The Bride Collector (48 page)

Then she told him that evil was working in him to make a mockery of them both, and he knew not only that this, too, was true,
but that he was powerless to change it.

So then he would have to kill her. She was crying with him and her hand was on his shoulder, and now he had to kill her.

PARADISE TOUCHED THE
man the way she imagined a mother might touch another mother’s hateful son who was having a change of heart. She felt no
intimacy. He was still a monster.

It had occurred to her as she waited in the ditch that perhaps the killer was dead. Not physically dead, but spiritually and
mentally. That, like her, he had died a long time ago when his father had taken his life as a boy.

And when her hand made contact with his chest, she had seen that in many ways she was right, he was dead. Because in that
moment her mind had filled with the image of a small boy weeping on his knees as a bearded man twice his height stood over
him with a piece of pipe.

Before this night she’d seen only images that the dead had seen, and then only a few times. Although Quinton was not buried,
he was indeed dead, because she wasn’t imagining this, was she?

If she ever saw Allison again, Paradise would beg her to explain how this worked; why God allowed her to see these things;
what was his power and what was hers.

But for now she only knew that she had to love this man because, although he was pathetic, he was also the mirror image of
the ugliness inside of her. The fear and hate that had haunted her for so many years were all wrapped up in this man.

How many times had Allison talked to her about God’s forgiving power? More than she could count.
Judge not lest you be judged,
she used to say.
Love your enemies, mostly the ones who throw you away because they don’t know what they’re doing. Let the light of our Savior
shine mercy and forgiveness into your heart.
These impossible sayings had only come to full meaning as Paradise waited in the ditch.

If it was true and she was God’s favorite, then so was he. And the only thing that would rescue either of them was to return
that favor.

So she’d done what Allison had said God would do. She forgave him. And she let him cry on her shoulder as she embraced the
light that freed her from him.

It was like walking down a path of coals into the gaping mouth of hell, and she still didn’t know if she really had, in her
heart of hearts, forgiven Quinton.

Then she remembered Brad. Brad was there, on her right.

She blinked, and turned and saw him. And for the first time she saw that he was bleeding.

HE WAS GOING
to snap, he was going to break, he was going to explode.

But he didn’t snap. He didn’t break, he didn’t explode.

Paradise let him lay his head against her shoulder and she comforted him as a sister might comfort a weeping brother.

After several long minutes of tension cut by the dreadful sound of sorrow and guilt, Brad first began to consider the possibility
that he’d been wrong. Some power greater than any he’d seen had affected them both and was doing what no FBI agent could ever
do. Maybe Quinton Gauld, the angel of death, had been undone by the forgiving words of an innocent young woman.

The man looked wretched, sobbing now with head bowed. His hands occasionally clawed at her back, but his fingers were too
limp to grasp her shirt or back. His eyes were closed, and flecks of white spittle had settled in the corners of his mouth.
White mucus ran from the broken man’s nose. He was a mess, a shriveled-up carcass that used to be a man.

Paradise seemed to accept the same conclusion. She calmed and looked at the miserable man before her, then turned her eyes
to Brad, as if remembering him again. Her eyes shifted down to his shin, the one that Quinton had drilled a hole into.

Blood had run from the wound and pooled on the dirt under his calf. He’d forgotten the pain, but it throbbed now to remind
him.

When Brad looked back up at Paradise, her eyes were still on his shin and they were wide with horror.

Her mouth parted and she took a step toward him, leaving Quinton. The moment she turned her back on him, something changed.

It was subtle at first, the catching of his breath, the stilling of his sob, as if the cue had been called and then someone
yelled,
Cut.
Brad saw it all, but now he refused to believe it, because if Paradise had failed, then they were both dead.

Paradise started to walk toward him. “Brad…” Her voice swam in empathy. “I came, Brad.”

This was the young, naive Paradise, and he cherished her for it.

The man behind her, however, was not nearly so innocent, and when his eyes opened, when he turned to look at the back of the
woman who’d left him on his knees and crossed to the man she loved, Brad knew he was going to kill her.

“Paradise!”

