Ted Dekker - The Bride Collector

“I can’t… I can’t leave…”

“Repeat it back to me.”

She hesitated, then stumbled through the instructions, but her mind was mostly on the fact that if she didn’t leave the man on the phone would kill Brad.

“But I can’t…”

“Listen, Paradise.” She heard his voice away from the phone, speaking to another man, demanding he speak.

Then Brad’s familiar voice. “Tell Allison, Paradi…”

Crack!

The phone went silent and the killer came back on. “So you see, I do have him and I will kill him. Are you listening?”

It was Brad, she was sure of it. His voice had sounded scratchy and breathy, but it was him!

“Are you listening, Paradise?”

“Yes… I’m listening.”

“Take the money in the envelope, go into the beauty salon, and ask them to make you pretty. Like your sister, Angel. Can you do that for me?”

What was he asking? She had to go into a beauty salon? What did this have to do with Brad?

“Pay them all the money, there’s five hundred dollars there. Tell them to cancel their appointments if they don’t have space. When you’re done, take a picture of yourself and send it to me so that I know you’ve done exactly as I’ve asked. Then go across the road to the park and wait for me. I’ll call you and tell you what I want you to do next. Now repeat that back to me.”

She did, haltingly.

“Good. Don’t tell them, Paradise. Do not say a word. Once you’re gone they’ll start looking for you. Stay out of sight. If they pick you up it’s all over. Okay?”

Her mind seemed to have shut down. She had to figure this out, but she didn’t know where to begin. It was a nightmare. How could she get out of a nightmare?

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

He hesitated. “Thank you, Paradise. I’ve waited so long for this.” The line clicked dead.

LIGHT PEEKED THROUGH a dozen cracks in the barn’s high roof, but there was no other indication of what time it might be. Morning, Brad guessed, but it could be afternoon. A sack had been over his head when he’d climbed out of unconsciousness, and he’d been sedated at least twice since then.

The picture, now clear, was one only his worst fears could have conjured up. He’d been taken, drugged, stuffed in a trunk. Now he faced his end as Nikki had faced hers. After spending so many hundreds of hours putting himself in the place of killers and their victims, he found himself actually in that position. In and of itself, it was more surreal than terrifying.

But the killer had called Paradise, and the claws of dread were encasing him. He felt nauseated.

They were in an old barn with graying planks for walls and dirty hay for a floor. The stale scent of grain and old horse manure hung in the air. Sagging eight-by-eight timbers spanned the sloping roof overhead, begging for an excuse to fold under the weight they supported. An old dilapidated relic.

His wrists were tied together behind a splintering four-by-four post. He sat on the damp ground, facing the killer’s stage. Several large wool blankets with wide red and black stripes, the kind for sale at roadside stands that advertised Native American souvenirs, had been spread out and bordered by railroad ties. On one end the killer had constructed a makeshift planked wall against a large pile of hay bales.

Two pegs stuck out of the boards three-quarters of the way up. On either side of his wall, the Bride Collector had placed candles on two wood barrels. It took little imagination to understand that he’d prepared the wall to drain his seventh victim.

The details had filtered through as he woke. But the one piece of information that dominated his mind sat on an old folding chair ten feet from him, legs crossed and arms, studying him in silence.

This was the Bride Collector, and he looked somewhat similar to the drawing Paradise had labored over as she’d excitedly pulled at her memory. But there were some key differences that might throw the team off, he thought. Small details that forensic artists would focus on, knowing how important they were.

In person, the killer’s mouth was full but looked flatter than on the sketch. Paradise had drawn the distance between his eyebrows and hairline too narrow, giving him a more sinister appearance than he had in flesh and blood. And his eyes were wider as well. But a forensic artist would be rendering a more accurate drawing today, maybe already had.

He was a large-boned man who at first glance would inspire confidence. Nothing about him looked suspect. His dark hair was short and well groomed. His hands were manicured. His eyes were dark, but not deep-set or threatening. He was handsome, like so many serial killers.

He wore gray slacks and a light blue short-sleeved button-down shirt, the kind that might pass for an auto mechanic’s shirt with a MIDAS or GOODYEAR logo on the pocket.

Apart from the phone call to Paradise, the man hadn’t uttered a single word. But his intentions loomed in Brad’s mind like a shadow in a darkened doorway.

“You should be feeling better now,” the man said. His voice was soft and low. Matter-of-fact. “You call me the Bride Collector, which is appropriate, all things considered. But you can call me Quinton now. My last name is Gauld.”

Quinton Gauld. Brad cleared his parched throat. “You don’t care if I know your real name.”

“Not now, no. My task on earth is nearly finished.”

“You’re going to kill me.” A simple statement of fact.

“I don’t know yet. Only if he tells me to.”

It was a lie, Brad thought. Only a fool would leave him alive after this, and the killer had proven that he was anything but a fool. The real issue now was his final victim. God’s favorite.

Then again, if the man was as psychotic as his notes suggested, gripped in the fist of an uncompromising delusion, he might not be lying.

The phone call Quinton had made played through Brad’s mind again. The thought of this man even looking at Paradise knotted his gut with deep offense, and he had to swallow to hide it.

The killer was luring her out. It was almost as if he’d orchestrated all the events of these past two weeks to this end. To lure Paradise out of the Center for Wellness and Intelligence. But why?

He could still see the picture of the beautiful girl Paradise had shown him yesterday. Angel Founder. Angie, Paradise’s sister. They’d had the identity of the seventh victim in their sights the whole time. But it still made no sense to him.

“You’re luring Angie. Angel. She’s your seventh victim.”

Quinton just looked at him.

“But why? Why not just take her? Why all this extra trouble with me and with-”

“The seventh favorite has to come willingly. It has to be her choice.”

“So you coerce her?”

Quinton uncrossed his legs and lowered his arms. He stared at Brad as if he were charged with the task of educating a stupid child. He finally stood, then walked to the pile of straw and grasped a fistful. Smelled it.

“I don’t want to coerce her. But she doesn’t know who she is yet. Humans are afraid of the unknown.” He turned back, tight-jawed and agitated. “I did try once before. I tried to consummate our relationship. She slapped me. I haven’t been able to have normal relations since. Sometimes life has to deal all of us a little motivation to keep truth in perspective.”

“So all along, this has been about Angel. The rest of us are just pawns? That’s all we are to you?”

“It’s not about me, Brad,” he said, regaining his confidence. “It’s him. I’m only the messenger. Have you ever wondered why most people who say they believe in God and heaven don’t actually want to leave this life to be with him? Not until life has slapped them around enough for them to beg for it. And for the record, a few do fall by the wayside when God calls his bride home. Or haven’t you read the book of Revelation?”