Hiding Catherine

by Jennifer Becker

“No,” Catherine screamed and clawed at Martin with her good hand, but it was too late. Martin fired off three shots straight into Rayne's back, sending her sprawling face first to the ground.

  Catherine screamed in horror and denial. It couldn't be. Rayne couldn't be dead. Rayne couldn't be dead because of her.

  “It's your fault, cupcake.” Martin glared down at her.

  It was her fault. She should never have attacked Martin and told her to run. She should never have gotten involved with Martin.

  Catherine pushed herself to her feet and glared all her hatred at him. “I hate you.”

  Martin just smirked. “The feeling is mutual.”

  He opened the warehouse door and shoved Catherine inside. She took one last look back to see Rayne's prone body before Martin closed the door and sealed her in the dark warehouse with a heartless killer.

  Martin flipped switches, and the warehouse lit up. Not that there was much to see. The warehouse was empty, and the second floor was falling apart with several chunks of the walkways missing. The stairs leading upstairs were leaning heavily to one side and didn't look like they could hold up any amount of weight before crumbling to the ground. All the windows on the second floor were broken or covered in thick dust. The first floor was bare of anything except for what looked like a glass tank and a chair in front of it. Why would there be a glass tank in the middle of an abandoned warehouse?

  Martin pushed her from behind and guided her to the ominous tank. Once she was close to it, she saw it was full of water. Instead of a square top, it was rounded, and the edges flared over the sides and there were chains next to the tank with a large metal ball at the end.

  “What is this?” She feared the answer.

  Martin swept her hair off her neck, and he leaned in behind her. Her body stiffened, and she tried to step away, but Martin pulled her back to his chest. He took a whiff of her neck. “This is where you die, Catherine.”

  This was where she what? Oh hell no. She would not go in that Houdini looking death trap. She fought him, but with a broken wrist, it made it harder. She tried kicking him, but he easily deflected her.

  “This will be a lot easier if you just go willingly.”

  “Like I would make it easy for you to kill me.” How crazy was he?

  “I could knock you out like the others, but where would the fun be in that?”

  The others? How many women had he killed here? And suddenly she knew. The news reports. The bodies found, then the last victim died of drowning but not near any water.

  “I see you figured it out.” He smiled triumphantly.

  “You killed all those women. For what?”

  “For you. I had to make your death perfect. They were my test subjects and Jacks believed in punishing bad women. Emily was meant to be punished for leaving her child's father. I plan to exact revenge on Kassie for abandoning Jacks."

  "And Rayne? What was her crime?" Catherine choked on her tears. She still couldn't believe Rayne was gone.

  "You dragged her into this. You told her to run. I couldn't let her escape."

  "You’re a monster." She couldn't believe she hadn't seen it before. She had been too afraid to warn someone before about what Martin was doing, but now, she had nothing left to lose and she'd be damned if she didn't go down swinging.

  She screamed out a war cry and launched herself at him, uncaring about her wrist. She reined blow after blow at his head and kicked out at his legs. He grabbed her arms and she raised her knee as hard as she could between his legs. His face was frozen a moment as it turned red to almost purple. His body shook before he crumpled to his knees, and he released her.

  Catherine ran around him and was almost to the door when something slammed into her back so hard it knocked her into the door, and she bounced off it, falling back onto the dirty concrete floor. Pain consumed her, especially in her back. Had he shot her? She supposed it was better than drowning. A moment later an upside down and angry Martin glared down at her.

  "You stupid fat bitch. What did that accomplish? Nothing. Just like you." Catherine was too sore and in too much pain to protect herself from the combat boot that came at her face next, knocking her unconscious. Finally, there was no more pain.

  Chapter 26

  Catherine came awake slowly, and the first thing she realized was that she was lying on her back with arms above her head. The unforgiving cold floor seeped through her skin and straight into her bones. Her head pounded furiously, and the left side of her face felt swollen. Her back screamed in agony from lying on the ground so long and being hit by something earlier. She realized quickly her hands were over her head and had been for a while because they felt numb. She tried opening her eyes, but a piercing light had her cowering from it and turning on her side. She brought her hands down to cover her face to protect her from the harsh light. The sudden movement brought a blinding pain to her right wrist, the one Martin had broken earlier and a protest from her limbs that had been prone for too long. She tried to cradle the wounded wrist to her chest and felt tight binding ropes around her wrists that prohibited her from cradling it fully, but brought her hands to her neck. She turned her head towards her hands and cautiously squinted her eyes open. They were blurry at first, and her head beat furiously in retaliation. She closed her eyes and laid her head down on the cold concrete waiting for the beating to subside. She kept her head down and away from the light, using her shoulder to block out most of the light and tried opening her eyes again. They opened fully and weren’t blurry this time. Her head pounded, but she ignored it. She looked down towards her hands, and they were wrapped in a rope that bound them so tightly she could barely move them. Her right hand was red and swollen. The circulation had been cut off for a while now. She tried moving her fingers and had to clamp her mouth shut to stifle her cry of pain. How she longed just to lie there and wait for Charlie to find her. No, she needed to stay focused on escaping. It’s what Charlie would want her to do. To fight. To stay alive. She had no idea how long she had been lying there unconscious, and she had no intention of hanging around waiting for Martin to drown her.

