Ted Dekker - The Bride Collector

He eased the center console up, turning the two divided seats into a bench seat for her to slide across, then motioned her to stay low.

Needing no further encouragement, eyes as round as the moon, she put her elbows on the seat and pulled herself toward him like an inchworm. The sound of her rapid breathing was loud, and all the while Brad could only think that at any moment they would be found out.

The killer still stood in front of the truck, surveying the scene like a good investigator. Rushing out to hunt for his escaped victim before fully reconstructing the scenario would be imprudent, and Quinton Gauld wasn’t an imprudent man. But if he looked back past the glare of headlights, he might see Brad’s feet below the door.

Brad reached for Paradise when she was only halfway across the seat, hooked his hands in her armpits, and dragged her slight frame out of the cab as if she were a doll. But her breath on his neck, and the warmth of her flesh against his arms-these weren’t the makings of any doll.

He pulled her into himself gingerly, careful not to disturb the truck and more careful not to hurt Paradise. He slid his right arm under her legs, cradled her against his chest, turned from the door and walked away as quickly and as quietly as he could.

She was shaking in his arms and he was afraid she might release a sob. So he cupped the back of her head and pushed it gently into his neck as he fled the barn.

He didn’t allow himself to breathe until he was ten feet past the door. Then he could hold his lungs no longer and he veered to his left and sucked at the night air.

Paradise began to cry into his shoulder.

“Sh, sh, sh, not yet, not yet,” he whispered. “Hold on…”

Upon discovering that they’d escaped, Quinton would likely assume they had run away from the barn and headed south to safety. Brad rounded the barn and ran in the opposite direction, north along its side, thinking he should set Paradise down and let her run beside him so they could move faster.

But he couldn’t let go of her. Not now, not after he’d lost her once, not following the suffering he’d put her through, not out here where she was exposed and terrified. So he held her close and he ran.

He considered heading directly into a cornfield thirty yards behind the back of the barn, but they couldn’t do so without leaving tracks through the drying corn and in this moon, their passage would be seen. Instead he ran for a grove of large trees at the edge of the clearing. Reaching them, he spun behind the farthest tree, dropped heavily to his knees, and set Paradise down like an invalid.

Her arms clung stubbornly to his neck. And now she sobbed in earnest.

“Shhhh… It’s okay. We can’t make any noise. Sh, sh, it’s okay.”

“Thank you,” she whispered softly. She pressed her wet face against his cheek and kissed him. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

The emotions of the night swelled in his chest and spilled over. He held her as if he were holding on to the last whisper of his own life and let tears fall.

QUINTON SAW THE movement through a crack at the back of the barn, a fleeting form rushing past like a ghost in the night, and his first thought was that Rain Man had come back sooner than expected. A holy ghost. Or a fox. He was outside the barn at this very moment, running like a fox in search of the perfect angle of attack. His judgment was compromised by his affection for the favorite, and he was scurrying in a panic, trying to gain the advantage. But armed with only a hammer, the man was outclassed.

Small-minded and foolish, but admirable in the way an animal was admirable.

Quinton turned and hurried back to the truck to retrieve his gun case from under the seat and to check on God’s bride, whom he’d left alone for too long. It occurred to him as he rounded the open truck door that he should have closed it. The sight of the broken post had caused this slight lapse in judgment.

He cleared the door and stopped.

The seat was empty. The favorite was gone.

Buzzards screamed through his mind.

He knew immediately what had happened.

He considered the possibility that Paradise had flown the coop on her own, but the holy ghost he’d seen was too tall to have belonged to the bride.

This turn of events would have caused any normal man to panic. But this, too, was a test. Quinton aimed to pass it with a calm that would impress even the vilest and most demanding master.

He retrieved the gun case, slipped out the nine-millimeter, chambered a round, and turned off the headlamps. It took great effort to control his anger, this despite his advanced sensibilities. But emotion only impeded good judgment, a fact that he’d proven twice already tonight, first when he’d left Rain Man in a rage after thinking he’d mortally wounded the man, and then again when he’d left the door open upon seeing the broken post.

He would not make the same mistake again.

Thinking clearly now, he walked to the door that led out the back of the barn. Rain Man had headed north, not south along the obvious route, which meant he was thinking clearly enough to do what he thought was unexpected.

But Quinton knew these grounds, having surveyed them during his selection process. If Rain Man was thinking clearly he would avoid the cornfields because this variety grew on small stalks planted closely-they would leave unavoidable tracks of their passing. Instead he would make for the clump of trees at the edge of the clearing. Unarmed and encumbered by bride and wound, Rain Man would be easily caught and killed.

He crossed the clearing toward the trees without fear, gun by his side. The buzzing in his head impeded his hearing slightly, something that had undoubtedly allowed Rain Man to sneak away with the bride. But now he listened carefully past the persistent buzzing. Any attempt on their part to flee the trees would force them to crash through the fields.

He approached the trees, gun extended. The moonlight made the earth look gray, revealing a bed of foot-high grass scattered at the base of the trunks. They would have gone to the back of the grove. Quinton rounded the trees, peering through the trunks for sight of the holy ghost and his little angel.

The ground behind the largest was bare. He considered this for a moment, knowing that he had not been wrong, not again. He was too evolved for that. They had come this way, they had stopped here. In their condition they would have had to, if only to collect themselves.

He lowered his weapon, studied the corn, and saw the broken stalks immediately. So, they had gone farther in after resting here.

Now a dilemma presented itself to Quinton. He could chase them down and surely catch up to them. Kill the fox. Take the bride. Or he could let them come to him.

His mind sifted through the possibilities and as he put himself in the mind of his adversary, he knew the course Rain Man would take. The man was a hunter. His mind was on the bride’s safety, but as soon as he felt he’d secured that much, his mind would return to the adversary he’d pursued for such a long time.

Thinking clearly, Rain Man would realize that by morning Quinton would be long gone. His evidence cleaned up, his truck nowhere to be found. Surely the man must know that anyone as extraordinary and superhuman as Quinton wouldn’t be found by registration and rental records. Rain Man would know that Quinton, having been so exposed, would vanish into thin air. Another state, another country, another world, another universe.

And indeed, by first light Quinton would be gone. As far as the east was from the west.

Furthermore, his adversary would conclude that there was no way to reach either a phone or a traveled road before sunrise. It was now man on man, ghost on ghost, angel on demon, this was it, this was the endgame.