The Bride Collector (44 page)

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.

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.

But until she confronted the abuse that had crushed her head seven years ago, she could never be free to accept love or to
love in return. And there was nothing in this world that Paradise wanted more than to love and be loved.

“I have to go back,” she said, dazed by her self-revelation.

“What?” He was appalled. “Absolutely not.” Angry even.

Paradise eased her arm away from him. “Don’t you see? I have to go back for my own sake. I have to confront and forgive—”

“No!” He gripped his right side in a way that made her wonder if he’d been hurt. “There’s no way I’m going to allow you to
go back there. You’re wrong about this, he’s a monster.”

But Brad didn’t know how Paradise worked. She felt a strange resolve. This ditch was just another crack in the surface of
her mind that would lead to another and another until the whole world was full of cracks. To reach the barn was to reach freedom.