  She was looking for a knot that held the rope together to see if she could pull it loose with her teeth or something when a chain at her feet caught her eye. Moving her hands out of the way she saw a chain wrapped around her ankles several times and the excess ended at the end of a large metal ball. It was the same chain she had seen earlier next to the tank. The same tank right in front of her. The same tank that had taken one woman’s life. The tank was full of water but not up to the rim. The stand stood over six feet tall. It was a rectangular box with metal on all four corners with screws screwed into it to keep it structurally sound. She didn’t have to be a mathematician to figure out what Martin intended for her. The metal ball would keep her weighed down, and the curved top would make it impossible to pull herself out. Which meant she had to get out of here now. She twisted the rope this way and that way, but couldn’t find where the rope tied off. He had to get it on her somehow, so where did the two ends meet?

  “If you’re thinking you can untie the ropes, think again,” Martin said right behind her.

  Catherine froze and looked over her shoulder to see Martin standing over her with a look of triumph on his face. And why not? He had her right where he wanted her. She saw no way out now. “What did you do with the rope?” She might stale him. Killers loved sharing their diabolical plans and it delayed them enough for the rescuers to come.

  Martin tilted his head and studied her as if he had never seen her before. His cold dead eyes stared down at her and sent shivers down her spine. “You’re trying to trick me.” He accused, his face tightened into a sneer.

  “No,” she quickly assured him. “You said you have been practicing for my death. That you wanted it to be perfect.” Catherine thought she would be sick rethinking about that detail. “I wanted to know what you did to the rope. I have never seen anything like it.” And she hadn’t. There was so much she never knew about
Martin. His ability to tie a rope without knots being one.

  “My dad taught me. He had a fishing boat.” Martin’s face pinched and his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides as if that knowledge brought back painful memories.

  “Martin, why am I here?” She needed him to stay calm and she needed to keep him talking. If he got too angry, he could just kill her and that would defeat the purpose of delaying whatever he had in store for her.

  “You must be punished.” Was all he said as he reached for her bound hands.

  Catherine tried to roll out of his reach but with the chain wrapped securely around her ankles and a large ball attached to it she couldn’t go far. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Martin paused in trying to capture her and stared at her in puzzlement. “Done nothing wrong? You cheated on me.”

  “What?” Catherine screeched dubiously. “I was nothing but faithful when we were together.”

  “We’re still together. We never broke up.”

  How could he think that? “You were kidnapping people and blackmailing a woman. Not to mention the fact that you used to beat me on a regular base. Why would I be with someone who does that? I left you.”

  “You were scared, it’s understandable.” He waved off her words as if she were a silly woman and didn’t know what she was talking about. “I couldn’t tell you everything that I was doing. A woman wouldn’t understand. Everything I did, I did for us.” He smiled proudly to himself.

  Catherine believed that he believed what he was saying. She still didn’t understand any of it, however. “But why?” She was no longer trying to stall him but wanted to understand his reasoning.

  “Women are a curse. Eve betrayed Adam. Women are always at fault. Emily refused the father the rights to his child. Kassie betrayed Jacks. And you,” Martin squatted down and gripped Catherine’s chin painfully with his thumb and finger. “You cheated on me. Told the police on me.”

  “And those women you’ve been killing lately?” She let the cheating and police comment go since nothing she said mattered. It may have been a little late, but she never regretted turning Martin in. She wished the police would have captured him before now.

  Martin was obviously on some drug or had been brainwashed. It explained his thought process right now. Emily had her reasons for keeping Annie’s biological dad out of the picture and in her opinion, Cormac was a better father for Annie. She didn’t know Kassie as well, since her ex-boyfriend had kept her under such lock and key, much like Martin had done with her, not surprisingly, Kassie took a chance on Graham. Just like how she took a chance on Charlie.

  “They meant nothing to me. They reminded me of you. I couldn’t replace you though, Catherine. I realized that after the fourth one. So, I needed you. I had to wait for the right time when that ugly guy wasn’t around. It was fortunate that the other team was there when I planned to grab you.”

  Catherine saw red at the dig at Charlie. He could say what he wanted about her. Call her names but no one talked about her man that way. He was beautiful and twice the man Martin could ever hope to be. “The only thing I see that is ugly, is you and your black heart. In case the message was lost in translation by my leaving you. We are over, done, finished.”

  Martin’s hand shook her chin, and his nostrils flared in anger as his eyes narrowed into slits. Catherine’s brief bravado quickly dissipated. “We’re not over until I say we are, Cupcake.” He said in a dead calm. A calmness that terrified her to her bones. A calmness that told her that her time was up.

  Before she could retaliate, Martin grabbed her bound hands and yanked them back over her head. The abrupt tugging pulled on her broken wrist and pinpricks of pain shot throughout her arms, protesting going above her head again. Catherine heard a clicking sound above her and tried to twist herself, so she could look up, but Martin pressed a knee to her chest keeping her down. The weight wasn’t crushing on her chest, but it immobilized her and with her feet chained she couldn’t move any part of her body. He leaned towards her feet and wrapped more chain around her feet. As if she couldn’t already move them.

