The Bride Collector (45 page)

“It’s not your choice,” she said. “If you…” She stopped, but then finished anyway. “You should allow me to do what I know
is best for me.” He started to open his mouth, but then shut it.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. But I have to live with me,” she said, standing.

Brad grabbed her hand, on one knee, trying to hold her back. “Please, Paradise. You’re not thinking! He’s a ruthless killer.
He abducts women like you and drills holes in their feet and bleeds them dry! Please, get down.”

“You’re right, he’s all those things,” she said. “And I know it makes no sense to you, but you’re going to find that lots
of things in my world won’t make immediate sense to you. I’ve lived with the fear of this monster for seven years and it’s
debilitated me. Now I’m out and I’m staring the monster in the face and I have to kill him.”

“Kill him? With what?”

“With what I do and say. With me.”

He looked over her shoulder at the point where Quinton would appear if he followed their tracks. “Sit down. Please just sit
down and listen to me for a second, Paradise.”

She squatted in the ditch.

“Okay, look, you’ve been through hell. Your mind isn’t seeing the picture—”

“My mind has never seen the picture clearer,” she said. Her tone was stiff, but his concern for her was making her feel weak
in the knees. So she said something about it. “What you don’t realize, Brad, is that the more heroic you are, the more I have
to go. You’re only making my case.”

What she said was true: Quinton was a monster. But so was
she
. And as she saw it now, clearheaded or not, the only way to defeat the one monster was to defeat the other. She stood again,
desperate and hopeless at once.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” Brad said. “You feel you have to go in there to somehow prove your worth to me?”

Tears flooded her eyes and she looked away. He was only making things worse by being even more understanding. Didn’t he see
that?

“Stop it,” she said.

“Stop what? Saying the truth?”

“Trying to save me. You’ve saved me enough.” She took a deep breath and wiped the tears from under her eyes. “I have to do
this, Brad. It’s for him, but it’s for my sake. You understand?”

“No, I don’t understand. I really don’t understand. You don’t have to overcome the monster in you for me to see your beauty.”

He couldn’t really mean that. No man could really feel that way about her.

“Listen to us!” he whispered. “We’ve both just escaped this freak and we’re a few hundred yards from his barn arguing about
whether you should go back. This is crazy.”

“Yes, I am.”

They remained silent. He was right, of course. Going back was crazy. But then so was she, and she knew somehow, some way,
this would end in the barn tonight. A fresh batch of tears flooded her eyes. She couldn’t even stand next to him without falling
apart.

Where was she? What was she doing out here? A sudden darkness crept over her horizon and she felt the familiar tendrils of
fog curling into her mind. She couldn’t do this! She had to get back to the center!

The world was closing in on her and it took all of her strength to stand still. Brad was right, everything she’d said was
hogwash! Even now, she was only saying things that proved she wasn’t sane, that she wasn’t worth anything out here, that she
could never, never be loved that way.

Brad’s arm slowly settled on her shoulder. He pulled her close and she put her forehead against his chest, trying hard not
to fall apart. But it was almost impossible.

He kissed the top of her head. “I can’t lose you, Paradise. You have to understand that. I just can’t lose you again. We can
find another way for you to face and defeat your fears tomorrow when this is all over, but I just can’t bear the thought of
letting you go back to that barn.”

She lost it.

She threw her arms around his stomach and she held him as tight as she dared and she wept long bitter tears into his shirt.
She knew she didn’t deserve this kind of love, but it felt like heaven to her. She would repeat everything that had happened
to her over the past seven years for this feeling. To be loved, even for one minute, the way she imagined that Brad was loving
her now.

The way she
knew
he was loving her now.

She couldn’t tell him this because a knot had stopped her throat and she couldn’t speak. She could only sob as he stroked
her hair and kissed the top of her head.

If God was love, as they said, she never could have guessed that she would find God in the bottom of a ditch three hundred
yards from the man who’d tried to rape her seven years ago.

The night seemed to end, or at least to stall. She rested in his arms for a long time and she didn’t ever want to let go.

