Ted Dekker - The Bride Collector

She’d never been in a beauty salon before, and what she saw sent a bolt of terror right down to her heels. The room was large. Around the perimeter a dozen chairs faced mirrored walls. Seven or eight women looked up as she walked in, all strangers.

Monsters. Demons. More women were under helmets. Aliens.

She’d seen pictures, but actually standing here in a salon triggered a fresh panic attack. Her heart began to pound like a piston and the air was suddenly too thin to breathe. She had to grab the counter to keep from falling.

Stringy hair, high-water jeans, chewed-down fingernails, hairy armpits-she didn’t belong here. She smelled like she’d rolled out of a compost heap, because she had. Now she was playing the part of the mentally ill, and she was pulling it off so well that she had them all fooled. Even her name made a mockery of who she really was.

“Can I help you?” She jumped back. She hadn’t noticed the girl in the chair behind the counter.

“Um…” Paradise dug out the money, all of it, and placed it carefully on the countertop. “Can someone make me look beautiful?”

“YOU’RE SURE?”

“Yes!” Allison nearly shouted. “Of course I’m sure. There’s no sign of her. We’ve searched every inch of the grounds. She’s gone and there’s no reason for it.”

“Is the artist there?”

“He’s been waiting in the lobby for half an hour. That’s what triggered the search. We went looking for her, but she’s not here. And I can’t seem to get Brad Raines on the phone. I figured he might know something, but I can’t imagine that he’d take her out. Or, for that matter, that she’d agree to go out.”

The scenario was truly impossible, Allison thought. Paradise would never leave no matter how much she thought she loved someone, not without talking it through with her.

“Why would Brad know anything?” the special agent in charge asked.

She gave her best answer. “They shared something special. She trusts him, which is saying more than you can probably realize. He might have asked her to leave, but not without speaking to me about it.”

James Temple hesitated. “We have another problem. Agent Raines has been missing since sometime last night.”

Allison sat down, phone plastered to her ear. “Dear God. Dear God, he’s going to kill her.”

THE BUZZ WAS back with a ferocity that unnerved Quinton, truly bothered him, for the first time since he’d been sent by God to find the bride. For half an hour he’d let Rain Man talk, methodically weaving his tale of alternative theories. What if, what it, what if, what if… Like a demon trying to seed doubt.

It was all madness. Quinton had learned a long time ago that one man’s madness was another man’s sanity. What most in the world saw as twisted might not be twisted at all, but profound truth. Or vice versa.

Wasn’t that the tale of every great prophet? Wasn’t that why the world had killed the Messiah? Wasn’t that why the assassin had pulled the trigger on Gandhi? Wasn’t that Martin Luther King’s downfall? In each case, someone believed each man to be dangerously mad. Yet the so-called madness proved to be an alternative sanity of the highest order, a better way of looking at the world that went against the grain but was, in fact, truth.

Likewise, the beautiful truth that Quinton bore was the product of a profound enlightenment.

Buzz, buzz, buzz…

A drop of sweat leaked down Quinton’s temple. “The problem with your theory, Rain Man, is it presupposes that I’m the mad one. Rather presumptuous, don’t you think?”

“Who said anything about mental illness?” Brad asked with an involuntary tinge of smugness. He’d slid back down to his seat and now looked up at his captor with steady eyes, which also bothered Quinton. If he didn’t still need the man alive, Quinton would be tempted to blow a hole in his head right now, at this very moment. Thankfully, he had more self-control than most.

“I don’t know why I’m bothering to listen to you.” He glanced at his phone again, begging it to vibrate in his hand with the call from Paradise.

Buzz, buzz, buzz…

“I’m only saying that a small part of your thinking may be flawed,” Rain Man said. “That there might be an alternative.”

“You finished?” He couldn’t ignore the buzzing, and he couldn’t ignore the man’s logic, and he was aware of the sweat gathering on his brow. It all bothered him, and now he was agitated by the fact that he was bothered. He’d dismissed Nikki’s pathetic attempt at reason. Why would Rain Man’s words-and he must remember that they were mere words-bother him?

“No, Quinton, I’m not finished.”

“I don’t have to listen to this.”

“No, but you’re not like the rest. Shutting your ears to an argument isn’t your way. Only fools do that.”

The man was using Quinton’s own arguments against him.

He sat down in the chair and crossed one leg over the other, willing the phone in his hand to buzz before the buzzing in his head turned him senseless. He had the time and he had a brain. Buzzards were flying low and dive-bombing the world with demonic spirits. The boy was on the pier. Fishing. Eating ice cream. While angels plotted the death of all politicians.

His mind was jumping.

Too active. Too manic. And it was hurting.

Take your medication like a good boy, Quinton. There you go, you worthless piece of buzzard meat.

“Are you okay?”

Quinton blinked. Who was this man to ask him such an absurd question? He was the one tied to the pole. For the buzzards.

“What’s your point?” Quinton asked.

“My point is that you’re right. An infinite God can have multiple favorites. His love for every human is… how did you put it?”

Quinton frowned. “Inexhaustible,” he said.

“Yes. Infinite love, which is by definition the greatest kind. If he has the greatest love for every single human, he can’t have a lesser love for one of them. They are all his favorite, so to speak. Some would say that favorite means to favor one over the other, but used loosely it helps us understand that his full and utter devotion is fixed completely on each one, in the same way one would think of a favorite. That’s quite insightful.”

“Very good, Rain Man. So you think the fact that you’ve seen what is obvious should earn you some favor, is that it?”

“No. Not for me.”

“Oh, that’s right. This is about Paradise. You haven’t proven that you aren’t who I think you are. You’ve been running at the mouth making points that are as plain as the dirt. You’re trying to stall to give your friends more time to find us. And now I’m getting bored with it.”

Rain Man drilled him with that smug stare, and Quinton suppressed a ferocious urge to hit him in the head with something.

“I’m getting to that, Quinton-”

“Stop calling me that!”

“What would you like me to call you?”

“Anything closer to how you really feel about me. How about Devil? Or Demon. I’m not your personal little Quinton. As you speak, the buzzards are being dropped by demons.”

Buzz, buzz, buzz.

He knew his thinking was fracturing, and for the first time in many years he’d betrayed that fragmentation in front of someone. Maybe he would have to kill this man after all.

Rain Man didn’t seem put off. “My point is that I share your logic. That I’m on the right side. Your side. I’ve been looking for you for months, and I knew that when I finally found you I would need to persuade you that I was one of the good guys.”

The man wasn’t making sense. Quinton’s head was throbbing. Dive-bombing.

“I’m one of the good guys,” he said. “And you’re trying to stop me.”