The Bride Collector (37 page)

Paradise grabbed her dirty jeans and dug out the cell phone. No calls. She stuffed it into the right pocket of the shorts
and hurried out into the main room.

Seven or eight heads turned to look at her, freezing her with their stares. She looked at the mirrored wall directly in front
of her. The girl facing her was an alien.

Same height, same face, but that was it. Her dark hair hung around her face to her shoulders like a picture-perfect wig with
bangs that swept across her forehead. Dark eyelashes curved up into light pink eye shadow, and dark brows had been thinned
to half their former thickness. Blush colored her cheeks, just enough to change the stark white face she was accustomed to.

And the lipstick. Red lipstick, like apples for lips!

Her first instinct was to rub it all off before her transformation into this alien whore was complete. “What… what did you
do?” she stammered.

“My, my look at you!” Cassandra was all smiles. “Now that’s what I call sexy.”

A chorus of
oohs
and
ahhs
agreed, and Jessie went on about how unfair it was that she could look so pretty in nothing flat.

The red shirt hung to the top of her jean shorts, which weren’t long enough. She knew they were right, though, that she looked
way too much like people Andrea would point out as pretty or cute or sexy.

But all Paradise could think was that this woman staring back at her wasn’t actually her. She was an imposter! And even as
the thoughts pummeled her mind, she knew they weren’t the right thoughts.

She was on the verge of a psychotic break. No, because she wasn’t psychotic. She had her phobias and had her visions, but
they were real. This… She didn’t know what to think about this!

Her head spun and she was suddenly convinced that if she didn’t get the monster off her, it would take over. She rushed over
to the nearest station, grabbed a white towel, and had almost taken a swipe at her face when she remembered his words again.
When you’re done, take a picture of yourself and send it to me so that I know you’ve done exactly as I’ve asked.

“Samantha?”

Now they were all watching her as if she had lost her lid. She was in a box. She had to get out before she made a complete
fool of herself and ruined everything.

Get out here or I’ll shoot your mother…

She fled. Past Jessie and Cassandra, past three customers now seated for their turn. Through the door and outside into the
bright sun where a new reality greeted her.

Parked cars. A road. And across the road, a large park.

She was shaking so badly now that she couldn’t seem to get her legs started again. This was what she had to do, right? She
had to get over there and take a picture of herself and then…

The door swung out. “Samantha, are you sure you’re okay, honey?”

“Yes.”

Cassandra eyed her skeptically. “Maybe you should come back inside.”

She got her legs going then, tearing away from the spa, past the parked car on her right.
I have to get out, I have to escape!
She got halfway across the lot and ran behind the green garbage bin.

Immediately she realized that Cassandra had seen her, and she was trapped like an alien back here.

She ran around the bin and headed across the road in a full sprint.

The cars started honking halfway across and she pumped her legs faster, right into the green park. Straight toward some trees
fifty yards away.

Paradise reached the first large tree and threw her back up against the far side for safety. Breathing like a hurricane. Her
mind was shouting at her, scolding, instructing, splitting, crying, begging it all to go away so she could stay in the closet.

But nothing went away because there was no closet and no aliens and no father.

She got her wind and snuck a peek around the tree. No one chased her. So she’d made it. She was okay.

Now what? Now she had to take a picture of herself to prove she’d made herself beautiful.

Paradise pulled out the cell phone and fiddled with the controls, searching for the camera button. Both Andrea and Roudy had
cell phones, and she’d messed with them some. She dropped the phone in the dust once, grabbed it back up, and rubbed it on
her red shirt, hoping she hadn’t damaged it.

By the time she finally figured out which button operated the camera, her heart was racing again. She was going to establish
communication with the killer. Where would this all lead? What if he wanted something else from her? Why had he wanted her
to look pretty for him? What if he actually wanted
her
? The thought was terrifying.

Pushing past the fear, she managed to hold the camera out and take a picture of herself. Figuring out how to send it was much
easier than she would have guessed—there was only one number stored in the phone.

