Ted Dekker - The Bride Collector

“Has anyone seen Paradise?” Allison asked.

They just looked and shook their heads.

“Looks like you three will do just fine.” She nodded at Brad. “This is Special Agent Brad Raines and his partner, Miss Holden. I’ll leave you alone for a while. Please be helpful, Roudy. Mr. Raines and Miss Holden are indeed from the FBI, and they would like to confer with you about a case.”

“A case! Delightful.” Roudy began to pace quickly. “You’ve come to the right party, I can assure you.”

Tears sprang to Andrea’s eyes, and it appeared that she might lose her composure. She wore some carefully applied makeup, and her blond hair was brushed neatly. The first encounter had happened so quickly that Brad hadn’t absorbed her simple beauty. On second look, there was no avoiding it.

“It’s okay, Andrea,” Allison said.

Andrea’s eyes darted to an empty corner. “That’s not what Betty’s saying.”

“No. But Betty’s wrong. Listen to Brad.” She rubbed Brad’s arm. “He has a good heart.”

Andrea gave Brad a fleeting look, brushing her nose with a shaking finger.

“Auditory hallucination,” Allison whispered so faintly that Brad barely heard her. She was saying that Andrea heard voices. One of them had just told her something that made her want to cry.

“I’ll be in the reception room when you’re finished. Take all the time you need.”

The administrator left them with a smile.

Brad took a deep breath, finding the whole scenario unnerving yet fascinating. To say the least. It took him a moment to recall exactly why they’d come to the Center for Wellness and Intelligence.

Roudy, aka Sherlock, stepped forward and extended his hand. “I am now at your full disposal.”

Brad took the hand and shook it. “Thank you, Roudy. I wouldn’t mind the help of all three of you.”

Roudy, put off or hurt, Brad couldn’t tell which, glanced at the others.

“You would take the lead, of course,” Brad said. “But first I would like to know more about who we are employing. Do you mind if we ask you some questions?”

“You’re going to pay us?” Andrea asked.

Roudy stuck a finger in the air. “Of course they are. They know value when they see it. My rate is one thousand and two hundred dollars per hour.”

“That’s only eleven cents,” Andrea said.

Except for Enrique, who was still studying Nikki with a whimsical grin, they all turned to her.

“Per second,” Andrea explained defensively. “Thirty-three cents per second divided three ways. When I get out of here I’m going to buy a new car and house with some beautiful clothes.” Her face wrinkled and a tear spring from her right eye. A single sob broke from her mouth, and she wiped the wetness from her cheek.

“Sorry. Sorry, sorry.”

“It’s okay-”

“Nonsense!” Andrea cried. Then again in a soft voice. “Sorry. Sorry, sorry. I’ll shower first.”

“Have some respect, Brains. He’s put me in charge and I won’t have this.” Roudy sighed. “Fine, I’ll split the fee. One thousand two hundred dollars split three ways.”

They moved so quickly, taking new directions at the snap of a finger, emotions racing across their faces, that Brad felt flat-footed. However childlike, they each possessed faculties that rendered him somehow incompetent.

They’re likely geniuses. It was all a bit stupefying.

“I’m not sure we can offer anything more than our gratitude,” Brad said.

Both Roudy and Andrea looked taken aback. Even Enrique turned.

“But I’ll check into it. At the least you may be able to help us save the lives of the Bride Collector’s next victims.”

“The Bride Collector?” Roudy stepped forward, fully engaged. “Tell me everything you know. He’s a serial killer?”

“First our questions,” Brad said, holding up his hand. “Fair enough?”

Andrea’s eyes darted over his shoulder. Brad glanced back, provoked as much by the sense of an incoming presence as the other woman’s look.

A young, slight woman who looked to be in her midtwenties stood in the doorway. Her stringy brown hair parted down the middle framed petite features-a small nose and delicate, pouting lips-and light brown eyes that sparkled with life.

Brad glanced down her body. She was short, hardly taller than five feet, dressed in a well-worn blue T-shirt with a Nike logo on her chest. The hem on her jeans hung an inch too short above old, white canvas tennis shoes.

She stood with both arms by her sides, unflappable but light, as if a strong gust would blow her away. The skin on her arms was pale and he couldn’t see her fingernails, but her bare thumbnails were chewed short. Unlike Andrea, she wore no makeup at all, not even a dab to cover the few red spots of acne on her forehead.

The newcomer’s probing eyes seemed to peer through Brad. Her expression was flat, as if she was undecided about whether she approved of their presence.

“That’s Paradise,” Roudy said.

“Does this mean we have to split the fee four ways?” Andrea asked with a perturbed expression. “That’s only eight point three cents per second.”

“We’re going to help the FBI crack a case,” Roudy said. “And Paradise is good with dead people.”

Brad wasn’t sure if it was Allison’s earlier comments about Paradise or the way the young woman looked at him now that piqued his pulse, but he found he couldn’t remove his eyes from hers. Paradise.

She broke off her stare, walked around to Andrea’s side, and faced Brad again, eyes still undecided.

Once more, Brad couldn’t help but think he’d fallen down the rabbit hole and landed in Alice’s Wonderland. The director’s assurance that these were all highly intelligent individuals had twisted his thinking. Hearing this bizarre exchange, anyone on the street might think these four had misplaced their minds.

And so they had, he reminded himself with a now-fraying sense of certainty. The classic symptoms of schizophrenia were all here: the paranoia, the hearing and seeing things that did not exist, the voices and threats. The compulsion to shower expressed by Andrea, the delusions of grandeur demonstrated by both Roudy and Casanova.

“I don’t think Allison would mind one more joining us,” Nikki said. “Thanks for coming, Paradise. That’s a beautiful name. Please call me Nikki.”

She didn’t respond.

It was immediately apparent to Brad that this homely counterpart to Andrea might be comfortable in her own skin but uneasy with anyone else’s assessment of her. Despite her calm, vulnerability seemed to glimmer off the young woman in waves, like heat rising from a desert road.

He nodded at her. “Hello, Paradise.” Then to them all: “Let’s start over, okay? Tell us who you are. What your… gifts are.”

“Oh that, oh that!” Roudy blurted. “You want to know what makes us all bonkers, is that it?”

“No,” Nikki corrected, stepping forward. She looked completely at ease in their environment. “We know that you’re each highly intelligent. And that each of you has rare gifts. Or was the director wrong about that?”

They all stared, as if judging if she was serious. Evidently deciding that she was, all but Paradise spoke at once.

Nikki smiled and crossed her arms. “Let’s start with you, Roudy.”

“Of course.” He glanced at the new girl. “The director put me in charge, Paradise.” She said nothing, so he plowed ahead.

“I stand five foot eleven inches, am forty years old, and have been stationed here, at this secret installation, for seven years. Some would call me choleric in personality, and it’s true that I am a natural leader, but my primary skills are those of perception and deduction. Most common cases, the kind the FBI regularly seeks my advice on, are easily decoded using an algorithm that assists me in isolating key evidence. I’m involved in several longer-term operations, which I’m not at liberty to discuss.”