Ted Dekker - The Bride Collector

The reason for her stubbornness was quite plain. Unlike the others, she was a psychologist, and therefore her mind was badly bent in the wrong direction. To complicate matters, she was full of antagonism toward him for taking the other favorites, and she didn’t seem to be able to grasp that this was all in her best interest.

Which presented a problem for Quinton. As God’s messenger sent to find the bride, much like Isaac’s servant had been sent off to find Rebecca, Quinton had to convince the bride. She had to become a willing participant, like the other five favorites. But Nikki wasn’t submitting to her destiny as she should, perhaps because she was mentally ill.

“Now, listen to me, Nikki,” he reasoned, standing over her restrained form on the gurney. “You’re not listening very well. I’m going to give you one more chance, but then I’m going to have to become more persuasive, and you won’t like that.”

The makeup he’d applied had smeared. He would have to touch it up. Time was running out. He couldn’t risk lingering with her forever just because she wasn’t right in the head. God would take one flawed bride for the sake of all those in the world who were equally flawed. And there were a lot of them. Perhaps that was why he’d chosen this one.

“Why is it so difficult to understand God’s love for you?” he asked. “Why don’t you want to be his bride?”

She’d finally settled down after the phone call to Rain Man and now seemed stoic. Perhaps she was ready to accept her fortune.

“You don’t want to be his bride?”

“It’s my choice, not yours,” she said quietly. Her face was flat and emotionless.

“It is. But in saying that, you’re only highlighting the fact that you’re choosing to turn your back on him. I could understand your rejection of him if you didn’t understand how much he’s taken with you. You do understand that you are his favorite. Is that where your confusion comes in?”

“God loves me, so he wouldn’t force me. I am his favorite. We all are. Which is why he doesn’t force us.”

“I’m not forcing you. The choice is yours. Do you want to be with him?”

She refused to answer this question. There was no hope for her twisted mind.

“You need me to agree, don’t you?” she asked.

“It would be nice, yes.”

“And you think I would do something because you think it’s nice? After what you’ve done to me?”

“Your incompetence is outrageous,” Quinton said. And again he wondered if he’d made a mistake by plucking such a dim-witted goof from the sea of women who would be grateful to be chosen. “You’re trying to stall, I understand. You think that because Rain Man now knows the sun has come out and is shining on his precious little lamb, he’ll come running. Even now, he might be on his way. But I doubt Rain Man and those retards he’s working with are as smart as all that. Although I will say, the women there put you to shame.”

She didn’t get it, of course. She truly was a mental case.

“I get that I am his favorite,” she said, in an obvious attempt to keep the discussion going. “But I don’t want to die.”

“So all of heaven and earth is waiting with bated breath to see what the favorite one will do, and you’re willing to put it all on hold because all you can think about is yourself. Nikki wants to live longer. To milk small pleasures from another hour, another day, week, month, year. Well, excuse me while we all sit and wait for the selfish little brat to suck down as much ice cream and strawberries she can before taking the trip down the aisle for a much better life. He loves no one more than you. Why so greedy?”

Fresh tears slipped from her eyes and ran back toward her ears. “Going down that aisle doesn’t feel right to me, Quinton,” she whispered. “I’m scared.”

“Of course you’re scared. You’re so busy, busy, busy in your tiny mind, obsessed with this puny life. But once you know the truth, Nikki, it will set you free.”

Her lips quivered, and for a moment he thought she might start to sob again, which would effectively end the discussion, this time forever.

Instead she said something else that required him to end the discussion.

“Even the demons know the truth, and they tremble. It doesn’t make them any less evil. God loves me, and he wouldn’t do this to me.”

And then she followed it up with an even more outlandish claim.

“You’re jealous, aren’t you? You are afraid that God hates you, and you will do anything to be his favorite, like us, like the women you’re killing. No matter what you keep telling yourself, you really think God hates you. You’re jealous. You want to be God’s favorite, too.”

Quinton stared at her, stunned by her audacity. Was she really so dense?

The buzzing in his mind grew so loud that he had to press back a growing panic. There was something truthful about what she was saying, he thought, but then he dismissed that thought as a plant from the evil one.

It occurred to Quinton that the seventh bride, the most beautiful woman in the world, whom he’d already selected and who put this woman to shame in every conceivable way, might be strong in spirit as well. What if she, too, resisted her invitation?

The thought made him feel ill. It wouldn’t happen, of course. Rain Man would see to that. He was sure of it. But the thought still made him nauseated.

Quinton picked up the syringe, pressed the needle into the vein in Nikki’s right arm, and pressed the plunger to the hilt. The large dose of sedative would make this easier for all of them. She had at least recognized God’s great love for her. That would have to do.

“Please, Quinton,” she whispered. Her eyelids looked heavy. “Please don’t kill me.”

She really was beautiful, Quinton thought. And then he taped her mouth shut and went to fetch the drill.

THE DASHBOARD CLOCK read 4:02 when Brad cut across two lanes, ran the red light despite the blare of horns, and turned onto Simms Street. Nikki’s apartment was on the right over the railroad tracks, just after 72nd Avenue.

His palms were wet and his shirt drenched with sweat no amount of air-conditioning could stem. Backup was on the way.

Two thoughts drummed through his mind, driving him faster. The first was that Nikki was alive. She had to be alive. The killer could not know they’d found his jack. The woman who’d fallen into his clutches because of Brad’s involvement with her, however thin that connection, was still alive. She simply had to be, because he couldn’t go through this again.

The second thought drumming through his head was that the killer wouldn’t kill her. He couldn’t kill her, not for the sake of killing, because his psychosis demanded he follow a ritual that couldn’t be satisfied with a bullet. He might try to kill Brad when he broke in on the act, but he wouldn’t turn his gun on Nikki.

She was meant to bleed and remain angelic.

It was as much a hope as a conclusion, but Brad depended on it now as he wove in and out of traffic on Simms, headed for the Golden Hills Luxury Apartment complex just now visible two blocks ahead.

An eighteen-wheeler pulled into Brad’s lane and braked. The same one he’d cut off at the intersection, now that he thought about it. Cars on both sides limited his options.

Brad laid on his horn and was immediately repaid by a loud honk from the truck in front of him. The eighteen-wheeler came to a stop at the red light at 72nd Avenue.

Panic lapped at his mind. He slammed his steering wheel with both palms. “Come on, come on, come on!”

NIKKI LAY PERFECTLY still, fighting off the effects of the drug. He’d hovered over her or sat in the chair watching her nearly every waking moment. Twice he’d retreated to the corner and urinated into a large plastic bottle. Once he’d left her alone in the room while searching out the rest of the apartment, and once he’d tinkered with his tools on the table across the room for an extended period, maybe half an hour. Preparing.