Free The Bride Collector by Ted Dekker Page A

residents hung around the main room at the round tables, near the televisions—which were both playing
I Love Lucy
reruns—and at a long snack bar. Half turned and stared at Brad and Nikki as they entered. The rest were too engrossed to
     pay attention.
    “People, say hello to our guests,” Allison called out.
    As one, clearly rehearsed, they all spoke in unison. “Hello, guests.”
    A black man larger than most football players looked up from where he sat hunched over a chess match at one of the round tables.
     “Hello, guests.” His voice rumbled like a bass guitar. Several snickered.
    “Way to go, Goliath,” a thin man called out from the group collected around the television. “Way to greet the guests three
     and a half seconds after they wanted to be greeted.”
    “That’ll do, Nick,” Allison said. “You don’t think Goliath is stupid, do you?”
    “I didn’t say he was stupid.”
    “You looking for a rematch?”
    Silence.
    “He’s not so bad himself,” Goliath said. He faced Nick and broke out into a wide grin. “But I got you right, Nick. You was
     the best and I beat you ten straight games.”
    A woman howled with laughter at the television, provoking Nick to whirl around to see what he’d missed. Goliath hunched back
     over his chess game; moved a pawn.
    “Anyone see Roudy or Paradise?” Allison asked.
    “Roudy is in his office,” someone said.
    Allison led them across the room toward the hallway. An older woman, whose dark hair looked as if it doubled for a rat’s nest
     at night, followed Brad with her eyes.
    Brad searched within himself and finally realized what about the place unnerved him the most. Somehow, the center’s oddity
     didn’t arise from the residents’ strangeness, but from the lack of it. Each person’s behavior plucked at a well-worn string
     in his own mind and resonated in countless familiar strains. He could call them childish or loud or quirky or obnoxious or
     a hundred other things, but these were all tendencies he recognized in himself.
    “He’s good?” Brad asked.
    “Goliath? World-class. He plays chess ten hours a day on a slow day. Our challenge is helping him apply his skill to other
     pursuits.”
    “And how’s that going?”
    She chuckled. “He’s been communicating with a lab doing cancer research. Turns out some parts of medicine aren’t unlike a
     chess game. Go figure.”
    “Where are all the staff?” Nikki asked.
    “Everywhere. They fit in. Here we are.”
    They entered a small classroom with a whiteboard and ten desks. A couch sat beneath a window that looked out to the fountain
     on the lawn. Three people sat in the room: a middle-aged man lounging on the couch, dressed in a black silk bathrobe and fluffy
     white slippers. A young blond woman, hardly twenty, pacing by the whiteboard and biting her nails. And a goateed man dressed
     in corduroy pants and a bow tie, sitting back against the teacher’s desk.
    The three clearly had not expected to be interrupted. For a moment, the trio stared at Allison and her two guests as though
     they were spotting aliens who’d landed the mother ship. The two men slowly straightened. The girl grinned.
    “Hello, friends,” Allison said. “I’d like you to meet our guests.”
    “Hello, guests.”
    “Any concern of ours?” The one with the goatee stroked his beard.
    “Why, yes, Roudy. They would like to speak to you.”
    “They would? But of course they would. Did you hear that, Cass? They’ve come to speak to me.”
    Cass, the man in the silk bathrobe, stood and smoothed his robe, eyes on Nikki. “She’s more interested in what I have to say.”
     He stepped forward, eyeing Nikki with a raised brow and crooked grin.
    “This isn’t about you, Cass,” Roudy chided. “Step back, man. Show some respect. About what? Speak to me about what? Are you
     saying this fine gentleman and woman are with the Federal Bureau of Investigation?”
    The girl by the whiteboard giggled, then lifted a hand