Ted Dekker - The Bride Collector

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.