Quinton’s face twisted with rage and he calmly reached for the fallen gun near his right knee.

Paradise rushed like a nurse on a battlefield to the man she loved. “I’m sorry, Brad. I couldn’t leave—”

“Get down!” Brad shouted. “Run, Paradise!” If she ran she might make it. She might!

“Run!”

Paradise stopped halfway to him, confused. “What?”

Brad watched the scene as if it were playing out on a huge screen in slow motion. His scream came out in a long groan, slowed
to half speed.

“Run!”

“What?”

Quinton had his gun in his palm.

He swung it around to bear on her back.

Paradise saw Brad’s horrified expression and slowly turned back to follow his eyes, blocking his view of the killer. And of
the gunshot that bellowed like a cannon announcing the end of an era.

Boom!

Brad’s heart stopped.

She started to fall. His eyes were searching for the exit wound because that’s what his mind was trained to do, but in his
heart he was dying with her.

Paradise sank to her knees, shaking as if even now she was refusing to die, because even now she was innocent enough to cling
to hope when none existed.

“Are you okay, sir?”

The voice came from his left, but it hardly registered. What was registering was the fact that Paradise hadn’t fallen.

Then, only when Paradise leaned over and sobbed, did Brad see Quinton Gauld’s fallen form beyond her. He had been shot through
his head.

Brad blinked.

A voice crackled over a radio. “… an ambulance here. One dead, believed to be the subject in question. Let the FBI know we
have their crime scene secure.” A Kansas state peace officer in a brown uniform holstered his weapon and nodded at Brad.

“Special Agent Brad Raines?”

“Yes,” he croaked.

“Sergeant Robby Bitterman, sir.” He glanced at the man he’d shot. “I’d say that was a close one.”

Then Paradise was rushing toward Brad. Falling to her knees. Throwing her arms around his neck.

She said nothing; she only wept.

“WHAT ABOUT A
trip to the beach?” Casanova asked, pacing the park lawn in his long robe and slippers. “I would really love to take a trip
to the beach. No offense, Allison, dear. This park is lovely, the setting is beautiful, the mountains, the sky, the birds
all perfect to set the mood. But I would rather do a different kind of bird-watching, if you catch my drift.”

Allison’s eyes twinkled. She looked at her four children, as she had come to feel about this bunch. Roudy, the persistent
sleuth, had dressed today as always in plaids (which he mistook for tweeds), a bow tie, and today even a pipe (albeit smokeless)
that Allison had given him a week earlier when they’d found Paradise.

Andrea, the young one, let her blond hair flow with a breeze that rustled up the park’s summer greens. Her eyes were on the
skateboard park two hundred yards down the hill. “I see some birds flying down there,” she said.

“The more naturally clothed variety is what I had in mind,” Cass said.

Andrea faced the self-appointed love guru. “You have a dirty old mind, Cass. Just because a girl has a bikini on doesn’t make
her natural. Not at all.”

Casanova didn’t miss a beat. “You could watch the hunks, Dre. Sweat dripping off the corded muscles of bodybuilders pressing
massive weights on the beach. While I give them pointers on bird-watching.”

“Sounds disgusting,” she said.

Paradise giggled.

Allison looked at the girl she now thought of simply as her favorite, though she would never call her that aloud, particularly
not in front of the others. Paradise sat on the grass with her legs folded back to her right, leaning with one arm hooked
over Brad Raines’s knee. There were two things about this picture that filled Allison with more joy than an ex-nun should
be allowed.

One, Paradise was in a park, forty miles from CWI. The agoraphobia that had once cauterized the flow of her life was now gone.

Two, Paradise was in the arms of a man, and such a man as Brad Raines, whom they all thought might be God incarnate by the
way they jumped at his every comment. They were all heroes in their own minds, but Brad was the one true hero. Even in Allison’s
mind.

After all, he loved Paradise. And Paradise loved him. That alone made them both heroes.

He had also brought in the Bride Collector, though Roudy took plenty of credit for cracking the case. To Allison’s understanding,
Paradise had apprehended the killer as much as Roudy or Brad.

