could mean.

  Next to the files of each crime sat half a dozen artifacts from the scene. The group had already spent twenty minutes poking and prodding, asking endless questions. But thus far, nothing of interest had presented itself to any of them. Getting all the photos up on the wall was Roudy’s inspiration, and he’d tackled the task with an animal-like frenzy. “There we go, there we go.”

  Having satisfied some threshold in his mind, he sprang back. “Tell me the first thing that comes to mind. What do you see?”

  Andrea and Paradise looked at Brad. Neither had been too talkative, evidently preferring to give Roudy his time in the sun.

  “A butterfly?” Brad offered.

  “Uh-ha. And now?”

  He hadn’t changed a thing.

  Brad humored him. “A… flower.”

  “Interesting.”

  “I don’t see what the point is, Roudy,” Andrea said.

  “Understanding Agent Raines’s baseline helps me judge his methodology for perception,” Roudy said in a dismissive tone. “Please, no comments that don’t help the process.” He went back to studying the wall.

  At the moment, Roudy’s methodology struck Brad as absurd. Certainly neither brilliant nor particularly insightful. But then, Brad didn’t think the way Roudy did. Either way, he hadn’t come for Sherlock’s insight.

  He was here for Paradise.

  She’d greeted him cordially enough but remained distant, dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt. Brad smelled the scent of shampoo when she passed. For the most part she stood by the window, watching Roudy and Andrea.

  Andrea seemed more interested in Brad than in the case. In fact, the only one really engaged in the case was Roudy, who leaped about the evidence like a tiger dressed in gray corduroy pants and black bow tie. His hair was a rat’s nest, and his goatee had been twisted and bent in all directions by nervous fingers.

  Brad’s conversation with Allison several hours earlier had come as a surprise to him. Rather than scold him for requesting a return to CWI, she paused only a second before agreeing. “And Nikki just might be right,” she’d said. “I say so for ulterior reasons, naturally. I care about your case, don’t get me wrong. But I’m more interested in seeing Paradise break out of her shell. What you’re suggesting will challenge her, but I think she could use a good head-to-head confrontation with a man.”

  “I’m sorry, I think you’re misunderstanding me,” he’d said. “Nobody’s suggesting a head-to-head confrontation. I would only try to encourage her to trust me so that-”

  “Oh, I realize what you’re doing, Mr. Raines. And I’m saying it will lead to conflict with someone like Paradise. But that may be good for her.” Then, after a pause: “Win her confidence, sir. Sweep her off her feet if you can. You have my full blessing.”

  Brad had called Nikki at eight fifteen, right after he hung up with Allison, and informed her that the director had agreed. He was heading out to the center with the files as soon as he could get it all together. Nikki was headed to her mother’s for the day, but said she’d be available by phone and would check in the minute she got back in the afternoon. Maybe she could join them then.

  Her reaction to finding the note on Brad’s window the previous night had surprised him. He found it interesting that Nikki, whom he’d always considered such a secure woman, had expressed some jealousy over Paradise. How could she have interpreted his care for her as anything more than concern?

  Was there something in his voice or eyes that had drawn a question mark in her mind? Had she picked up on something that not even he consciously considered? Thinking about it now, in the same room as Paradise, made him feel self-conscious. The notion that Nikki had picked up on something distracted him from Roudy’s antics. If he looked at Paradise, would she see what Nikki had seen in his eyes? Would she get the wrong impression?

  Then again, wasn’t he here to win her trust? He was, yes, but he felt awkward stepping in that direction. The whole idea of leading her on so that she might lower her guard and cough up the images trapped in her mind was offensive to him.

  He glanced in her direction and saw that she was staring at him. To avoid any embarrassment, he shifted his eyes to Andrea. But she, too, was watching him. The blond beauty smiled, then looked at Paradise, who still hadn’t broken her stare.

  Brad offered Paradise a gentle smile. “So, you’ve been quiet.”

  “She’s had a couple of hard days,” Andrea said.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. You okay?”

  “Well, I’m not sure, Mr. Raines,” Paradise said. “They say I’m mentally ill, but even in my state of insanity I can see that you’re not getting what you came for.” Her arms were crossed and she held his gaze. From the corner of his eyes Brad could see that Andrea was glancing back and forth between them, surely picking up on this strange chemistry. Was this what Nikk
i had sensed? But it wasn’t anything to be jealous about. He and Paradise simply had an understanding. A connection that bypassed normal pretense. She was bone-deep honest, and he was attracted to people who exchanged society’s shell of propriety for such stark truth telling.

  Then again, she wasn’t transparent, was she? Truth hid behind her eyes, in her mind. And if Nikki was right, she might be complicit in that hiding.

  Paradise finally averted her eyes, lowered her arms, and walked toward the evidence spread all over the desk and wall. “So, let’s see if we can’t help him out a little. What do you say, Roudy? Right, Andrea?”

  Roudy looked over his shoulder. “What do you think we’re doing? We’ve made tremendous headway already. I’m working as fast as humanly possible and then some.”

  “Remember what you said,” Andrea said in a soft but firm tone. It sounded like a warning.

  “I know what I said, Andrea, but I’ve changed my mind.”

  Whatever had been said didn’t sit right between these two.

  Paradise faced him, eyes bright now. “So, maybe it would be helpful if I summarized what we have here. Would that be helpful? Get us back on track?”

  “Okay. Yes, that would be good.”

  Roudy turned and lifted a finger. “The first question I’m considering is, Why? The why before the who. And on that front, I do have some thoughts.”

  “If you don’t mind, Roudy,” Brad said, “I would like to hear what Paradise has to say.” The man looked shocked. “Before you offer your full analysis.” That calmed him.

  Paradise caught his eye, and for the first time she hinted at a smile, as if to say, That was nice of you, thinking of me without dismissing Roudy.

  “Should I give you thoughts on why, then?”

  “Yes. Roudy?”

  “Yes. Yes, by all means.”

  “I have some thoughts, too,” Andrea said, stepping closer to Brad. “They don’t call me Brains for nothing. But I’m good with more than just my mind, as you can probably see.”

  Paradise shot her a stern warning. “Andrea!”