Ted Dekker

by The Bride Collector (v5)

  Forgive me, Paradise… Please, I beg you… Forgive me. I was a fool for not knowing. I wouldn’t do it again. I swear I would sweep you off your feet. I would smother you with kisses and promise to never allow a man to lay a hand of harm on you again.

  In Brad’s tortured mind, now stripped of the pretense that distorted the world’s view of beauty, he understood clearly: Paradise was the favorite. The one bride every man would kill for.

  And now Quinton Gauld, this demon from hell who strutted about the world in a man’s body and called himself human, would rob Brad of all second chances.

  Tears had long ago dried on his dirty cheeks, but now his eyes flooded with them again. He pushed himself to his feet, sliding up the pole, which creaked angrily against his body weight. He leaned forward, body quaking. It was all pointless, but he couldn’t think like that.

  He threw himself back, crashed into the post. The loud impact took his breath this time, and he had wait for it to return. If the pole broke and the timber it supported collapsed and crushed Brad, his death would not be wasted.

  Brad hurled his weight backward. Crack. This time the collision did not take his breath, because he was falling.

  His impact with the earth behind him, however, pounded the air from his lungs. He tried to breathe and blinked up at the splintered end of the post over his head, still hanging from the beam above.

  It took him a moment to fully realize that he’d just broken the pole and that the bottom half was lying on the dirt floor beside him.

  His breath and his mind returned to him at the same time. Adrenaline flooded his veins, jacking his heart rate up to a steady hammer.

  He rolled to his right, desperate to be on his feet, but his hands were still secured behind him, and for an awful second he wondered if Quinton had tied him to a stake in the ground in case he managed to break the post.

  He frantically rolled away from the post. In the process his hands came free—the knot apparently having loosened as he fought to free himself. Brad scrambled to his feet, ignoring the pain on his right side. If he’d survived this long, he wasn’t in danger of dying from the wound now.

  He stood tensed, hands clawed, beside the blanketed stage, at a momentary loss. His freedom had come so unexpectedly that he forgot what it was he’d had in mind.

  Escape.

  A phone, he had to find a phone. Or a car. He had to make contact with Temple.

  No, first the medical kit.

  He leaped over the blanket, threw the black medical kit open. Scissors, gauze, and a scalpel lay in a neatly arranged tray. A thick bunch of first-aid antiseptic bandages was bound together with a yellow tube of antibiotic ointment. Besides these items, he saw a large assortment of medications and some putty, a small chisel, and a hammer.

  Brad ripped open his shirt and stared at the angry, bloody wound on his side. He picked up a small brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide, spun the cap off with unsteady fingers, and splashed the disinfectant on his side. The liquid foamed as it made contact with the wound, which was not as deep as it looked. He deduced that his weakness was more from dehydration and blood loss than injury.

  It occurred to him that he might not want to leave evidence of his pilfering out for Quinton to see. He stopped. Then again, the broken pole was evidence enough. His mind wasn’t working right.

  Think!

  Without taking any more time to cleanse the wound thoroughly, he applied a finger of antibiotic cream directly onto the entry point, slapped on an adhesive bandage, then wrapped his lower body with an Ace bandage. Then he quickly drained a bottle of water that sat on the counter.

  He closed the bag.

  On second thought… He reached back in, took out the scalpel, and closed it up again. Then he took a clawed hammer from the table and strode toward the open barn door, moving fast.

  Dark outside, pitch-dark. A gravel driveway snaked into the night. Without any knowledge of where he was, he had little choice but to follow the road to wherever it led him.

  For the first time in several hours, Brad began to hope. For what, he wasn’t sure, but he could hope now and so he did.

  Please, God. Please let her be alive.

  35

  SHE REMEMBERED THE lights over her head as they rolled her down the hall, and she remembered hearing the attendants’ voices talking about the way she looked, but whatever they’d shot into her veins had pushed out the light, and Paradise had retreated into her fog of safety, away from the demons snapping at her heels.