Now what?

She sank down to her seat, trembling.
Then go across the road to the park and wait for me. I’ll call you and tell you what I want you to do next.
Her mind was twirling like a ballerina in outer space.

“Brad.” She whispered his name, feeling both foolish for thinking that she mattered to him and desperate for him to notice
her. All of this was for him… She’d thrown herself into the land of demons and aliens for Brad, because she had been so certain
that she mattered to him.

What if she was wrong?

He’d awoken a part of her that she didn’t know existed. Even if she didn’t matter to him the way he now did to her, she had
to save him. She would do anything to save him, because she loved him.

Sitting here trembling at the base of the tree all alone, dressed like a whore, she loved and needed him more than she needed
air. A knot filled her throat; an ache so terrible that she cursed herself for allowing it to live inside her. But she couldn’t
deny it. Not now that she realized how lonely she’d been before Brad had—

“Excuse me.”

She gasped and jerked her head up. A man in uniform stood ten feet away, looking down at her. A policeman. She scrambled to
her feet, tipped dizzily to her right, and stumbled to her knees before pushing herself back up.

“Whoa, easy there. Are you Samantha?”

She gasped. The killer? He was the killer here in disguise. “What do you want?”

“Take it easy, I’m not going to hurt you. We received a call.” The policeman, if that’s what he was, eyed her with skepticism,
hand on his stick. “Can you tell me your full name and where you live?”

“I…” At any moment the phone in her pocket was going to vibrate, she had to be here! “Samantha,” she said.

He nodded, understanding, though he understood nothing. “And where do you live, Samantha?”

“I… Nowhere.”

He stepped closer. “Do you mind if I look at your arms?”

So then he probably wasn’t the killer. “Why?”

“It’s okay, I just want to see the inside of your arms. Do you use?”

Drugs? “No. Please, you have to leave me.” She glanced around, half expecting the killer to walk into sight at any moment.

The cop spoke into his radio. “Yeah, I think we need to take her down to the station. Pupils’re dilated slightly, she’s obviously
on something. She’s refusing to show me her arms. I’m going to bring her in, copy?”

“No!” Paradise showed him the insides of both arms. “I don’t use drugs!”

“Copy that,” his radio squawked. “Bring her in.”

“No, that’s not it!” She frantically scanned the park for any sign of the killer, that demon. “He’s after me!” she blurted.
“I have to meet him here, you can’t take me.”

The man followed her eyes. “I don’t see anyone.
Who’s
after you?”

“
He
is. The killer.” Panic crowded her thinking and she tried to stop it, but the voices were stampeding now.

“You can either come the easy way or we can make this difficult. But you have to come with me, young lady.” The cop stepped
forward, hand extended. “Look, this is as much for your safety as anyone else’s. You almost got yourself killed crossing the
road, they said. Please, don’t make this diff—”

“I can’t!” she cried, now fully fearful that she was abandoning Brad. “No, you don’t understand! I can’t, I can’t!”

His hand closed around her arm and she spun and was running before having time to think through her decision. Straight into
the brush behind her. It tugged at her shirt and scratched her legs.

A hand grabbed her collar from behind and hauled her down. She cried out. She was flipped onto her back, then roughly over
onto her belly.

“Stop!”

He pulled her arms behind her and slapped handcuffs over her wrists. She was yelling hysterically now and all she could think
of was Brad.
They’re going to kill Brad, the aliens, the killer, the demons are going to kill Brad.
And the more she tried to explain, the louder and more incoherent her explanation became.

The cop was telling her to calm down, it would all be all right. He pushed her around the trees to a side street, where his
partner waited in the police car. Together they muscled her into the back, slammed the door shut, and rode off.

It was the end, she thought, staring back at the park. They were all going to die. This was it. Once again her father was
going to kill them all because she didn’t do what he said she had to do.

Aliens, demons, the killer, her father. It was all happening again.

The memory suffocated her. She slumped over on her side and began to moan. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

“You can’t what, Samantha,” a voice asked. “You can’t take your medication?”

