Designed to Love (27 page)

***

The sound of a key turning in the lock,
wakes me and I bolt right up in bed, my heart pounding in my chest.
I can just make out Sophia's small frame in the dimly lit hallway.
She goes directly into her bedroom, not bothering to look to see if
I am awake. I glance at the clock.
What could
she possible be doing out until four in the morning?
I
think to myself, slipping out of bed to go find out. She has her
back to me, changing in to a nightgown and the welts across her
back stand out like the red stripes on the American flag.

"Sophia, what happened?" I gasp.

She whips around, holding the gown up in
front of her, and puts her finger to her lips, motioning me to be
quiet. I walk over and grab her by the arm, pulling her in to the
bathroom. Silently I turn the shower on high to mask any sound and
whisper, "Let me see."

Reluctantly, she slowly turns around. There
are five to six linear welts that run across her lower back and
buttocks, and dried blood where the straps cut deeper into the
skin. She winces when I gently run my finger over one.

"Did Mr. Z do this?" I ask, already knowing
the answer. Instantly my eyes fill with tears once again. I can
feel the fear, anger and frustration churning in the pit of my
stomach.

"I'll kill him for this," I vow out
loud.

She looks at me wide-eyed and shakes her
head. Turning to the steamed mirror, she writes with her
finger;

He is dangerous and will
do the same to you!

I'm not afraid of
him!
I write below her fading message.

You should be!

The others will come for
me.

Just as soon as I finish, she writes,
He'll be ready for them!

You're coming with
us!
I reply, ignoring it.

Her face softens and her dark eyes swell
with tears. She shakes her head helplessly.

***

Sophia is still asleep when the house phone
rings, so I don't think twice about answering it after the first
ring, even though she warned me not to.

"Well, well, just the person I wanted to
talk to," he says almost cheerfully, making me feel sick to my
stomach.

"What do you want," I respond coolly.

"I think we are all set to negotiate a
ransom for your release, Cataryn. What do you suppose Ronan would
be willing to pay to get you back?"

"Whatever you ask for," I answer
confidently.

"Do you think he and the others would be
willing to carry out a few relatively easy assignments? How about
the Golden GEM? Dr. Kappel indicated that she'd have extraordinary
powers—powers to change the world in fact. We could certainly use a
person like Claire on our team," he breathes softly into the
phone.

It takes a second for me to process what
he's saying. Like everyone else, he assumes Claire is the Golden
GEM, and when I fully realize the terms of my ransom, my entire
world starts to crumble in around me. He was using me as a bribe to
coerce the Designers into God only knows what type of unlawful
activities, but even worse, get to Claire. I instantly feel sick to
my stomach and teeter on disclosing the true identity of the Golden
GEM just to steer him away from Claire. Something tells me he
wouldn't buy it and remembering Lawrence's warning, I instead do my
best to respond with ignorance.

"The Golden what...?" I ask, plastering a
look of confusion on my face for the camera.

"Don't insult me by playing dumb, Cataryn.
You know very well what I'm talking about," he says coldly.

"Um FYI, my sister is not a golden anything,
and if you touch her, I will kill you!" I say, clenching me teeth
to keep from shouting.

"When Ronan and the others see the
videotape, there will be no question whether or not they should
cooperate. Too many lives are at stake," he says, ignoring my
threat.

"Let me give you a preview of what the
Designers will be getting in the mail tomorrow morning," he says
about the same time I hear the TV click on. He remotely launches a
video with footage of me in the apartment.

"You're wasting your time," I say, slamming
the phone down in its cradle. I refuse to give him the satisfaction
of watching the tape and am about to walk out of the room when I
hear something that stops me dead in my tracks.

