The Bride Collector (18 page)

She was ashamed that she was still looking at him. Why didn’t he look away? Was he so amazed at her courage, staring back
at him even though she couldn’t measure up? Was he surprised that she didn’t understand her place as the rag he used to shine
his shoes? How dare she stare into his eyes!

The moment of silence stretched and Paradise fought an urge to run away.

“Thank you for doing this, Paradise,” Brad said. “I realize how awkward this is for you, and I want you to know that I don’t
expect anything. It doesn’t matter if you don’t see anything.”

It was kind of him, and she thought he meant what he said.

“But since we’re here, why don’t we give it a try?”

She nodded.

Brad reached down, took the hem of the sheet in his fingers, and pulled it down. Her eyes were on his fingernails, how clean
they were. Being clean and tidy must be important to him. She didn’t know how to be like that, and she hated herself for it.

“Her name is Melissa,” Brad said.

Paradise blinked and looked at the dead woman’s pretty, pasty-white face. There was a cut above her right temple. Perfect
lips, perfect skin.

She hated Melissa.

But that was ridiculous. She hated no one, not even her own father. What was getting into her? “She died last night,” Brad
said.

Her mind began to fill with the circumstances surrounding the woman’s death, abstract images that come from her own imagination.
The dancing lover and the ape biting off her face.

Paradise was suddenly unsure she could go through with this. Mnemophobia offered only a fine line between the fear of bad
memories and the fear of creating new bad memories, and though she’d worked through it all with Allison, she now felt those
old fingers of fear reaching up inside of her.

It should be me,
she thought.
I should be dead instead of this beautiful woman. I’m not even a woman, not really.

But she was here and he was waiting and the fear of disappointing him was as great as her fear of creating a bad memory by
touching such a beautiful dead body. So she stretched out her hand, tried and failed to still her quivering fingers, and gently
touched Melissa’s white cheek.

She felt only the bloodless skin, chilled by the refrigerator’s cool air. She saw no ghosts. No visions. Not even an image
spawned by her own overactive imagination. Just a dead girl on a gurney, cold to the touch.

Paradise left her fingers on the face and glanced up at Brad, whose eyes rose to meet hers, searching.

What did you expect, a butterfly to fly out of her mouth when I touched her? A frog to leap out of my shirt? A ghost to pop
out of her? I never did deserve to be in here with you, so may I crawl back into my corner now? I’ll just rock and moan for
a while like a good monkey
.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Nothing, huh?”

“I told you.”

“Nothing at all? Not even a… thought?”

“Nothing.” She removed her hand. “I’m s…”

But she didn’t get to say
sorry,
because in that moment her vision suddenly went black. A voice echoed in the darkness, speaking to her. “I’m going to drill
some small holes in your heels, about half an inch wide, but don’t worry, as soon as your blood drains out, I’ll plug them
back up. You’ll still be beautiful. Perfect. Okay?”

A woman’s voice: “Okay.” Melissa’s voice, only it felt like it was coming from Paradise, because in this moment, Paradise
was Melissa.

Her mind reeled with objection and she reached for something to steady herself. Flesh filled her hand. Melissa’s flesh. But
Paradise was in a full panic and felt like she was going to fall, so she held tight.

“Melissa?” A man’s voice filled her head.
His
voice. Did she know this voice? Had she heard this voice, felt this hot breath on her cheek?

A face filled her vision.
His
face. A handsome clean-cut face with strong cheekbones and dark hair. Genuine, smiling eyes as he reached a gloved hand for
her cheek and stroked her skin with his thumb.

“So beautiful, my dear. You are his favorite, remember that. And that makes you my favorite, because you were lost but now
you are found. I found you. Think of me as God, it will help you.”

Horror at the sound of that familiar voice slammed into Paradise and robbed her of breath. She tried to pull her hand away,
but her fingers were latched on to the body’s cold flesh as if they wanted more. A part of her needed to know more.

Paradise screamed and jerked back with all her strength. Her hand slipped free and the blackness cleared, but now she was
reeling backward, tripping. She crashed into the stove behind her and fell to the ground, hard.

The landing knocked the wind from her, silencing her scream. She lay on the smooth concrete floor, shivering. Allison’s calm
voice reached out, but Paradise was already clawing on her belly for the safe place.

For the white fog, where all that was bad would not find her. Slowly, she inched toward it, desperate to reach the safety
before the monsters grabbed her legs and pulled her back into the darkness.

Dear God, save me. Don’t let them get me. Take me in your arms, hold me, don’t let evil eat me. Please, don’t reject me!

She struggled to all fours and crawled forward as the first wisps of white fog drifted past her. She was shaking on the kitchen
floor, and two voices, a man’s and a woman’s, were trying to calm her, but in her mind she was entering the fog.

The monsters nipped at her heels, ripped off one of her shoes. She crawled faster, on bloody knees now. And then she was in
the fog and she zigzagged to her left and right to shake any final pursuit.

Bloodied, winded, and too weak to crawl another foot, she collapsed in a heap and hugged the earth, relieved, so terribly
relieved. She’d made it. The blackness was gone. She was safely in the fog that had protected her for so long. And Paradise
began to cry with gratitude.

Gradually, calm settled over her, like the loving breath of God. The monsters were gone. She couldn’t even remember what they’d
looked like.

Thank you. Thank you, my savior. Thank you for taking my pain
.

BRAD STOOD BACK
from Allison, who sat on the floor with her legs folded behind her, comforting Paradise, rubbing her back. “It’s okay, honey.
Take your time, it’s all gong to be okay.” Paradise lay on the ground, crying softly.

