The Bride Collector (43 page)

North, back in the direction of the barn.

Wait, wait…

The lights grew bright above. He had to see who was in that truck, but if he rose too soon they might see him.

Wait… Not yet, not yet…

Brad rolled to his left and pressed his belly onto the slope with his arms cocked beside his chest so that he could push himself
up quickly.

Wait…

He waited until the roar was nearly on top of him, pried his head up, saw that the truck was now ten feet away, and was prepared
to leap to his feet when he caught a snapshot of the driver through the front window. No one in the passenger seat. Just that,
one driver.

But that driver was unmistakably Quinton Gauld.

Brad dropped his head. Breathed hard into the dirt. Quinton was his only link to Paradise. Quinton was in the truck. Quinton
was on the way to the barn. Paradise could be on the floorboards or in the truck bed.

He pushed himself to his feet the second the truck passed, scrambled up the slope into the road, and ran toward the vehicle’s
red taillights as it braked for the sharp turn.

He had to get into that truck bed. And he had to do it without being heard or seen.

Brad sprinted up to the rear bumper, crouching low so that his head would not show over the gate.

QUINTON GAULD HAD
spent the last two hours contemplating his success. His achievement was so lofty, so advanced, so perfectly executed, so
angelic that he wondered if Rain Man had been mistaken. Perhaps he really was an angel sent by the Most High to bring home
the most beautiful bride humanity had produced after millions of years of evolution.

Paradise was unmatched in beauty and perfection, so wonderfully made that he had never planned to leave her body for the authorities
to discover, glued to the wall. He intended to take her dead body to Robert Earls, a taxidermist who lived like a hermit outside
Manitou Springs. Robert would be plied into preparing and stuffing her body before Quinton killed him. Quinton had wanted
to mount her body on the wall above his mantel with one of two inscriptions. Either
HERE RESTS GOD’S FAVORITE BRIDE PARADISE
, or
CREATION GROANED FOR A MILLION YEARS AND GAVE US HER, GOD’S PERFECT BRIDE
.

Quinton slowed for the corner, turned the wheel to his left, and pulled out of the turn. The truck bumped over lumps of grass
growing in the middle of the uneven road. Something thumped behind him and he glanced in the rearview mirror, saw nothing.
He would have to ditch the truck and the 300M later tonight. He would then have to pack and move before sunrise.

Mounting Paradise above his mantel was no longer an option.

But it didn’t matter. As much as he was tempted to think he was in the Most High’s angelic service, he knew that Rain Man
had been right. His head was buzzing and the buzzards were dropping demons and he was one of them. And now he resolved to
accept himself without giving any further space to Rain Man and his demented thinking.

BRAD LAY PERFECTLY
still in the empty, ribbed truck bed, facing the sky, ready to throw himself over the edge the moment it stopped.

He’d managed to slip over the tailgate and duck low as the truck bounced over the corner. For ten minutes he’d thought through
his options, wondering whether Paradise was with Quinton. But the back window was tinted and he couldn’t see inside the cab.

So he lay still, dogged by insecurity and questions and pain from the wound.

He methodically rehearsed his course of action at the end of this road. His chances of incapacitating the killer were nearly
nonexistent. But he would have an opportunity to slip out while the man was distracted by the scene in the barn.

And if Paradise was in the cab? Dear God, he hoped she was and was alive. As long as she was still alive and he was in the
same vicinity, there was hope for her. How he could save her, he didn’t know. He would have to deal with events as they played
out.

A thousand thoughts strung through his mind as the truck rumbled north, back to the barn. Thinking more clearly, Brad estimated
that Quinton had left him in the barn seven or eight hours earlier, give or take an hour. He would have needed time to take
Paradise and switch out vehicles. The round trip had likely taken him five or six hours.

He was in a green Chevy pickup roughly three hours east of Denver. Not west in the mountains, not south in the dry country,
but east. Near the Kansas border. How many large abandoned barns were there in this vicinity?

Quinton likely had the cell phone he’d used earlier. If Brad could get his hands on that phone, place a call to Temple, and
tell him to get every law enforcement agency in the region to canvas farmers, cops, residents—anyone who knew the area—to
identify all large barns in wheat fields two to three hours east of Denver, they might be able to find him.

No. Even then, it would be too late. His first order of business must be to ascertain if Paradise was alive and in the cab.
His second, if she was, would be to get her out. If she wasn’t, he would assume she was dead and kill the demon in his own
barn.

