Ted Dekker - The Bride Collector

For these reasons and for his newfound love for the bride, Rain Man would come back tonight in an attempt to put a final end to the demon that had entered his world.

And when he did, Quinton would be waiting for him.

THEY HAD REMAINED under the tree for less than a minute before Brad knew their raw emotions would only betray them here, so close to the barn. Paradise could not stop crying and he could not stop trying to comfort her. Quinton was already on the hunt and they couldn’t stay here in such a state of ruin.

He’d taken her by the hand and together they’d run into the field, careless for a few minutes, then with calculation when they came to the ditch that ran perpendicular to their flight. In this light the killer would not know if they’d turned right or left.

Brad took them left, single-file down the center of the ditch. A hundred yards, no farther. From where they crouched they could just see their original point of entry. If Quinton followed them, the moon would reveal him on the bank without betraying their crouched forms in the ditch.

They would rest here until he decided what to do next. The sun would be up in a few hours, and they had to put some distance in before the light made tracking them an easy task. It might take hours for them to reach safety. In the meantime, the more distance between them, the better.

There was another alternative. He could hide Paradise and go on the offensive. Not even Quinton Gauld would expect such a brash move. In a matter of hours the killer would be gone, and the more Brad considered it, the more he was sure that Quinton would be gone for good. But he would never be gone, because in one week or one month or one year he would return for the one he had lost. For the last favorite.

For Paradise.

But for the time being, they were safe.

Paradise clung to his arm, still trembling, staring back down the ditch.

“Are you okay?” he asked, smoothing her hair back. She looked different. Even by moonlight he could see the change in her. Her hair was still messy, but wavy and cut to cup her delicate features. She wore a red shirt and jean shorts.

She faced him, lips trembling. “I’m scared.”

“I know you are. It’s okay, I swear we’re going to make it out of this.”

“You came back for me?”

He hesitated, then nodded.

Her tears glistened in the moonlight. “I love you, Brad.”

It was a simple declaration of understanding, stripped of any social posturing, etiquette, or purpose. And Brad’s heart flooded with this same understanding.

“And I love you, Paradise.”

But her face twisted with anguish. “I’m scared, Brad.”

“No, you don’t need to be scared anymore. I have you and I won’t let you go.”

“But…” She could barely speak past her emotion.

“But what?”

“Is that okay?”

He was reminded then of her own horrors extending beyond this night. Her fear of memory and the outside world. Any human would crumble if taken by the likes of Quinton Gauld to be drained of blood and glued to a wall. But Paradise faced a thousand demons more.

And didn’t they all, he thought. The struggle with inner demons was fierce and private and universal.

Brad extended his hand to her, and Paradise was hardly capable of taking it. She couldn’t accept love from a man like him. Not yet. She might try, but she faced a history that darkened the waters of love like brine. Like himself, but worse, so much worse. The truth of this covered him with shame for his self-absorption. To think that he’d felt sorry for himself for so long…

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, it’s okay.”

Then he leaned forward and kissed her on her forehead. He wanted to kiss her lips. He wanted to hold her gently and swear his undying love for her. He wanted to take her from this place and never let her out of his sight.

But she was too delicate for any of that. Too precious. Too beautiful and rare and beyond his clumsy ways. She, not he, would dictate what she needed and when she needed it.

So he just touched his lips to her forehead, let them linger for a moment, then pulled back and said, “You are very special, Paradise. And I love you, the way a man loves a woman.”

PARADISE HEARD THE words and she believed them. For the first time in her life she really did believe that a man loved her, not the idea of her or the image of what she could be, but her, Paradise, the woman crying in the ditch battling an inner demon that had made loving any man impossible.

I’m a woman, she thought. I’m a woman and Brad loves me.

It was such a startling revelation that for a moment she forgot to breathe.

His hand touched her cheek. Maybe he would kiss her the way a man kisses a woman. She was far too nervous for that, but secretly, so secret that she wouldn’t admit it even to herself, she begged him to kiss her on the lips.

But no, a prince would wait to be invited by the princess. And Paradise didn’t know how to be a princess.

“Are you okay?” he asked again, cocking his head to look in her eyes.

She didn’t know what to say.

“You’re safe, Paradise. I swear, as long as I live, I won’t let anyone lay a hand on you ever again,” she heard him saying.

But you can’t save me from myself, she thought. My problem is me.

She looked down the ditch again. No sign of Quinton. Her mind went back to the confession he’d made in the truck, thinking that she was passed out.

My father hurt me, too.

The comment had run through her mind like a merry-go-round. Quinton, the man who she now clearly remembered from her early days at the center, was just like her, at least in some ways. They were cut from the same cloth. He’d been born into an abusive family.

Maybe I still am mixed up.

The longer they had driven, the more she fantasized about ending all of this by sitting up and giving Quinton a hug. Absurd, of course. A product of her own intense fear and a profound desire to survive him by making him her friend.

But the notion refused to leave her.

My father hurt me, too.

She tried to imagine the ways in which a younger boy named Quinton might have been hurt. It was no wonder he’d studied to be a psychologist. Like it was no wonder Brad had joined the FBI because of his own pain.

If Quinton could see and confess that he was mixed up, couldn’t he see the light?

“If he faces the truth he might change,” she said aloud.

“What do you mean?”

Paradise faced him. “In the truck, he told me his father had hurt him. That he was mixed up. I was thinking…” She looked back down the ditch. “Has anyone ever shown him love?”

“I know the kind of love he needs,” Brad said. “It’s administered in a chair that’s plugged into a very powerful generator.”

She hardly heard him. “He’s like me,” she said. Truth began to fall in place. Not just about Quinton, but about her. “Sometimes we have to face our demons.”

“And sometimes we have to kill our demons.”

“He’s psychotic,” she said. “I think I might be psychotic, too.”

“He’s a psychopathic killer. He isn’t Roudy or Casanova, and he isn’t anything remotely like you.” An edge had entered his voice. He seemed deeply bothered by her logic.

But there was something else whispering through her mind. This crisis wasn’t just about a psychopathic killer named Quinton Gauld or a schizophrenic girl named Paradise. This was about a man named Brad Raines and about the fact that he loved a woman who couldn’t be a woman because she lived in fear of herself.

It was suddenly clear to her. Like a sunrise in her mind. She was able to remember details she’d never remembered because she was facing her past. She was even okay out here in the ditch with Brad, far from the safety of CWI.