"Mom," I whisper, my eyes filling with tears
as I watch the woman being videotaped walk around a similar
underground apartment to the one I'm being held. She looks thinner
and pale, not at all the athletic, energetic woman I remembered
from the day she left to go sailing. After a few minutes, the scene
shifts and this time my dad is shown in a different apartment but
the same layout; concrete walls, no windows and only one door
leading outside. He sits motionless in the chair, staring blankly
ahead. His face is gaunt and his eyes vacant of emotion. The
Callahans are shown next. Nothing more than a thirty second clip of
each of them, as they move around their bunkers. They appear just
as I remember them, the effects of being held captive apparently
haven't yet taken their toll, as it has on my parents.

Alisha's parents disappeared while scuba
diving several years ago, but only her mom and sister are shown in
the videotape. She looks like Alisha, minus the custom light blue
Designer eye color, and has a similar sad expression on her face as
my parents and the Callahans. I can't imagine what Alisha's
reaction will be when she sees that her older sister Alexandra that
she thought died in a car crash is still alive. The video ends with
footage of my brother. His cries as a whip strikes the skin on his
bare back pushes me over the edge, and I snap.

In a rage, I grab the closest object within
my reach. The TV screen makes a loud shattering sound when the
guitar collides with the front of it, but I don't stop there. I
continue my rampage, swinging it like a bat until I am left holding
nothing but a piece of the fingerboard with the strings dangling
loosely in the air. A wide-eyed Sophia doesn't say a word when I
rip the telephone cord from the wall and launch the cordless phone
at the concrete wall. I move into the kitchen and pull dishes out
of the cupboards, aiming them one by one at the concrete walls.
Each loud crash echoing throughout the bunker gives me a feeling of
retribution. When I've exhausted destroying everything I can in
both the kitchen and living room, I crumble in a heap, sobbing
hysterically, while Sophia attempts to sweep up the glass and
debris around me.

***

"They didn't die in a boating accident?" I
mumble, trying to grasp the concept that my parents and brother are
still alive and being held and tortured somewhere. Memories of the
worst days of my life come flooding back to me; cops knocking on
the door, Claire's cries of anguish, social workers taking us away,
funerals, separation from Claire, despair and loneliness.

"Did you know?" I ask Sophia as we sit
together on the bench outside.

She shrugs her shoulders and says, "Does it
matter?"

In the big scheme of things, it doesn't
really matter but it feels good to have a reason to resent her.
Drawing my knees up to my chest, I look the other way, trying my
best to suppress thoughts of my family long enough to try and
contact Ronan to warn him.

"Cat, I've found you.
I'm here with you. Can you hear me?"
The words spoken by
my husband are the sweetest I've heard in weeks, and I jump to my
feet, trying hard to stay calm in front of Sophia. I want to be
comforted by his reassuring words, but I know in my heart that in
spite of all the Designers powers, it was the captors who had the
upper hand right now. Sophia holds up two fingers giving me a
warning signal and from out of nowhere, I have a sudden and
terrible premonition, followed by a staggering feeling of dread.
One minute I'm conversing with my husband in our own mental cloud,
and the next, I am free falling through a black, bottomless
pit.

CAT

"Sophia, open the bunker door—let's get her
inside. Why the hell did you allow her outside in her state of mind
anyway?" I hear the familiar British accent of Mr. Z as he roughly
picks me up off the frozen ground. Ever so slowly, all of my senses
return after what I supposed was a fainting spell. During the time
that I was out, I had the oddest dream that I was with Ronan,
hovering over the Freeman pool in a suspended state between life
and afterlife. It was blissful, and we both wanted to stay but he
insisted on returning.

"Death by drowning in a swimming pool would
be a humiliating way to go considering I have crustacean DNA.
Besides, I have a wife that needs to be rescued," he said jokingly,
knowing full well I would take offense to being portrayed as a
damsel in distress.

I reminded him that Lawrence says I was
designed to change the world, and he laughed.

"I believe him—after all you've certainly
changed me," he said, softly. We remained hovering high above the
Freeman pool, holding each other tightly until he finally looked
down at the resuscitation effort going on over his lifeless body
and said, "Things are getting serious down there. I need to go
back."