It took fifteen minutes at a steady clip to reach the barn. Brad knew they were close when the truck made a turn into the
driveway, and he would have rolled out then if not for the possibility that Paradise was in the cab. He was unwilling to squander
a chance to act quickly for her sake.

So he lay still against every impulse that demanded he roll out now, while he was still shrouded in darkness.

He’d left the barn door open, and Quinton drove the truck straight in. Yellow light flickered off the rafters from the still-flaming
oil lamps. This was it. Quinton Gauld now knew that Brad had escaped. He was surely staring at the broken post already, even
as he brought the truck to a stop.

Brad felt naked in the back of the truck, exposed and hopeless. The end would come now. He would rise with cramps, fall out
of the bed, and Quinton Gauld would shoot him before he could stand. He should have gotten out as they rolled down the driveway,
made a run for it, returned in stealth.

But, no, he’d reasoned this through. Paradise was his first priority.

The truck lurched to a stop. For a count of ten, nothing.

The driver’s door opened. The killer stepped out.

RAIN MAN HAD
survived. The man had taken up superhuman power, survived the gunshot, and snapped the post like a twig before fleeing. Quinton
cursed himself for not having taken more certain measures.

He took the keys from the ignition but left the lights on to illuminate the scene. He stared at the broken post for a few
seconds, flooded with respect and some concern. This was the first time he’d ever been bested by any adversary, and he wondered
if it was because Rain Man’s God was stronger than the devil.

A thousand crickets screamed in his head.

He silenced them and stepped out of the truck, bringing a calm reason to bear upon the situation. He surveyed the barn quickly.
No sign of the man. No, of course not, Rain Man wouldn’t just stand out in the open like an idiot.

But perhaps he was not superhuman, either. In all likelihood he had only recently escaped and then only after repeated bashing
back into the post. He would be too exhausted from the effort to travel far, too smart to stumble out into fields to die.
He was likely nearby, passed out in a ditch or crouching in fear.

Yes, Quinton preferred that scenario. The truth was, Quinton hadn’t been bested by Agent Raines because the game was not yet
finished. This was only one more test, an opportunity for him to demonstrate to all those looking on that their selection
of him as their servant was a wise one indeed. He’d switched sides and now they wanted to know if he was up to the task.

He stepped in front of the truck’s powerful beams and scanned the scene from right to left, methodically surveying everything,
making calculations and decisions as his senses absorbed details.

The amount of blood on the ground told him Rain Man was seriously weakened. The post was also smeared with blood. A lesser
man would be dead, he was sure of it. Unless he’d misjudged, and the dark stains on the dirt were from other bodily fluids
as well as from blood. He could smell no urine, nothing but blood and sweat.

The medical bag had been moved, meaning Rain Man had taken what he needed to stanch his wound. He might be armed with either
a knife, a scalpel, or the hammer, all of which were missing from the table.

So then, Rain Man was a worthy adversary after all. This, the final hour, came down to the beast’s attempts to consume the
bride and the man on the white horse’s attempt to rescue her.

But whose shadow was larger now? Cast by the truck’s light, his loomed monstrous and dark on the far wall. His veins were
full of blood, and he was at full strength. Furthermore, he had guns. He had his buzzing mind.

And he had Paradise.

Quinton knew then that Rain Man would be back.

BRAD SLIPPED OUT
on the passenger side like an escapee going over a fence. He lowered himself silently to the ground, thankful that the barn
had a dirt floor. The killer stood in front of the truck’s large hood, obscured from view. He’d left the truck’s lights on—if
he turned back, his eyesight would be blinded.

Brad crawled to the passenger door, reached up, and tried the handle. Locked. Okay. Okay, maybe that was better, anyway.

He quickly backed away, remained crouched, rounded the back of the truck, then snuck up on the driver’s side, blocked by the
open door. The killer could not have suspected that Brad had come back in on the truck and was already moving.

Wasting no time, he hurried to the driver’s door on the balls of his feet. Looked inside. There, with a light blue blanket
covering all but the top of her head, and round eyes staring over the dash at the scene before her, slouched Paradise.

Alive
.

Alive, awake, and by all appearances unhurt. Relief and panic jolted Brad’s heart. At any moment the killer could turn back.

And what if she yelped in surprise at seeing Brad?

He looked at the ignition. Quinton had removed the keys. Brad tapped on the seat. She spun her head, blinked, and jerked with
recognition. He frantically motioned silence. Reaching in, he slid a Dr Pepper can out of the cup holder and set it on the
floor. The other cup holder was empty.

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.