The Bride Collector

27
PARADISE STOOD IN the middle of her room for long minutes, trembling. The cold sweats had started immediately after she’d hung up the phone. Her fear made no sense to her. How could a person fear something that clearly didn’t bother most people? Like a fear of the ground, whoever heard of such thing? Or a fear of air.
Agoraphobia was like that, and she knew she should be able to stop it. But she couldn’t.
The panic attack came so fast and so hard that she couldn’t think, much less get to the medicine cabinet for a Xanax. The antianxiety medication was supposed to work quickly, but in her case it did nothing but take the edge off. Still, Allison allowed her to keep a small supply in exception to house rules.
She stood here while the world spun around her, and she was sure that this time her heart would finally tear loose and get stuck in her throat, and she would suffocate.
She was so disoriented that she forgot how she got here. But then it all came back, like a flood. The phone call. The killer wanted her to climb into the red truck and go to the beauty salon. If she didn’t, he was going to kill Brad.
An image she’d never seen before, of her father pounding on the door of the closet she’d locked herself in, crashed through her mind and she gasped. Then it was gone. Now the panic was back, stronger, and she knew that she was going to at least fall down.
She staggered to the bathroom, desperate for a pill, water, anything that might keep her from dying. She’d just had a new memory. But she couldn’t think about that now.
He has Brad and you have to get into the red truck.
She shook a couple of Xanax from the bottle; all five came out. She picked two out of the sink, pressed them into her mouth with trembling fingers, and gulped some water, spilling down her flannel top.
She knew she had to do what the killer wanted. As far as she was concerned, she didn’t have a choice. Because no matter how much she told herself that she didn’t love Brad, she did.
She loved him more than she loved anything. Much more. Because Brad undid everything her father had done.
In thirty minutes the gardener will climb into his red pickup truck…
Paradise looked at the clock on the bathroom wall. How much time had passed? But she had to get to the truck before Smitty did, and without anyone noticing.
She spun from the bathroom and ran to the door, grabbed the knob. Then stopped. Her breathing whooshed around her like a jet engine. She wasn’t dressed to go out.
She was still in the flannel pants she’d slept in!
What does it matter, Paradise?
It mattered a lot. She didn’t fit out there. To her, stepping past the gate was like stepping out onto a platform in a huge stadium with the world’s worst case of stage fright. They would all be watching, and she would be standing in her pajamas!
But she had to get to the red truck. If she could somehow get under the tarp, then she might be safe.
Tears flooded her eyes again. No, no she wouldn’t be safe out there!
But neither was Brad. And she loved Brad more than she loved herself. What would Brad think about her looking like this? How could she say she loved him and go to him looking like a skank? The thoughts flew around her mind, one on top of the other.
She tore over to her dresser and yanked out the first pair of jeans she could get her hands on. Quick, quick, she had to get into the red truck.
Paradise pulled the jeans on and ran halfway back to the door before realizing she’d forgotten a shirt. She hurried back, clawed into a yellow T-shirt, then rushed back to the door. The first thing you’re going to do is keep your mouth shut. She had to go quietly. No one could know.
So she slipped into the hall and snuck toward the stairs as quickly and quietly as she could in her flip-flops. Her panic attack was back, thumping, spinning, gasping, but she kept her mouth shut and went before anyone could see her.
Smitty usually parked his red truck by the toolshed beyond the men’s wing. Paradise made it to the back door and ran out into the hot sun. She turned left, running on the gravel back there without stopping to see if anyone was watching. She should, she knew. This wasn’t the way not to get noticed, but she was too terrified to stop.
She saw the red truck next to the shed when she tore around the corner. A green tarp was stretched over a mound of something in the back, she didn’t know what. The idea of climbing underneath…
She couldn’t do that. They would see the lump and know someone was hiding, intending to sneak out, which was strictly prohibited.
But there was a lump of something under there already. Another dead body. A pile of dead fish. A dead cow. Manure for the garden. So they might not notice another lump.
Paradise bent down and hurried up to the truck. Without waiting for her nerves to fail her completely, she slung her leg up over the opened truck bed and threw herself in, expecting a yell from someone who’d seen her.
But no yell came.
She scrambled to the edge, yanked back the tarp making a terrible ruckus, and rolled under it as if it were a blanket. Then she pulled it back down over her head and lay still, panting into the green plastic.
The acidic stench of manure filled her nostrils. She was right. The fertilizer felt soft and mushy against her back. Breathing hard, she thought the smell might poison her.
They would plant her in the ground, dead from asphyxiation. Bringing all her willpower to bear, she lay as still as she could, praying that no one would notice the green tarp moving as she panted.
With each passing minute she was tempted again to throw the tarp off because she knew she couldn’t do this. She could not go beyond the gate!
