Ted Dekker - The Bride Collector

He nodded once, pressed the Glock’s muzzle close to the wood directly in line with the deadbolt, and pulled the trigger.

Boom! The gun bucked hard and he threw his full weight into the door. But the door was stronger than one deadbolt and he didn’t break through on the first attempt.

The Bride Collector was now aware that someone was trying to shoot their way in. He was setting up for a shot in the hall or climbing out the back window where the two other cops would pick him up. Or he had something else up his sleeve.

The thoughts only pushed Brad’s sense of urgency. He pulled back and pulled the trigger four more times, obliterating the lock, the bolt. This time a single kick swung the door in silently on well-oiled hinges.

Brad went in with his weapon extended. Chips from the backside of the door lay scattered on the floor. On the wall, a painting of Vail shattered by a bullet hung askew. Dust filled the air from the splintered wood.

Nothing else was out of place. The tan couch, the large-screen Samsung television, the ornate table lamps, the walls with the rest of the paintings-all undisturbed, unmarked.

No sign of the killer.

Brad ran to the hall on his left, hesitated one second against the wall, then jabbed his head around the corner. Nothing but hall. It was a two-bedroom apartment, she’d told him once. Both rooms down this hall.

Not a sound. No sign of any disturbance at all. What if he was wrong? What if Andrea’s jack in the whole was just a big mistake and Paradise had sent him on a wild-goose chase?

He stepped around the corner and ran down the hall. The doors to both bedrooms were open. He knew then… He knew but he could not say it or even think it. Something was wrong.

The first room on his left looked like a bedroom. Empty. He ran past, down the hall, into the room at the end. The shades were pulled up and bright light illuminated a queen-size bed with a brown comforter and matching lamps on the nightstands. Paintings of castles in rich English meadows.

Nikki was not in her home.

The blow was so unexpected that Brad didn’t react. They had been wrong. They had come to the wrong place. Nikki…

Nikki would pay the price.

“Sir!”

He spun at the sound of the officer’s voice, calling from back down the hall.

“Sir, I think you want to see this.”

He pushed past one officer who’d followed him down the hall and saw that his partner had turned the light on in the first room.

“What is it?”

The room was decorated in rich purples and greens, larger than the one at the end. At its center was a king-size bed neatly dressed in a silk comforter with six or seven decorative pillows and two beautiful chiffon lamps. This was the master. Nikki’s room.

The officer was looking at an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheet of paper folded in half and set atop one of the silk pillows. It was addressed with red ink and it read, RAIN MAN.

The killer. He’d been here. Which meant that Andrea was right, this was the jack in the whole. A note from the killer addressed to Rain Man. To him.

“Call Temple at my office. Get a forensics team out here immediately.”

“Yes, sir.”

He grabbed a tissue from the box on the nightstand and used it to pick up the note, then opened it gingerly to the Bride Collector’s familiar handwriting:

The jack is in the whole, but today the jack is the joker and he’s got a smile. So sorry, Rain Man, but the sun has come and things are looking bright. I have taken God’s favorite back to him. He waits for his bride. You’ll have to find your own.

P.S. We are at 2435 4th Street. Boulder. #203.

He stared at the words trying to think past the voices screaming in his mind. The killer had outwitted them, played them in a fixed game. Nikki was gone. Gone!

But that wasn’t true… No, the man couldn’t know that they’d broken his code so quickly. He was sure to think he had some time. Brad had heard Nikki’s voice only twenty-five minutes ago.

He pulled out his phone as he ran. Temple picked up on the first ring. “I have a team on the way, Brad. I… I…”

“He’s got her in an apartment in Boulder,” Brad cut in. “I’m half an hour away-more, it’s rush hour! Get the Boulder PD out there now! And tell them to go in silent. He doesn’t know we’re on the way, he can’t, not…” Brad ran out of breath as he took the stairs at a run.

“You’re saying she’s alive?”

“I don’t know. Twenty-four-thirty-five Fourth Street in Boulder. Number Two-oh-three.” He shoved the note in his pocket. “Hurry, Temple. Please hurry.”

Temple would make the call, but local response time would be five, seven, ten minutes. Depending on where the closest cruiser happened to be. Depending on how fast the dispatcher got the interagency message. Depending on everything but him.

No longer concerned about stealth, Brad took out of the apartment complex on screaming wheels. He headed east on 72 and took the Foothills Highway north. The cards were now dealt, the bets made. They would either reach Nikki in time or they would find her dead.

Brad had faced death. Victims. Ruby. He’d grown accustomed to the stench of it. But that stench never faded, not for him, and particularly not if it arose off someone like Nikki.

Yet something had happened deep in his psyche these past ten minutes. Something he recognized. He’d rushed into her room and assumed that he was too late. That Nikki was dead.

He was horrified, yes. But she wasn’t Ruby. No one had been Ruby. No pain had come close to shutting him down the way he’d shut down following her death ten years earlier. And this, he thought, was because he had given himself to Ruby, heart and soul. When someone you love dies, something inside of you dies. You die. She is you. You are her.

He shook the thought from his mind and called Allison at the CWI.

“Well, young man, you’ve certainly left the place buzzing.”

“Hello, Allison. Sorry about-”

“Don’t apologize. You’ve put all three on the top of the world. Did you find her?”

“Not yet. But they were right. Tell Paradise we found another note from him. I want you to write it down and ask them to study it for… anything. Can you do that?”

“Tell me.”

He read the note to her.

“God’s favorite,” she said softly, repeating to herself. “Interesting.”

“Does it mean something to you?”

“Well… In general, yes. Basic theology. So besides this note, you found nothing?”

“No. Boulder PD is on their way now. I have to go, Allison.” He hesitated. “You used to be a nun?”

“Yes.”

“You still believe in God.”

“Of course. I’m not terribly religious, I’m afraid, but I do what I do because of that belief. And yes, I will pray.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t count her out, Brad. She still has that image locked in her head somewhere.”

Paradise. He never would have guessed that Allison, of all people, would push for him to exploit her own patient.

Then again, Allison saw the exploitation as her patient’s salvation.

A tone in his ear indicated an incoming call. He glanced at the phone screen. Temple.

“Nikki’s seen him, too,” Brad said to Allison. “We’re going to get to her in time. Gotta go.”

He switched over to Temple. Nearly fifteen minutes had passed since he’d made the call to dispatch Boulder PD. This had to be it. His heart pounded in his rib cage like a fist.

He brought the phone back to his ear. “Yeah, hello…”

“Brad…”

And he knew immediately by Temple’s tone that it wasn’t good.

“What is it?” he demanded, flushing with anger.

“I’m sorry, Brad. They found her.”