Ted Dekker - The Bride Collector

A smile softened her face, and looking into her soft blue eyes, he suddenly wanted to tell her everything. About how he’d fallen in love with a young tennis player named Ruby while attending UT in Austin, the wild carefree days when the world was at both of their fingertips and everyone who saw them together knew it. About the way her eyes twinkled and her laugh echoed on the tennis court, about how completely he’d given himself to Ruby.

About her suicide.

The thought of it brought a familiar lump to his throat. It had taken Brad three years to uncover the secrets that had led to Ruby’s decision to take her life.

“Think about it, Brad. The killer’s playing us. Probing us. Tempting us, egging us on, daring us to stop him. My job is to take his challenge and beat him at his own game. Uncover his true self. So how do you get someone to reveal their secrets?”

She was talking about the killer, but as much about Brad.

He motioned at the wall with a nod. “They do what they do out of pain, and a small part of me can understand that. Not the way they react to it, of course, but the pain itself. Let’s just say I’ve loved and I’ve felt the pain of a terrible loss. A woman I once knew. It’s why I can identify.”

He stopped, not knowing where he was heading. Suddenly uncomfortable.

After a pause, Nikki stepped up to him and touched his shoulder in a show of empathy. But she seemed awkward, and he felt the same. She removed her hand and faced the wall.

“You’ve never mentioned that before. I never knew.”

“I know. We were talking about long-harbored secrets, remember?”

She nodded. A long pause flowed between them, one Brad made no effort to end.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” she finally said.

“It’s okay. We all do at some point.”

But he wasn’t sure about that. The pain he’d felt had left him wishing for death. In a way, he was waging his own personal campaign against death even now. It was why he’d joined the FBI, now that he thought of it.

“But you’re right,” he said, resuming an earlier thread, “part of understanding someone else comes from exposing yourself.”

She looked at him, then grinned at his choice of words.

“So to speak…” There, he thought with a surge of relief. Back on familiar ground-the tinged banter. Their usual territory.

His cell rang and he picked it up, thankful for the interruption.

It was Frank. The staff had registered an interesting hit while cross-referencing the killer’s note with the mental health facilities database.

“You ever hear of a place called the Center for Wellness and Intelligence?”

“No, I don’t think so. Hold on.” Brad asked Nikki if she’d heard of the facility. She stared upward for a moment, then shook her head.

“It’s a private residential facility in the hills south of Boulder that only takes mentally ill patients with high IQs,” Frank said. “As far as we can gather.”

Brad glanced at the wall. The confession. A single line expanded in his field of view.

Where intelligence does centered.

The Center for Wellness and Intelligence. Nikki followed his eyes and saw what he saw.

“The program picked up on the words center-”

“I got it, Frank. Text me the address and advise the administrator that we’re on our way.”

“Yes, sir.”

He snapped the phone shut.

“You think it’s something?”

“It’s a lead,” he said. “He’s playing us, right? So let’s play.”

ACCORDING TO COLORADO’S Department of Mental Health, the state’s organization had certified and currently regulated fifty-three facilities that cared for the mentally ill, ranging from state hospitals to residential care facilities and nursing homes.

The Center for Wellness and Intelligence was listed as a referral facility, privately run and uncertified.

State-by-state closure of state asylums and hospitals between 1960 and 1990 had flooded the streets with mentally ill patients who had no provider to take up their care or cause. Many, up to half by some estimates, wound up incarcerated.

Over time, a range of facilities began to take up the slack, but no national care system had yet replaced the atrociously run asylums that once blanketed the country. There was more to the story, much more according to what Brad had learned while in Miami. Some said that mistreatment of the mentally ill was one of the country’s few remaining dark secrets. No one wanted to lock them up in expensive institutions. Yet no one knew how to treat them effectively through any other means. Better to sweep them all under a rug, otherwise known as the streets and alleyways of the modern city.

They left Nikki’s car at the crime scene and headed east toward Eldorado Springs. The small town was nestled at the base of the Rocky Mountains, roughly six miles southwest of Boulder.

Eldorado Springs Drive wound through the foothills, populated by scrub oak and smaller pines. “Never been out here,” Nikki said.

“I haven’t, either.”

The wheels hummed on two-lane blacktop.

“Beautiful,” she said.

“Peaceful.”

“Hmmm.”

Mental illness. Brad mulled over the words. The mystery of the mind, hidden in the folds of hills beyond the tangles of life in the city. Nothing of the placid landscape spoke to him of the killer. Less than half an hour before, they’d stood before a wall on which a madman had glued a woman whose heels he’d drilled and drained. Now they rode through God’s country. The incongruity of the two images brought a faint buzz to Brad’s mind.

While Brad drove, Nikki glanced at the notebook where she’d jotted down notes from a conversation she’d had with the director of CWI, Allison Johnson.

“Something strange about her.”

“The director?”

Nikki stared ahead. “There’s our road. Before the village, she said. South on a dirt road two miles.”

Brad slowed, turned, and headed the BMW down a winding gravel road. “Isolated.”

“I think that’s the idea. It’s a privately run facility for families or patients who can afford a hefty room-and-board fee. Used to be a convent run by nuns. There’s a place like this in Colorado Springs, something about the healthy air that once attracted caregivers and patients.”

“It’s religious?”

“Actually, I’m not sure. Wouldn’t surprise me; health care administered by the Catholic Church has a strong history.”

“You said she was strange.”

Nikki nodded. “Maybe strange is the wrong word. Don’t get me wrong, she was delighted to have us. She just sounded rather eccentric.”

“Maybe she has a little of what they have,” Brad said, then added so that he didn’t sound demeaning, “Maybe we all do.”

“She said they only accept patients who display exceptional intelligence.”

Brad wasn’t sure what to make of that.

They rounded a bend and saw the large gated entrance immediately. A white sign above the heavy metal gates left no doubt: THE CENTER FOR WELLNESS AND INTELLIGENCE. And underneath, a motto of sorts: LIFE NEVER SHORTCHANGES.

A high fence ran in both directions away from the gate-the kind of fence that brought images of concentration camps to mind, complete with barbed wire and charged lines. Beyond lay a long paved driveway bordered by manicured lawns and tall pine trees. Brad chuckled appreciatively. The Center for Wellness and Intelligence might be mistaken for an upscale resort.

He rolled up to the guardhouse and presented his identification. “Brad Raines and Nikki Holden here to see Allison Johnson.”

The uniformed man with a badge that said he was Bob nodded and checked his log sheet.

Brad indicated the barbed wire. “Nice fence.”