But then it occurred to her that he had gone very still. And his breathing seemed heavier. She calmed herself.

“There is one thing, though,” Brad said. She looked up and saw his steeled stare back in the direction of the barn. “This
has to end tonight.”

Now it was her turn to ask. “What do you mean?”

But there was no mistaking the look of rage and resolve on his face, the flexing of his jaw, his glare in the moonlight, his
flat lips. They sent a shiver down her spine.

Brad kissed her forehead again, then gently took her face in his hands and looked into her eyes. “Listen to me, Paradise.
I know this isn’t going to make a lot of sense to you, but I want you to do something for me.”

“What?”

“I need you to wait here for me. Wait fifteen minutes, and if I’m not back, I want you to run west, down this ditch, as fast
and as far as you can. They’ll see you from the air, he won’t—”

“No!” she cried, pulling back in disbelief. The thought of his leaving her was like a mule kick to her head. “No, I can’t.”

“Sh, now listen. Yes you can. He won’t catch you.”

“You can’t leave me!”

He paused. “I know I can’t. And I won’t. I won’t because I’m going to go back and put an end to this tonight.”

“You can’t leave me!” she said again. “Not now. You’ve just found me, you’ve just said you love me, you’ve just…” The words
came out in a rush, but all the while her mind was saying,
He must, he loves you, he has to go back and kill the monster, he has to because he loves you…

“You can’t leave me…”

And you have to let him go.

He stared at her. “He’s going to get away if I don’t, Paradise. He’ll disappear and then come back for you, and I can’t allow
that. He’s obsessed with you. He won’t stop until he kills you. You understand? I can’t let you live with that threat over
you. I have to end this tonight.”

You have to let him go because you love him and you have to trust him to be who he is for you…

She threw her arms around him to keep him from going and trembled with fear, knowing he must. How many times had she longed
to be rescued, written about the man on the white horse sweeping to save the maiden… But now she had found the man on the
white horse and she dreaded the thought of losing him.

“Paradise…” He kissed her head again, then gently pried her arms away. “Paradise, please.” He kissed her face, her lips, just
lightly. “Please, I love you. I’ll be back. He isn’t expecting me, right? No one in their right mind would go back, he knows
that.”

She just looked up at him, letting his stumbled-in words fall away because in truth he was right, neither of them was in their
right minds, not her for wanting to go earlier, not him for going now. They were thinking with their hearts, and she would
trade nothing for it.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said.

Paradise stretched up and kissed him on his lips. It was the first time she’d ever kissed a man. They were warm and soft.
And she wanted to cling to him and cry and kiss him again.

Instead she put on her bravest face and looked up into his eyes. “Come back quickly,” she said.

He nodded once.

“I will.”

BRAD CUT DOWN
the ditch, past the point they’d exited the field, pulled up twenty yards farther, and listened. Crickets chirped in the
grove of trees south. A light breeze rustled through the fields like blowing sand on this endless shore of corn gilded by
a round white moon.

He looked back up the ditch. If he used his imagination, he could make out the form of a woman huddled up against the ditch
slope in the far distance. A precious woman named Paradise who deserved and now had his complete devotion.

But without his imagination, he couldn’t see her, and the thought of never again seeing her terrified him.

Leaving her there to suffer yet another abandonment had wrenched his heart. But he knew that he might never have another opportunity
to save, really save, Paradise. As long as Quinton Gauld was at large, Paradise’s life was in mortal danger.

He faced south, into the cornfield. There was only one way to maintain the upper hand. He had to go in silently, quickly,
and with a ruthlessness that once belonged only to those he’d hunted. For all he knew, Quinton Gauld had already fled. But
assuming the man was either mounting an effort to sweep the fields or still cleaning up, Brad had to move and move now.

He stepped into the field and snaked between the stalks as carefully as he could. At this pace, the sound of his brushing
against the closely planted stalks could be noticed, but not easily distinguished from the slight swaying caused by the breeze.
Either way, he had little choice. The cornfield had to be crossed.