  The last conscious thought she could remember was that she’d finally gone crazy. For real crazy. Psychotic. But that was okay, because Roudy and Andrea and Enrique were also psychotic now and then, and she loved them just the way they were.

  They must have placed her in a hospital bed and pulled a blanket over her head. Either that or she was dead and they’d taken her to the morgue. But she’d opened her eyes and could feel the blanket over her face. It was pitch-black under here.

  Her arms didn’t want to move.

  No sound. She wasn’t lying flat on her back. She was slouching against the elevated mattress behind her. She’d been in this situation before, seven years ago. The only way to avoid more medication was to act totally normal. A problem for a person who was not normal. But she was normal, right?

  Her first impulse to throw the blanket off in a panic was tempered by her slow-moving muscles and by her clearing reason.

  Depending on what drug they had given her, she might soon be clear of the fog they’d induced. Most antipsychotic medications took days to work their way out of a person’s system, but maybe they’d only given her a sedative.

  Or they’d given her an antipsychotic and her mind would clear because of it. She wasn’t psychotic, but she had no other explanation for the behaviors that had led to her being brought here.

  At the moment this was the last of her concerns.

  The phone call from the killer suddenly blasted into her mind, explaining why she was lying here, incapacitated in the hospital while…

  Dear God! He had Brad!

  Her pulse raced. She had to get out into the hall, find a phone, and call Allison. The killer had prohibited it, but that didn’t matter anymore. She had to tell Allison everything!

  She forced her hand off her belly where it rested and clawed at the cover. Her muscles nearly didn’t obey. The blanket slipped off her head, freeing her eyes to see the darkened hospital room.

  But it wasn’t a room. She blinked, fearful that she was hallucinating. Her drugged mind was telling her that she was inside a pickup truck parked at a gas station, but she knew better. She was in the hospital where she’d been drugged and admitted.

  Unless that was the hallucination and this the reality.

  Or unless she had been in the hospital but was now in a pickup truck, staring out a dirty side window at a row of Chevron pumps. She blinked again but the image remained.

  Paradise sat up and pulled the blue blanket down to her waist. She was in a pickup truck, one with a center console that divided her seat from the driver’s. A can of Dr Pepper sat in one cup holder, a phone in the other. The phone the killer had left for her.

  So then…

  She snapped straight as a springboard, face throbbing with heat. This was his truck, she was in his truck, he somehow managed to get her, she didn’t know how, but she was here at a gas station and she was in the killer’s truck.

  For a full ten seconds Paradise tried to think clearly enough to make a decision. She tried to move, to run, to scream, to hide, to do anything but sit here like a lump waiting for him to come back, because he was gone and she didn’t know where and she had to do something, something, anything.

  But she couldn’t move.

  Her muscles broke free of terror’s grip all at once and she was clambering. She grabbed at the door handle, yanked it. Her hand slipped off and it banged loudly.

  Locked.

  She searched for the locking mechanism, but couldn’t find one. She
wasn’t familiar with cars, and it didn’t matter because he wasn’t stupid enough to leave her in an unlocked truck. But she had to get out!

  A strange whimpering sound, like a kitten in trouble, broke the silence. She shut her mouth to still her cry and breathed through her nose in shallow, panicked draws of air as she twisted left and right, searching for something.

  Anything!

  Pale light washed over the interior, revealing clean, uncluttered surfaces. The dash was empty. The seats looked new. She jerked the glove compartment latch and the drawer flapped down. Inside she found a map, still folded neatly, a black comb, and a packet of tissue paper. That was all.

  It occurred to her then that she should kick at the window, break it out.

  She slammed the glove compartment shut, pulled her legs up, leaned back against the center console, and kicked her bare feet into the window with all of her strength. They bounced off with a thud, and she did it again… and again.

  Screaming this time.

  She pressed her face against the window and was about to pound on it as hard as she could to draw attention from a someone, anyone, when she saw him.