The event leaves me dazed and my mind foggy.
The dream seemed so real that I can almost still feel the warmth of
his arms around me. I want desperately to stay outside to reconnect
with him, but am too weak to resist the man carrying me
downstairs.

"There was glass everywhere and I didn't
want her to cut herself. I thought the fresh air would calm her
down," Sophia says to Zane, her voice trembling.

The sound of crunching glass can be heard as
he walks over what's left of the mess in the living room and takes
me to my bedroom, lying me down on the bed. He immediately barks a
list of orders for Sophia, and I hear her rummaging through
cupboards in the kitchen looking for the requested supplies.
Moments later, she returns to my room, and I feel a cool cloth
being applied to the back of my head. He picks up my limp wrist and
cradles it in one hand, as he feels for a pulse with the other.

"You're damn lucky I happened to be around,"
he growls to Sophia in a soft voice that has menacing
undertones.

"Shut up. It wasn't her fault," I finally
manage to whisper as I make an attempt to open my eyes. It takes a
few minutes for the room to stop spinning and Mr. Z's face to come
into focus.

He must read the look of shock on my face
because he chuckles and softly says, "Not what you expected,
eh?"

He looks familiar to me, but I can't place
from where. Appearing to be in his mid to late twenties, he could
have stepped off the front cover of a GQ magazine. He's dressed in
a pair of nice slacks with a button up collared shirt, and hardly
looks like the dangerous criminal that I had imagined. If it wasn't
for the color screening of blue and the cruel video tape, I might
question his involvement in such heinous criminal activity
altogether.

"Well then whose fault would you say it is?"
he asks, with a wicked grin.

"Yours," I reply matter-of-factly,
attempting to sit up.

"Not so fast, Cataryn. Sophia said you hit
your head when you fainted," he says, pressing his hand in my
shoulder to get me to lie back down.

"Take your damn hands off of me now!" I
hiss, shoving his hand out of my way.

Almost immediately, his energy darkens even
further, and in a flash grabs a fist full of my hair, pulling my
head back until I'm looking up at him. He leans close, and I feel
the warmth of his breath as he whispers in my ear, "Cataryn, I
expect women to behave properly and obediently. Do you understand?"
He hisses between a perfect set of teeth clenched tightly together.
He pulls back even harder on my hair, until I cry out in pain.

It takes effort to get the words out, but I
finally manage a "Yes—now could you please take your hands off of
me?"

He lets go of me, and his eyes soften as he
regards me silently for a minute. "You know, I've been watching
you, and you sort of fascinate me, Cataryn. I've been thinking how
much easier it would be if you just voluntarily agreed to stay with
me and your sister— it sure would simplify things. I could give you
anything you wanted you know," he says, his eyes drifting down the
front of me, as a faint smile plays at the corners of his
mouth.

"I will never voluntarily leave my husband
or sell out Claire to a maggot like you," I reply stiffly, moving
further away from him.

The insult doesn't seem to bother him so
much. "Ah, the pitfalls of young love. You're too naïve to accept
that love is transient. It comes and goes like the wind, Cataryn.
Over time, you'll forget about Ronan, and he too will move on to
someone new. It's inevitable you know," he says bitterly, and I
can't help but wonder if he's had his heart broken by someone.

"What do you want with my family Zane?" I
ask, surprising him by addressing him by his first name. He glances
over at Sophia who immediately denies disclosing the
information.

"You're Zane Harrington—the pilot of the jet
that followed me into the Great Falls airport. I remember now. You
named your airplane Nellie," I say out loud, only to regret it
moments later.

Of course, Lawrence had already told me who
he was, but now, the pieces of the puzzle start to come together as
the recollection of that day unfolds vividly in my mind.

He looks surprised. "I gave you enough drugs
to make an elephant amnesic," he murmurs. I couldn't be sure if I
should take that one as a compliment or not.

"Oh don't worry. If you think the Designers
have the ability to find me down here, you are way overestimating
their gifts. You have no real reason to keep your identity from
me—right?" I quickly try to reassure him. "Would you really prefer
me to call you Mr. Z?"