“You can’t make me take medication. I can’t let him kill him!” A small inner voice suggested she tell them everything, but
then the voice on the phone was in her ear demanding she tell no one, or he would kill Brad.

Paradise lay on her side and let her moan grow into a wail. She was a whore angel in a demon’s world and the aliens had finally
captured her and were taking her to the hospital where her father waited with his gun to finish the job.

“Not the hospital!” she moaned. “Please, not the hospital.” They’d tied her to a bed and tried to kill her after her father
had failed.

“We got a nut, not a druggie. She’s psychotic. Let’s take her to the mental health ward and let them make the determination.”

A fear deeper and more terrifying than the fear of facing the killer swept over her mind.
You’re only as sick as your secrets.

In her tangled mind, going to the mental ward was like going to hell. And Paradise wasn’t ready to go to hell yet.

ALLISON RUMMAGED THROUGH
the drawer with Andrea. Paradise had shed the flannel pajamas, which now lay in a heap on the floor, and put on something
else before vanishing. If they could figure out what she was now wearing, the police stood a much better chance of finding
her. Several major media sources had already agreed to broadcast her picture in the next news break; Temple was going live
with the case.

They’d found the bottle of Xanax, a drug Paradise hated and rarely used—the only reason Allison allowed her to keep a few
on hand. So what had frightened her into taking two of the five pills?

Of greater concern to Allison was the other medication Paradise would miss, a small dose of a psychotropic drug they had been
calling a vitamin and slipping to Paradise for years now. Without it, Paradise would undoubtedly betray her own psychosis.
Slowly, over the course of twenty-four months, they’d begun a process of trying to wean her off the medication, but without
much success. Allison and the staff had operated under the agreement that no one would ever make mention of the medication—there
could be no opportunity for Paradise to learn that she was on chemicals to control the symptoms of her schizophrenia.

If anyone could beat the illness, Allison thought, Paradise could, and she wanted the girl to be given every opportunity,
including assumption, to do so. She was convinced that Paradise’s symptoms didn’t include hallucinations, and that her so-called
ghosts were precisely that.

But trauma would likely force other psychotic symptoms to the surface, particularly given the extent to which she was
un
medicated. If she was out there now, there was no telling what symptoms she might be experiencing.

“What’s missing?” she demanded.

Andrea was as nervous as a manic mouse. “I don’t know, I don’t know! Sorry. It’s my fault, it’s all my fault, Allison. She’s
my friend and I let her go with that man. I tried to warn her, I tried to tell her that the only thing he wanted was to get—”

“Focus, Andrea!”

Normally she would never snap at the girl. But she’d lost her child, Paradise. Nothing about today was normal. Allison was
taken aback by her own reaction to what had happened, a sense of utter loss, as if her whole world was about to crumble in
on itself.

“Her yellow shirt isn’t here,” Andrea said, searching again.

Yellow shirt. Yes, of course, the pale yellow T-shirt, one of only four or five that Paradise favored!

Allison hurried over to the phone and called the laundry. “A yellow shirt, José. If there’s one down there call me back. Hurry.”

She hung up and ran to the wicker laundry basket in the corner. Opened it. Nothing. Good. Good, they might have narrowed this
down.

“Ma’am.”

She spun to the door now filled with Roudy’s bow-tied frame. “What is it?”

“I would like to make an announcement.”

“What is it?” She didn’t have time for this.

“I have broken the case.”

“What do you mean? You’ve
found
her?”

“No. I know who the killer is.”

She let her hope fade. They really didn’t have time for this! “Please, Roudy, this isn’t the time to be…” She stopped herself.
How many times had she encouraged them not to reject their gifts outright? “Never mind. Who is the killer?”

Roudy held up the drawing that Paradise had made late yesterday. Allison had given the drawing to him an hour ago when he
demanded they turn the critical elements of the case over to him immediately, more to keep him occupied than with any hope
he’d actually do something with it.