The sound of footsteps prevented her from fleeing. The door opened and slammed. The truck growled to life and, with a grinding of gears, it rolled forward.
Please, God, please save me. Please, please…
She was suddenly in a closet, and a fist was pounding on the door. “If you don’t come out here right now, I’m going to blow your mother’s head off.”
The new black memory slammed into her mind and she started to scream. But she clamped her hand over her mouth. She’d been here before, seven years ago.
“If you don’t come out of there, I swear I will kill her!”
Everything went dark and quiet.
Pop.
It was the first time she remembered hearing the gunshot that killed her mother, and she knew now that it was because she hadn’t come out of the closet she’d barricaded herself in.
Her father was swearing.
Pop. Silence.
That was him? He’d shot her and himself. She could barely breathe, barely cry, barely whisper. “Sorry, Mommy. I’m so…”
Then darkness lovingly took her away.
WHEN PARADISE OPENED her eyes, she was surprised to see that the sky had turned green. Or she was lying on her back, staring up at green leaves. She’d been dreaming of a prince on a white stallion, sweeping in from the desert with the heroine hanging on for dear life behind him. They plunged into the trees and then into a meadow, where the white bats had joined with a thousand warriors in eager…
She gasped. No! She was in the back of the red truck under the green tarp. The guards had stopped them at the gate. They’d caught her!
Her first thought was one of immense relief. She couldn’t leave. They would take her back and she would cry on Allison’s shoulder and somehow everything would be all right.
Her next thought was of Brad.
She bolted up and swept the green tarp off her head. A bright sun blinded her and she squinted, and in the brief second before she instinctively squeezed off the light she saw that something was terribly wrong.
She was facing a street and cars were driving by. This wasn’t the gate that led into CWI.
Paradise twisted around. The large green sign above the glass windows read STARBUCKS. The red truck will drive into the city and stop at a Starbucks…
She was… She was out? Out!
Paradise dropped back down and whipped the tarp back over her head, trembling from head to foot. This was not good, this was not good, this was not good… Dear God, help me, dear God, dear God, dear God…
Nothing happened. She could hear the hum of traffic and the sound of voices far off. Then the voices were gone. She had to get ahold of herself. Or she could lie here and wait till Smitty drove the truck back to the center. Where was she? How far did Smitty go for his break?
Her memory of her father came back. “If you don’t come out here right now…”
Pop.
She couldn’t do it again. She had to come out, or this time… She had to come out and stay out. This time, if she didn’t, Brad would die.
Head swimming with resolve, Paradise eased the tarp away from her face, held her breath as she listened for voices and, hearing none, peeked over the truck bed. Some people huddled together way down the street.
You will get out without drawing attention, and you will walk due east one block until you see a shopping strip with a beauty salon.
She clambered over the wall of the bed, dropped to the asphalt, and ran away from the Starbucks, crouched over to make herself smaller. She got all the way to the end and on to the sidewalk before two things became clear to her.
One, she looked and smelled like a dog who’d rolled in a pile of manure. Running hunched over wasn’t the way to avoid attention.
Two, she didn’t know if this was due east.
But she couldn’t stop now. She’d never get her legs moving again. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that the road headed in the opposite direction ran past a wide open field. No strip mall. So she must have guessed right.
Paradise stood as straight as she dared and hurried forward, refusing to look to her right or her left, afraid of what she might see. Cars, people, the killer, monsters, ghosts, demons… Any or all of them were hiding in wait, she was sure of it. She just had to keep her legs moving until she could find that garbage bin. Maybe she could hide inside until she figured out what to do.
She was hyperventilating, so she closed her mouth and forced herself to breathe through her nose, counting as taught. One, two. One, two. What had to be half a block passed. Maybe more. Buildings loomed ahead to her right, that had to be it. If she could just make it…
A car honked, and she let out a startled cry, but she didn’t look up. Then she thought it might run her over, so she glanced to her right just to be sure. It was on the other side of the road, trying to get past another car.
The sidewalk ended in a parking lot and she stopped. At the end there is a large green garbage bin.
“What’s your problem?”
She spun to the voice on her right. Two young women sat on the hood of a car, facing the direction she’d come from. She knew the type from her outings across the Internet. The narrow jeans like tubes, the black fingernail polish, the cigarettes, the silver-studded belts.
“You lost, you freak?”
“You think I’m a freak?” Paradise heard herself saying. “Have you looked in the mirror lately?”
She had no idea why she would say such a thing, not now, not ever, especially not here. She’d lost her grip on reality and was suffering a psychotic break.
The girl who’d spoken looked like she’d been slapped. “Tramp. You look like you just crawled out of a garbage bin. I bet the men just love you, don’t they?”
The words settled into Paradise’s mind, then burned down to her soul, the utter truth of them. Her wit, so quick behind protected walls, failed her completely. She was a skank. Dirt. Now she both looked and smelled the part.