  The man she’d seen upon touching the dead body, the same one she’d drawn for Brad, was at the corner of the convenience store, walking toward the front door in even strides, unconcerned. He was tall, dressed in gray slacks, dark hair. In his right hand he held a piece of wood with a key attached to it.

  He was the only one in sight and theirs was the only vehicle as far as she could see.

  Paradise pulled back and ducked, trembling. The only person’s attention she would draw here would be his.

  She waited a moment in her slouch, but he would return soon. She had to move now, get out now.

  She peeked over the door frame and saw that he was inside. On the window a sign read WELCOME TO ST. FRANCIS GAS AND GO in large red letters trimmed in black.

  She was peering over the door frame at the outside world, and it was as threatening as her worst fears had taught her.

  She was crouched in a closet peeking through the cracks, and her father was out there, pointing a gun at his head, pacing around her dead mother.

  She was hiding in her bathroom with the lights off at CWI, after clawing at the beast who tried to rip her clothes off while holding her mouth with his large hand.

  That psychologist who’d befriended her. Then tried to rape her. That man with a beard and large glasses whose breath smelled like mothballs. The memory presented itself to her like a déjà vu, fresh for the first time, yet she had been there. It was a memory set free. She could remember it as if it had happened only…

  Familiarity flashed, as if two live wires in her brain had brushed up against each other, and she gasped. Without the beard, without the glasses, this man was Quinton Gauld!

  She threw herself into a crouch and whimpered. No, no, she couldn’t do this! She couldn’t not do anything! She couldn’t let the memories incapacitate her as they always had, because this time her fear alone would result in her death, and in Brad’s death.

  But the memories flogged her. Darkness, closets, mothball breath, grunts, and big strong hands. And in this closet that smelled like mothballs was his phone that had only one number in it.

  Paradise straightened and stared at the blue phone. She didn’t know any phone numbers except her sister’s and the last time she’d called her sister she wasn’t home. But she had to try something, so she grabbed it. Turned it on. Pressed the illuminated numbers with a rattled finger.

  Send.

  It rang once. Twice.

  “Come on, Angie, pick up, pick up, pick up!”

  She spun to the side window. Quinton Gauld had finished his business inside and was walking toward the door.

  A voice came over the phone’s small speaker. Her sister’s, asking the caller to leave a message.

  Paradise began to hyperventilate. Four-one-one, she thought. I have to call 411.

  “THE FILES,” ROUDY announced, swishing into Temple’s office in his pajamas and slippers. “I need to see them all.”

  “Excuse me?”

  They’d been in the office for half an hour, and Allison insisted they give Roudy his nose, let him sniff around. He’d been in and out of every office asking obtuse questions, giving strange advice. The staff watched him with lost and often amused expressions. All but Temple, who had no clue how to deal with a man of Roudy’s temperament.

  “You have your unsolved cases in the basement under lock and key, I presume?” Roudy asked, pacing.

  “Yes, that’s—”

  “Then bring them to the conference room, lay them out in order beginning with the oldest case and working up to the newest, and I will make an attempt to solve all of them for you. You really should have brought these to my offices much sooner. It’s hardly excusable.”

  Temple glanced at Allison, who allowed herself a small grin despite the cloud of fear that had settled over her. The minutes had ticked by without any word on either Paradise or Brad.

  Law enforcement was out in full force, and four other FBI field offices were helping sift through leads that had poured in since they’d gone public. It went on and on, but not one concrete lead led them closer to finding her Paradise.

  This was her fault. She should have known that something was wrong with Quinton Gauld when he left. If only she’d been more sensitive, more in tune, listened more closely. He’d come and gone like any employee who came and went without any incident that might raise a brow. But shouldn’t she have been able to look at a man who would do the things Quinton Gauld had done these past few weeks and know, just know, that there was something wrong with him?

  Apparently not.

  If that monster put one finger on Paradise, she personally would pull the trigger and send him to be with his God.

