Ted Dekker - The Bride Collector

Brad cleared his throat. “Do you know what’s crazy?”

She took two breaths before answering. “Us.”

“Here we are, facing the work of a psychopath who’s killed five women, two of them in the last week. We’re both staring at a note threatening me, and instead of breaking the note down, we’re posturing.”

She sighed. “You’re right. Sorry, it’s all the stress. I hardly slept a wink last night.”

“Well, you have the day off tomorrow. Take it. Go see your mother. Meanwhile, there’s a squad car outside your apartment.”

“This guy doesn’t strike me as the kind who would let that stop him.” She waved it off. “Don’t worry, I can take care of myself. So, back to the original question: Unless what?”

“I was thinking, unless he’s changed his mind. Instead of another woman…”

“He’s got you in his sights,” she finished. “He’s turned this into a game with you.”

“‘I’m not sick, I’m just better than you,’” he read. “‘I’m the sunshine, you’re the Rain Man.’”

Nikki picked up her glass and took a sip, lost in thought. Swirled the wine and took another. “‘Takes one to know one.’ Does she trust you?”

“Who?”

“Paradise. She’s young and impressionable.”

“Only a few years younger than we are.”

“Not in experience. She’s probably taken with you. Starstruck even.”

True. Paradise’s lack of subtlety in her dismissal of him had in fact signaled her affection for him. The thought had returned to him several times since.

“She’s not that naive,” he said.

“Oh, I wouldn’t count on it. You’re a good-looking, powerful man, and you needed her. That’s pretty strong medicine.”

“So now we’re back here again? What’s the point of this?”

Nikki walked over to the note. “Maybe she knows more than she’s telling you.”

“Not consciously.”

“You can’t know that, not yet.”

The thought was offensive, but he couldn’t dismiss it entirely. He could, however, give Paradise the benefit of the doubt. “I doubt it.”

She turned to him. “Then show them the file. Let them read the notes. I said it before, and now he’s said it: It takes one to know one. It may only be circumstantial, but CWI is now directly tied to this case, and for all we know the key is locked in Paradise’s mind. Use them all.”

Brad had already considered the possibility, however thin the reasoning. Roudy would certainly agree to it. But Paradise was another issue.

“I doubt she’d agree to see me-”

“Oh, please. You have her wrapped around your finger! She’s playing you.”

“I don’t think you understand. She’s not like that.”

“She’s a woman. I get women. Turn on the charm, ask with a twinkle in your eye, she’ll agree, trust me.”

“You’re actually suggesting I lead her on?” He turned away from her and shook his head. “I couldn’t do that. She’s… No.”

“I’m not suggesting you lie. One way or another you have to find out what she knows. What she saw when she touched the body. She’s your only lead.”

“I can’t just pry her open and read her mind!”

“Listen to you, Brad. Why so cautious suddenly? This isn’t like you.”

She was right, of course. He didn’t know why he was so annoyed by her suggestion, but the thought of disturbing Paradise, regardless of the reason, felt wrong. She’d suffered enough already.

He dropped down on the couch and stared at the note plastered on the outside of the window.

“Earn her trust. Get her to lower her guard,” Nikki said. “She might know more than she realizes.”

TWO FULL DAYS had passed since Paradise attempted and then utterly failed to encounter the dead. Roudy had emerged from his black fog that first afternoon, and by sundown he was back to his pestering self. She’d spent the night alone in her room, with the door locked, ignoring the tap, tap, tap of her friends who kept stopping by and knocking. They weren’t rude enough to pound, but the taps might as well have been screams of ridicule.

“Come on, Paradise, what did we tell you?”

“I could have helped them, Paradise! I am the one they really want.”

“He only wants in your pants, Paradise! What did I tell you?”

“Go away!” she finally cried.

Twenty minutes later they were back. Tap, tap, tap.

But Paradise wasn’t insane. Nor was she mentally ill. She had some issues with phobias relating to her past, and she was bipolar, yes, there was that. But she wasn’t psychotic and she wasn’t crazy. Slowly, she managed to pull herself out of the deep hole into which she’d thrown herself after escaping the mortifying ordeal in the kitchen.

As the night quieted she grew annoyed with her pouting and forced herself out of bed. She took up her yellow notebook and pencil and continued her work on Lost Highways, the novel she’d begun to write two weeks earlier. It was mostly scratching at this stage, just ideas and sentences haphazardly written on the page, a guide for when she was ready to begin the actual story on the computer.

There was a significant difference between thinking and writing. Writing wasn’t just the translation of interesting ideas to paper. It was its own kind of thinking, which seemed to kick in only when the pen made contact with the page, or her fingers touched the keyboard.

But tonight, not even that faithful connection seemed to yield any useful thoughts or emotions. She gave up after an hour.

Hungry, she warmed a bowl of noodles in the microwave. She lived alone in a one-bedroom unit that was comfortably if sparsely furnished. A twin bed and a desk in the bedroom; a brown sofa in the living room; a small kitchen area without a stove, but it had both refrigerator and microwave, all she ever used.

She spent half an hour on the Internet using the small gray Compaq computer the center provided all residents who could conduct themselves appropriately in the virtual world. They didn’t want someone who was deeply depressed posting suicide videos on YouTube, now did they? The computer was her gateway to the world, but she found little in the world that really interested her, so she used it primarily to research topics of interest, like mental illness and religion and nature.

Cats and dogs cheered her up. If there was one thing she longed for, it was a dog, a golden retriever or maybe a Labrador. But pets were forbidden, so Paradise had to settle for pictures or videos that never failed to bring a smile to her face.

Warmed by Top Ramen and cheered by a Web video of a cat trying to catch a butterfly on the other side of a window, Paradise slipped under her covers at one in the morning and fell asleep. A black day was behind her, but she’d survived many black days.

She woke in a gray mood, haunted once again by her failure. But she was determined not to let it keep her down, so she ventured out. Her friends gave her about an hour of space during which they subjected her to overt glances, but the looks lengthened into unbroken stares of accusation until Roudy finally decided they’d waited long enough and approached.

Paradise didn’t want to talk about it. She made her position clear: If they wanted to be with her, they could not say a single word about the FBI, Mr. Raines, or the case involving the Bride Collector.

“Did he try any funny business?” Andrea immediately wanted to know.

“What did I just say? Nothing about Mr. Raines.”

“I didn’t say Mr. Raines. I said he.”

“But you meant Mr. Raines. Nothing about any of those things no matter what words you use to describe them.”

Casanova lifted a finger. “Did anybody try any funny business?”