The Bride Collector (35 page)

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.”

THE BUZZ WAS
back with a ferocity that unnerved Quinton, truly bothered him, for the first time since he’d been sent by God to find the
bride. For half an hour he’d let Rain Man talk, methodically weaving his tale of alternative theories. What if, what it, what
if, what if… Like a demon trying to seed doubt.

It was all madness. Quinton had learned a long time ago that one man’s madness was another man’s sanity. What most in the
world saw as twisted might not be twisted at all, but profound truth. Or vice versa.

Wasn’t that the tale of every great prophet? Wasn’t that why the world had killed the Messiah? Wasn’t that why the assassin
had pulled the trigger on Gandhi? Wasn’t that Martin Luther King’s downfall? In each case, someone believed each man to be
dangerously mad. Yet the so-called madness proved to be an alternative sanity of the highest order, a better way of looking
at the world that went against the grain but was, in fact, truth.

Likewise, the beautiful truth that Quinton bore was the product of a profound enlightenment.

Buzz, buzz, buzz…

A drop of sweat leaked down Quinton’s temple. “The problem with your theory, Rain Man, is it presupposes that I’m the mad
one. Rather presumptuous, don’t you think?”

“Who said anything about mental illness?” Brad asked with an involuntary tinge of smugness. He’d slid back down to his seat
and now looked up at his captor with steady eyes, which also bothered Quinton. If he didn’t still need the man alive, Quinton
would be tempted to blow a hole in his head right now, at this very moment. Thankfully, he had more self-control than most.

“I don’t know why I’m bothering to listen to you.” He glanced at his phone again, begging it to vibrate in his hand with the
call from Paradise.

Buzz, buzz, buzz…

“I’m only saying that a small part of your thinking may be flawed,” Rain Man said. “That there might be an alternative.”

“You finished?” He couldn’t ignore the buzzing, and he couldn’t ignore the man’s logic, and he was aware of the sweat gathering
on his brow. It all bothered him, and now he was agitated by the fact that he was bothered. He’d dismissed Nikki’s pathetic
attempt at reason. Why would Rain Man’s words—and he must remember that they were mere words—bother him?

“No, Quinton, I’m not finished.”

“I don’t have to listen to this.”

“No, but you’re not like the rest. Shutting your ears to an argument isn’t your way. Only fools do that.”

The man was using Quinton’s own arguments against him.

He sat down in the chair and crossed one leg over the other, willing the phone in his hand to buzz before the buzzing in his
head turned him senseless. He had the time and he had a brain. Buzzards were flying low and dive-bombing the world with demonic
spirits. The boy was on the pier. Fishing. Eating ice cream. While angels plotted the death of all politicians.

His mind was jumping.

Too active. Too manic. And it was hurting.

Take your medication like a good boy, Quinton. There you go, you worthless piece of buzzard meat
.

“Are you okay?”

Quinton blinked. Who was this man to ask him such an absurd question?
He
was the one tied to the pole. For the buzzards.

“What’s your point?” Quinton asked.

“My point is that you’re right. An infinite God can have multiple favorites. His love for every human is… how did you put
it?”

Quinton frowned. “Inexhaustible,” he said.

“Yes. Infinite love, which is by definition the greatest kind. If he has the greatest love for every single human, he can’t
have a lesser love for one of them. They are all his favorite, so to speak. Some would say that
favorite
means to favor one over the other, but used loosely it helps us understand that his full and utter devotion is fixed completely
on each one, in the same way one would think of a favorite. That’s quite insightful.”

“Very good, Rain Man. So you think the fact that you’ve seen what is obvious should earn you some favor, is that it?”

“No. Not for me.”

“Oh, that’s right. This is about Paradise. You haven’t proven that you aren’t who I think you are. You’ve been running at
the mouth making points that are as plain as the dirt. You’re trying to stall to give your friends more time to find us. And
now I’m getting bored with it.”

Rain Man drilled him with that smug stare, and Quinton suppressed a ferocious urge to hit him in the head with something.

“I’m getting to that, Quinton—”

“Stop calling me that!”

“What would you like me to call you?”

“Anything closer to how you really feel about me. How about Devil? Or Demon. I’m not your personal little Quinton. As you
speak, the buzzards are being dropped by demons.”

Buzz, buzz, buzz.

He knew his thinking was fracturing, and for the first time in many years he’d betrayed that fragmentation in front of someone.
Maybe he would have to kill this man after all.

Rain Man didn’t seem put off. “My point is that I share your logic. That I’m on the right side. Your side. I’ve been looking
for you for months, and I knew that when I finally found you I would need to persuade you that I was one of the good guys.”

The man wasn’t making sense. Quinton’s head was throbbing. Dive-bombing.

“I’m one of the good guys,” he said. “And you’re trying to stop me.”

Rain Man seemed prepared for the comment. “That’s what they told me you would say.”

To calm down, Quinton turned his mind to the seventh favorite. The one who’d rejected him seven years ago this very month.
She had come in looking like a wounded dove and he’d fallen madly in love with her during those first few months. He’d treated
her like a queen, keeping his loving eyes ever on her, as if he were God himself and she the broken angel.

And when he had finally decided that consummation was in order, he went to her room and dropped his gown to show her his entire
magnificent body. But instead of recognizing how precious their union would be, she’d scratched him and hit him, screaming.
He’d tied a rag around her mouth as he tried to explain. But the more persuasive he became, the more she resisted until finally
he’d lost his senses and hit her hard enough to knock her unconscious.

It was only then that he realized the truth. She was reserved for God, not for him. She was the most beautiful woman alive,
created only for God himself. And now he would deliver her to him.

Rain Man had concluded that she was Angel. But he was wrong. If he was one of the good guys, he would know her true identity,
wouldn’t he?

“You’re full of yourself, Rain Man.”

“Yes, I know that’s what you think. And you should. But I’ve found you now, and I can say what I was sent to say.”

The audacity of the man. “If you knew who I was, you would know who she is. I’m finished with this ploy.”

But he was now sweating profusely, and his skin was starting to itch.

“You have everything right,” Rain Man said, “except one thing. You’re not delivering the brides to God. You’re killing them.”

“There’s a difference?”

“I’m here to tell you that there is. That you’ve made a mistake.” Now Rain Man’s voice was trembling. “That you are killing
God’s favorites, like Hitler killed them, like Nero killed them. Like Lucifer is trying to kill them. That’s the alternative
conclusion to your logic, and it’s the truth. You’ve made one mistake, and it’s the deepest offense possible.”

An electric current spread through Quinton’s body. What if what the man said was true?

The buzzards are dive-bombing. The ice cream is melting. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned
.

The buzzing in Quinton’s mind grew and he began to shake. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

But what if he did?

“I’m here to tell you that you’re serving the wrong master, Quinton.”

Quinton was on his feet before he could process the statement. He bounded across the blankets and slammed his fist into the
man’s head.