  “We don’t have all day,” Roudy was saying.

  “I’m afraid you wouldn’t have enough hours in your lifetime to work through all those files. Either way, you don’t have the credentials—”

  “Nonsense. Talk to your superiors. Have them shipped to my office.”

  Temple’s phone rang and he picked it up, saved from his own awkwardness.

  “Temple.”

  Roudy turned to Allison and spoke in a soft if urgent tone. “You must speak to these people. Don’t you just love this place? It’s fantastic. Makes me consider moving my own office.”

  Temple tensed and with him, Allison. He grabbed a pencil. “Put it through.”

  Silence. Even Roudy remained frozen. Temple pressed the speaker phone button and the sound of fast breathing crackled over the speaker.

  “This is Special Agent—”

  “Hello?”

  Allison’s veins turned cold. It was a whisper but she was certain…

  “Hello?”

  “Yes, ma’am, we’re here, please identify—”

  “Paradise?” Allison stepped forward. “Is that—”

  She was interrupted by Paradise’s terrified rambling. “He’s coming, he’s coming now, walking toward the truck! You have to help me, Allison! He’s got me.”

  She was alive!

  Temple sat and snatched up a pencil. “Try to calm down. Can you tell us where you are? What kind of truck, what do you see outside?”

  “Green…” came the panicked voice. “He’s coming, he’s…” Her voice softened to a bare whisper. “He’s coming…”

  PARADISE WAS CROUCHED, peering just over the door frame as he approached. Her mind spun with a hundred options but none was much different from the other and they all ended badly.

  The side windows were tinted, so he couldn’t see in yet. But the front window was much clearer and he would cross the front of the truck to get in on the driver’s side.

  “Green,” she whispered into the phone. “He’s coming, he’s…” She lowered her voice, swimming in fear. “He’s coming.”

  “Tell us what you see, Paradise. We have to know where you are. Look outside.”

/>   “St. Francis Gas and Go,” she whispered. “In a green pickup truck that’s clean inside. A gas station.” She didn’t know what else to say. “It’s Quinton, Allison. It’s him. He’s here to kill me.”

  Allison spoke with a tone that demanded calm and strength. “Stay strong, Paradise. I’m not going to let him kill you. You hear me? I’m going to save you, Paradise. Just stay calm and do what you need to do.”

  The killer was ten feet away. She couldn’t let him know she had used the phone.

  “Paradise? Paradise, are you there?”

  She didn’t have time to say more. She didn’t dare. She had to do what she had to do.

  She clicked the phone off, set it in the cup holder, pulled the blanket over her head, slouched back in the same position she’d woken in, and tried her very best not to tremble or breathe too hard.

  Back in her closet. Back to safety. Back into the fog.

  The driver’s door opened. Then shut.

  Quinton coughed. He pulled the blanket down off her head and, evidently satisfied by her sleeping form, replaced it with a soft grunt.

  “I’m sorry about this, Paradise,” he said in a very normal voice. “I really am.” The engine rumbled to life. “And for the record, although you won’t ever hear me admit this, I really did love you. I think I was a little mixed up back then. My father hurt me, too.” A pause. “Maybe I still am mixed up.” Another pause. “You’re every bit as beautiful as I remember. I can see why God loves you. I should probably just kill you now.”

  And then he didn’t say anything for a while.

  36

  THE DIRT ROAD ran straight south, that much Brad Raines could tell by the position of the stars in the night sky. What he couldn’t know was how far south the road went before meeting up with any sign of civilization.

  He walked beside wheat fields as flat as a golden sea in eastern Colorado or possibly as far east as Kansas. Twin ribbons of worn earth ran parallel under the moonlight, overgrown in patches. Tufts of grass grew calf-high down the center. No sign of telephone or electric poles. The road offered private access to the fields and was likely used only by farm equipment and trucks. If he could find a driveway he might follow it to a house, but in the hour he’d been walking, he’d seen only fields, access paths, and the occasional wide sloping ditch.