Paradise had made the call that narrowed the authorities’ search to a narrow strip along the Kansas–Colorado border near the
town of St. Francis. Within fifteen minutes they had identified nineteen potential locations that fit the Bride Collector’s
MO—abandoned barns, shacks, silos, a couple of old farmhouses. In all, thirty-two state troopers, state police, and local
police had been pulled into duty and dispatched to those nineteen locations with strict orders to approach with extreme caution.

Fifty-four minutes after Temple made the call to the chief of police in St. Francis, Sergeant Robby Bitterman rolled to a
stop seventy-five yards from Sam Warner’s old abandoned equipment barn on the north side of his wheat fields, surprised to
see it lighted. He had called for backup, then gone in on foot and, for the first time in his fifteen-year career, used his
sidearm to kill a man. A single shot through the head from twenty feet.

The officer had shot Quinton, but Paradise had taken his power already, his power over her, over them all. God had reached
down and saved his favorite. Why her and not the others, Allison didn’t know.

Whether or not Paradise really had seen something in Quinton’s spirit—his ghost or his past—neither she nor Paradise knew
for certain. These things were mysteries to them all.

To see Paradise now, only a week after that harrowing night, shining like all young women in love should, Allison wasn’t sure
she could have wished a different scenario upon them all. Paradise had approached her and asked if, now that she was learning
so much about love, she should become a nun. Allison freed her from the obligation immediately, and Paradise had run off with
a light step and relieved smile.

“Have you talked to him yet?” Roudy asked, sidling up to Brad. “The man upstairs, I mean.”

“To Temple you mean?”

“That’s the one. I really do think I’ve earned it. I’m sure you would agree.”

Allison stepped in. “We’ve all earned a lot these last two weeks, Roudy. But sometimes it takes a while to get comfortable
in our new skin.”

He looked at her and cocked an eyebrow. “Please, Allison, I was born comfortable. Don’t mistake any eccentricities on my part
as being less than perfectly capable or smooth as silk in the halls of justice.”

“Never. But their world is still a new skin. It may take time before they fully understand your… talents. No?”

That made him pause.

“Well, I see your talents,” Brad said. “And so does Temple. Frankly, you might have some challenges accepting their talents.
They don’t see the world the same way you do.”

“True,” Roudy said, lifting a finger. “I see your point.”

“I’m not sure you want the office you asked for. It would require a lot of travel.”

“True. Good point.”

“I think it would be much easier to bring copies of the unsolved cases to you, to sift through at your own pace, unencumbered
by the clumsy efforts of less insightful men and women. Don’t you?”

“Now that you put it that way, I do. A very good point indeed.” He marched back toward Allison. “So then, we should be getting
back. No time to waste.”

Paradise was looking up at Brad. She winked at him. “Not so fast, Roudy. You may not need to adjust to your new skin, but
some of us might like the adjustment.”

“I vote for the beach,” Cass said.

“Does this mean you’ll be moving out, Paradise?” Andrea asked, nibbling on her fingernail.

“We all move out sometime.”

“No, I can’t.” Andrea paced on the grass, suddenly very nervous. “It’s too dangerous out here! I don’t think I can ever live
out here again.”

“But why would you, my dear?” Roudy asked. “I need you. You don’t expect me to handle the caseload my reputation will now
heap upon me all alone, do you? We have cases to solve, lives to save!”

“Did you ever think Paradise would be out here?” Allison asked, ignoring Roudy.

“No.”

“There you go, then. Anything and everything can change in the space of one day. Not that you’d want to change.”

Andrea’s eyes darted over to Paradise. “Do I want to, Paradise?”

The girl didn’t reply immediately. The hillside grew quiet.

“I don’t know.” She looked at the horizon and her features softened. She was still the same Paradise Allison had always loved.
No makeup, jeans and a T-shirt. She’d taken up a new interest in grooming, and she decided that she liked her jeans long,
to the ground, and her blouses colorful, a yellow tank top today, layered with a white one.

But she was the same girl who’d always possessed extraordinary wisdom and beauty.