His plan was a simple one. Without a weapon, he didn’t stand a chance in any kind of confrontation. But there was another
way. A way that would require him to gain entry to the barn without being seen. If he could just get in, he could finish this
tonight.

Heart pounding like a large rabbit’s thumpers, he snaked forward. Quickly, low, breathing as quietly as possible. He stopped
ten feet from the end of the field and listened for any unusual sound.

None. What he would give for his gun now. Even the hammer. He could have grabbed something on his way out of the barn, a rake,
a stick, a metal rod, a rope, a brick, anything, but he’d neither seen nor considered taking anything. And why should he have?
Only a person who’d lost his mind would come back.

Brad slipped up to the edge of the field and peered out from the stalks. Orange light still flickered in twin upper windows
and from a dozen vertical cracks along the wall. Quinton was still here.

The fissures between the old shriveled boards were large enough to give an attentive person on the inside a view of someone
on the outside. He would have to keep that in mind. Now that he thought about it, there was the possibility that Quinton had
seen them as they made their escape, illuminated by the strong truck lights shining through the cracks. But he hadn’t pursued
them. Either way, it no longer mattered.

There were fewer cracks on the right side of the barn. Brad crouched low, stepped from the cornfield, and ran across the clearing
toward the barn’s far corner.

THE BARN WAS
nicely lit by the moon, and from Quinton’s exterior perspective fifty yards from the southwest corner, he had a perfect view
of three-quarters of the building rising like a tomb against the starry sky. He sat with his legs crossed in a yoga position,
palms up, thumb and forefinger circular to help him concentrate.

He blended into the wheat field that rose behind him just above his head. Rain Man’s flight into the field had taken them
to the northwest; assuming he returned, he would probably come from the same direction. Even if he changed his angle of approach
considerably, Quinton would see him coming.

Fully expecting Quinton to be inside the barn cleaning up like a madman, the fox would peer through one of the cracks and
be unnerved by the fact that his prey was not in sight. The fox would then circle the barn stealthily, trying to pinpoint
Quinton’s whereabouts before he rushed in for the kill—assuming Rain Man was as smart as Quinton thought he was.

If Rain Man did not return, Quinton would clean up and leave in the next hour, long before the sun rose. And he would return
later to finish what he’d started. He was a patient man. He’d waited seven years already; another few months would not be
a problem.

All was in order. Quinton would not disappoint those peering eyes from the night again. Particularly not now that he finally
understood his true purpose.

The only thing slightly off was the sound. The buzzing in his brain had become a grinding. It was so loud now that he could
hardly distinguish it from the crickets. Not that his hearing mattered at this point. He would rely on his eyesight and superior
intelligence, having set hearing and emotion aside for the moment.

His mind was bright enough to illuminate the world.

His hatred, on the other hand, was so dark that he had begun to relish the thought of killing Paradise for the smell and taste
of the blood alone.

His advantage wasn’t limited to these strengths. His buzzing intelligence had also shown him precisely how, armed with nothing
but sticks and stones, the fox intended to kill him.

Rain Man would try to burn the barn down with him and his truck in it. And for that he would need only a well-thrown stick
or rock. Like David slaying Goliath.

This was why Quinton waited where he did, safely on the outside, ready to move when the time came. Leaving the truck parked
in the barn presented a risk, but he couldn’t remove it without tipping his hand. Either way, sitting in the yoga position
against the wheat field put Quinton in the perfect position.

The cornfield on the opposite side of the clearing suddenly parted and Rain Man darted out, crouched low, offering a low profile
to any bullet.

Quinton was on his feet already. The fox was there, scurrying.

But the Hound of Hell was ready and his fangs were already barred.

BRAD CAME TO
a gliding halt against the corner of the barn and pressed his back against the boards, breathing through his nose. He’d stuffed
five rocks into his pockets from the ditch, two in his right, three in his left, but he would use them only if he couldn’t
find something large with which to smash the lamps.