  Suddenly the weight was off her chest, and she looked up at her hands to see a metal clamp over the rope. A loose pile of the chain was connected to it, and it went up towards the ceiling. She looked over at Martin who had walked to the chair in front of the tank and picked up a remote sitting in the seat. He turned and faced Catherine with a sinister grin and hit a button. At first, nothing happened, then she heard a machine start up above her. She looked up and saw what looked like a crane attached to the ceiling, pulling the chain holding her wrists up. As it pulled on the chain she felt a strain on her hands then on her upper body, then she was being lifted off the ground. The strain became unbearable as the weight at her feet was lifted pulling her in two directions. She needed to escape. Now. Maybe she could swing herself around, and the metal clamps would cut through the ropes? It wouldn’t be too far of a drop. It was better than the alternative. She would have to be a little high for the ball hanging off her feet, but she could make it work. Or she might use the ball like a wrecking ball and break the tank.

  She tried swaying herself back and forth, but the weight on her feet was making it difficult to get good momentum. Martin said nothing as she was lifted into the air and swung over the tank. He probably thought her struggles were futile. And maybe they were. She had barely started swinging by the time the crane stopped over the tank. Catherine looked down at the clear blue water and gulped. This was it. She saw no way out from this. She turned her head towards the warehouse door but it remained closed. Charlie hadn’t found her in time.

  “So long, cupcake.” Martin chuckled menacingly and hit another button on his remote. The clamp holding the rope above her head released and she free fell into the water. Catherine opened her mouth to scream, but it quickly filled with water. The icy water hit her like a punch in the gut and stole what little air supply she had left. The weight at her feet dropped her straight to the bottom of the tank with a large thud.

  Catherine immediately tried paddling to the surface. It wasn’t easy with bound hands, but she made it to the surface thanks to the little bit of slack in the chain at her feet, and took in a lung full of much-needed air. She couldn’t lift her head out of the water, but if she tilted her head all the way back, she could breathe. That tactic wouldn’t last long, unfortunately. She would grow tired trudging water and eventually drown. If she could get the chains around her feet loosened, she might get enough slack to get to the edge.

  She took a deep breath and dove under the water feeling along the chains at her feet. There had to be a clasp or a lock that held it all together but she knew he had wrapped it around her ankles right before he had lifted her up. The few inches might save her. She tugged on the chains, but it was wrapped tightly around her. Opening her eyes and using her hands, she found where the chain connected to the ball. She ran her hands up to the first chinks and pulled. She heard the scraping sound and smiled in triumph. She found where it had just been wrapped around her. She pulled on it more until it slide behind her.

  She pushed up to the surface and took a breath. The loosening of the chain had only gained her centimeters. She went back under the water and unwrapped more of the chain until she was stopped by the lock holding the rest around her ankles. She shot back to the surface, and this time her head came all the way up. She pulled her way to the edge and tried to pull herself up but with the curved glass and being wet she couldn’t get a grip on anything, and her hands kept sliding down. This explained the fanned out edges. It made it impossible to pull herself out. What was worst was now that the rope around her wrists was wet it was constricting even tighter.

  “Give it up, cupcake,” Martin called up to her. She had almost forgotten that he was there. She looked over at him to see him sitting in the chair, with an ankle crossed over his knee, as if he were sitting there watching a movie, and not a person soon to drown to death. “I’ve been practicing for this. There
is no escape. I made sure of it.”

  Over her dead body would she give up. There had to be something she could do. She tried pulling herself up again, but her hands slipped, and she fell beneath the surface. Her hands glided along the edge of the glass looking for a loose screw or something she could use to cut through her bindings. There. She felt something sticking out in the corner. She opened her eyes and saw a screw was sticking out. Not much but maybe just enough for her to cut through the ropes. It was worth a shot. She hooked her wrists over the screw and moved it side to side. Her limbs shook from the cold, but she kept pushing herself. She told herself if she could just get the ropes loose, she would have a fighting chance. She believed Charlie would come for her, she just didn’t know when. Her lungs hurt from the lack of oxygen and she pulled her wrists away from the screw, but it didn’t come loose. A piece of the rope was caught on the screw somewhere. She tried to wiggle to the surface, but her hands prevented her from making it to the surface. She pulled herself closer to the screw to see where it was caught. A blurry image out of the corner of her eye caught her attention and then she saw Martin walk up to her smiling coldly. He thought he had won. She turned away from him and studied the rope. The screw had pierced through the rope and was fraying on the top. She pulled her wrists down and rotated them back and forth. Her lungs screamed for air and stars winked in and out of her vision, but she refused to give up. Just a little more. Her movements became sluggish until she stopped moving her arms. Her limbs felt heavy, and her body no longer listened to her. Her eyes were heavy. She couldn’t keep them open much longer. Martin watched vividly next to her. Waiting for the end and wanting a front row seat for it. She closed her eyes and summoned the memory of her first encounter with Charlie on the side of the road. I’m sorry, I failed you, my love. And then there was only darkness.

  Chapter 27