He wanted to do something, help in some way, but he was at a loss. Whatever had just happened, he was neither trained nor
prepared to process it. His professional boundaries felt confining. They were silly borders meant to help ignorant people
cope with complicated life.

Paradise had either had a psychotic episode that resulted in a powerful hallucination, or actually connected with some
thing
that had caused her to react immediately and violently to its threat.

Ghosts did not exist. But the idea that she’d suffered nothing more than a hallucination made foolishness out of his bringing
the body here in the first place. The fact that he had brought the body meant he was willing to consider that Paradise could
connect with these so-called ghosts, however impossible it seemed.

A dozen times on the ride here, he asked himself why he was willing. It certainly wasn’t because he’d suddenly developed a
belief in the supernatural. Nor because they just might get lucky.

Really, he’d come because of her. Because of Paradise. Because of the way she’d looked out the window earlier today and told
him about another world. Because her eyes had scanned him once and told him who he was with unnerving calm and precision.

There was mystery in her eyes. It was as if her mind really did open to another world, and he’d been given just one glance
into that world. Into Paradise.

He’d brought the body to Paradise for
her
sake. Because she deserved the chance to complete what he’d asked her to do. Having asked once, he could not turn his back
on her decision to help him. Whatever else he did, he could not hurt Paradise. She’d suffered too much.

So he’d brought the body. And despite her insistence that she would not see anything, Paradise had seen something.

Now what? He wanted to reach out to her and assure her the way Allison was, but that would be inappropriate. He was a special
agent, not her psychoanalyst.

Allison looked back at him. “It’s okay. Just a simple defense mechanism. It’s the way she’s learned to cope.”

“She’ll be okay?”

“Of course she will.” Allison lovingly drew a strand of hair off Paradise’s cheek and tucked it behind her ear as she might
her own daughter’s. Paradise calmed. “Every mind has its fuse. Every circuit has a reset. The more powerful the computer,
the better the firewall must be. One of our residents taught me that.” She smiled and looked at Paradise with gentle eyes.
“Paradise has a powerful mind. She’s just protecting it.”

For the first time since coming here, Brad considered the possibility that he had entered a world where the minds were not
sick when compared with his, simply greater—and learning to cope. Like Paradise, they were so powerful they required special
systems that lesser minds, like his, did not.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Well, like I told you, she sees ghosts. Don’t tell me you don’t believe in ghosts, Mr. Raines.”

He didn’t know what to say.

“Not to worry. Learning to love is more important than learning about ghosts.”

“Whatever she saw—”

“Is probably gone by now,” Allison said. “Unfortunately, her experience appears to have been a bad one, which means it probably
involved a man. The killer perhaps. Her mind’s probably erasing it now, as we speak. Her defense mechanism isn’t always useful,
but until she can learn to cope…”

Paradise’s eyes suddenly opened and she sat up, looking like a small child who’d woken from a long afternoon nap. She stared
at them, then at the floor, confused.

“What happened?” Her eyes settled on the gurney and recognition filled them. “It happened, didn’t it? I saw something.”

“Yes, I think you did.” Allison smoothed her hair.

Paradise brushed Allison’s hand away and pushed herself to her feet. “Now that I’m totally mortified…”

“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Brad said. “This is why we brought the body.”

“Then I guess it was a waste of time. Even if I did see something, I can’t remember what it was.”

“You remember touching her?”

“Yes. And I remember standing here making a fool of myself before I touched the body, but that’s all I remember. I’m sorry
to say that I can’t help you, Mr. Raines. This has all been a mistake.” Strong emotion was creeping into her voice. “Maybe
Roudy can help you.”

Brad felt his heart tighten with empathy. Paradise walked toward the door trying to hold her shoulders square, but she walked
as if she herself were a ghost.

“Paradise, please…”

She left without looking back.

“SO. THIS IS
it, huh?” Nikki sauntered across the living room, carrying a glass of Pinot Grigio, perusing Brad’s choice of decor. Women
were always interested in his tastes, in part because his choices were so well defined. Most men, it seemed to Brad, didn’t
have refined preferences. They had tastes, sure, particularly when it came to cars and women. But ask them about fabrics and
colors, about women’s clothes, paint colors, and accessories, and they would usually just shrug.

“I didn’t realize you were so metrosexual.” She took a sip of her wine. They’d spent two hours sharing crab legs and two lobster
tails at Trulucks on their so-called date. A second long day after the fiasco at CWI had produced only more dead ends, and
a quiet dinner with Nikki had been a welcome break.

Brad set the bottle back in the built-in wine cooler under the kitchen counter and picked up his own glass. “Black velvet
and chrome isn’t exactly feminine,” he said.

“Did I say feminine? But you’re right,
metro
is the wrong word.” She looked at the five-foot Tuscan floral painting over two chairs between the urns.

“Yeah, not exactly contemporary, I know,” he said, crossing to her. “I like to”—he motioned at the room with his glass—“blend
styles a bit. I know… contemporary with a rich Tuscan decor would have most decorators rolling their eyes. But every piece
in here is deliberate. The couch is from France, a designer named Trudeau whose chrome work is sought after. The urns were
once museum pieces in Mexico, not terribly valuable but originals.”

“And the painting?”

“José Rodriguez. An original. The other paintings are also originals, nothing too fancy. Just carefully selected.” He winked
and lifted his glass to her.

“So you like originals.”

“I guess you could say that.”

“And does this taste extend to women?”

She was referring to herself. But the first image that filled Brad’s mind was of a shorter woman, frail, with long dark hair
and pale skin. She chewed her fingernails and bathed maybe twice a week if encouraged. Her mind was an ocean of mystery and
although she didn’t know it, she had pulled him in with a single look.