Paradise turned and fled toward the green garbage bin, which she could now see. On the backside of the bin, a cement enclosure hid her.
She crouched down on her heels and threw her hands to her ears to stop the ringing and, although she felt a little safer holding herself, the tone went on, like a signal, warning that she was about to break apart.
Slowly, she sank to her seat and let herself cry.
Under that bin you will find an envelope with money and a cell phone.
A cell phone. Angie. She caught her breath. She could call Angie! She would know what to do, right? The man had demanded she keep her mouth shut, but she could call her sister and no one would know. Angie would know what to do.
Paradise dropped down and peered under the garbage bin, saw the manila envelope and pulled it out. Frantic now, she ripped it open. Some hundred-dollar bills spilled out. A cell phone clattered to the stained concrete.
She snatched it up and quickly entered her sister’s cell number.
The phone rang. Again. Then again and her sister’s voice came on asking the caller to leave a message. But she shouldn’t leave a message!
The whole idea of calling her sister suddenly struck her as terribly dangerous. What if the killer found out and felt he had to tie up loose ends? She ended the call and tried to think.
Take the money in the envelope, go into the beauty salon, and ask them to make you pretty. Like your sister, Angel. Pay them all the money, there’s five hundred dollars there.
Everything had happened so fast, and she’d been so terrified that she hadn’t asked the most obvious question: What exactly did the killer have in mind? Why did he want her to come out?
But she knew there was no value in asking a question that had no immediate answer. It would only make her task more difficult.
The answer to what would happen if she didn’t come out, on the other hand, did have an immediate answer. He would kill Brad.
Brad, the man who she thought she loved. But she was a fool, wasn’t she? Floating around her room like a bird, imagining that she loved a real man and that maybe, just maybe, a real man loved her. The thought of it now made her ill. It was all absurd!
You look like you just crawled out of a garbage bin. I bet the men just love you.
Paradise picked up the bills one by one, and stood to her feet. The sign over the beauty salon read FIRST IMPRESSIONS—HEALTH AND BEAUTY SPA.
She’d sometimes wondered what it would be like to be beautiful like her sister, but she’d never found the need to chase after impossible dreams. Actually, it had never even been a dream. She didn’t spend much time thinking about how she looked.
But she couldn’t save Brad’s life looking like a skank—even the killer knew that. She was on the outside now, and out here people noticed ugly people. Even Brad would notice her ugliness.
Paradise slid the money into her pocket with the phone, noticing then for the first time that her jeans were two inches too short. She’d mistakenly grabbed the pair that Andrea had told her never to wear again unless she wanted to look like a dork.
The walk across the parking lot to the beauty salon was a long one, but she made it without being stopped. A barely audible chime sounded when she pushed her way past the glass door. Hang on, Paradise. Be brave.
She’d never been in a beauty salon before, and what she saw sent a bolt of terror right down to her heels. The room was large. Around the perimeter a dozen chairs faced mirrored walls. Seven or eight women looked up as she walked in, all strangers.
Monsters. Demons. More women were under helmets. Aliens.
She’d seen pictures, but actually standing here in a salon triggered a fresh panic attack. Her heart began to pound like a piston and the air was suddenly too thin to breathe. She had to grab the counter to keep from falling.
Stringy hair, high-water jeans, chewed-down fingernails, hairy armpits—she didn’t belong here. She smelled like she’d rolled out of a compost heap, because she had. Now she was playing the part of the mentally ill, and she was pulling it off so well that she had them all fooled. Even her name made a mockery of who she really was.
“Can I help you?” She jumped back. She hadn’t noticed the girl in the chair behind the counter.
“Um…” Paradise dug out the money, all of it, and placed it carefully on the countertop. “Can someone make me look beautiful?”
“YOU’RE SURE?”
“Yes!” Allison nearly shouted. “Of course I’m sure. There’s no sign of her. We’ve searched every inch of the grounds. She’s gone and there’s no reason for it.”
“Is the artist there?”
“He’s been waiting in the lobby for half an hour. That’s what triggered the search. We went looking for her, but she’s not here. And I can’t seem to get Brad Raines on the phone. I figured he might know something, but I can’t imagine that he’d take her out. Or, for that matter, that she’d agree to go out.”
The scenario was truly impossible, Allison thought. Paradise would never leave no matter how much she thought she loved someone, not without talking it through with her.
“Why would Brad know anything?” the special agent in charge asked.
She gave her best answer. “They shared something special. She trusts him, which is saying more than you can probably realize. He might have asked her to leave, but not without speaking to me about it.”
James Temple hesitated. “We have another problem. Agent Raines has been missing since sometime last night.”
Allison sat down, phone plastered to her ear. “Dear God. Dear God, he’s going to kill her.”