CHAPTER 2

After eighty six days, ten hours and eighteen minutes there was nothing.

A minute later.

Eighty six days, ten hours and nineteen minutes, there was a something.

There was a ransom and instructions for her return.

The blue line leapt for joy.

The red paint was still on the canvas somewhere.

Eighty six days, ten hours and nineteen minutes

It made no sense that the demand was so long after her disappearance. Why wait so long you ask. But no-one thought about that at the time. Why would they, why would I. In that moment I was looking at an image of my best friend, alive. She looked malnourished and weak and distant. Her face was bruised and small cuts across it and her eyes were deep dark hollows.

But she was alive

Red was not gone forever

My heart hurt with something new. A tiny little piece of hope pierced through it. It was more painful than glass to the skin. Fear, joy, hope, confusion and happiness at the same time.

Blue stopped moving for a moment.

The possibility of getting her back was suddenly very very real.

From nothing to everything.

That's why "Why now?" was the last question on anyones mind, "Hope" was the only universal thought.

My heart broke the day she disappeared, and as unscientifically impossible as it was, it broke a little more that day I saw that image of my brave and selfless friend's face looking like she had been through hell and back.

Red wasn't gone. Maybe broken but not gone.

I didn't remember that the minutes following that felt like hours or that I sobbed or that I had to be restrained by several officers. I didn't remember screaming and arguing. I didn't remember demanding that I pay the ransom myself.

I only remember holding her in my arms again.

She was alive. Red was alive.

She whispered something weakly in my ear. Something about being so happy to see me. I couldn't respond because my throat was painfully closed with emotion. I was trying to just breathe.

Red was right beside blue.

I was holding her tight, I felt her warm tears dripping on my shoulder. I felt her bones sharp and jagged through her skin. I felt her quivering.

Red and blue were together again.

I hated the unkindness of the world for taking her away, for damaging her, for the pain it had caused us all. I hated whoever had taken her and hurt her.

Red was back.

I wanted to keep her safe and never let her be lost again. Hold her forever. Never let her out of my sight.

Red was so close to blue that it looked like a line of purple between the two.

We were blureurple.

It was a slow physical recovery for her but I stayed by her side, I didn't want to leave her.

She ate like she may never see food again. And her hands shook like she was constantly nervous. The water washed off her was black in the tub and she looked white against it. The cuts and bruises healed. The dimness in her eyes was replaced with a familiar sparkle. She smiled when she took her first steps completely unassisted. She gained weight and her dimples became softer and her protruding bones slowly disappeared along with all traces of her disappearance. And she again joked about bunny pancakes and yoga.

Emotionally she was fine, like nothing had happened.

Side by side were our colors. A line unfaltering. Parallel. Blue, red & some purple.

I never ever ever imagined that after all this...that It would again all be destroyed, that one color would stop altogether. That the two would cease their journey together. That the colors would be separated. I was so sure that the worst was over.

I was wrong. I knew nothing.

BLUREURPLE

"She remembers nothing, Doctor Isles. Even regressive therapy has had absolutely no effect."

"That can't be, she was gone for almost three months, she must remember something, anything."

It was a battle that no one expected. Usually the victims can identify their captor. Reveal the trauma they experienced. Or remember some parts of it. Maybe they don't want to talk about it but to actually blank out the entire experience completely was improbable.

The therapist knew more than me, but I thought I knew better than her. She said it was either a form of amnesia from the trauma or that it was borderline personality disorder. That her mind may have blocked it out because it was too traumatic to deal with. I decided the therapist was just negligent, that she couldn't do her job competently and that Jane obviously didn't trust her. She had been chosen for her impeccable qualifications and world-renowned breakthroughs in the field of psychotherapy, but she didn't know Jane like I did, that I was sure of. What else could it be...

I thought I knew better than them all. Blue knew red and blue would find out where red had been.

"What do you remember Jane?"

"Arggg. Maura please. You've asked a hundred times already. I keep telling you...We had lunch together, then I finished work for the day and then went home, watched a movie and went to bed. Then I woke up in this hospital. Why won't you let this go?"

Her voice was gravelly and irritated. Her lips were tight and her forehead creased in a deep frown. She rubbed her hands together harshly like it was the only way she could stay in control.

"Because you were gone for months Jane. Months! There must be something. Please Jane...you can tell me."

She chewed her thumb nail and glared at me.

She didn't or she couldn't tell me, and it hurt me. It hurt that she didn't trust me. And she was angry at me that I didn't believe her. And now that I understand why, it is too late.

I am not that smart after all. I didn't read her body language...but worse than that...If I had stopped and really thought about it for a moment the pieces would have easily fitted together. If I had reflected on what had happened that last time Jane couldn't remember something was because she had been programmed to forget. It should have been obvious to me. I have a high IQ. But I was too busy feeling sorry for myself and wanting to know where she had been and too busy thinking I knew best that I didn't see it. I didn't see it at all.

She didn't remember anything.

Red didn't know where red had been.

RED IS FOR RAGE

Jet.

If thought's could kill he would have died the most excruciating pain one hundred million times over.

But thoughts and looks and anger cannot kill. Here he was alive.

Jane was only just home, physically recovered and healed from malnutrition and torture after being abducted and just been released from hospital...and here he was...Jet...re-emerged.

This can't be, this isn't fair.

Now I knew where the ransom had gone. Now I knew where Jane had gone.

Now I knew we should have asked 'why did the demand for a ransom come so late'.

Now we could speculate what had occurred in those three months. Now we knew why Jane didn't remember anything. And I felt like my stomach had folded in on itself and crawled up into my throat and was strangling my voice from inside. The room blurred slightly and I was beyond light-headed, I was dark-headed with rage.

I knew where Red had been.

Red had not just been been beaten and starved

I heard the words son-of-a-bitch before it registered that I had spoken it myself. I felt the pain in my palms from clenching my hands. My jaw would hurt for days from clenching it so tightly.

This evil man had already once abused his powers and had tried to use Jane as a sort of super soldier. He had been her counsellor when she was dealing with the traumas of the serial killer that had put scalpels through the palms of her hands. He had used that trauma during his time with her to create an alter he could control. He had then commanded her to follow his orders. But he had failed his mission. Jane had been too strong or the programming too weak and she gotten free back then.

But now I knew that Jet had held her for 24 hours a day for almost three months. Whatever he had done originally was much worse now. He would have held her until he knew he could control her for certain this time. That she wouldn't be able to break free. He had to have fully broken her.

It had taken three months.

Red was not the same.

He had sent her back to us for a reason.

Was I about to find out what that reason was.

Here he was, standing on my doorstep, about to unleash his plan. Here he was with that psychopathic smirk on his face.

"Have you ever taken the time to analyze just how many things in life are designed to deceive us and how many things we have been taught, that just aren't so?" He spoke like everything he said was as heavy as silver and as precious as gold.

I stared at him like he was dirt.

He didn't care.

His question was some sort of distraction, or game. It was hinting at something only he would understand.

He was just like Hoyt.

I wanted to kill him.

Jane was behind me, she had heard the doorbell too. I had answered the door but I had not returned to the kitchen. She had come to find me. She didn't even recognize him.

She looked confused at my expression of anger. I became confused.

How could she not know Jet. How could she not remember him.

How could she not know Him. Yet it should have been obvious to me.

She moved towards me, to make sure I was alright. Fear in her eyes and worry across her forehead. Her lips starting to open to ask what was the matter. Her body emanated care towards me and she stood partially in front of me to defend me from him, protecting me against the thing that was a threat to her, the man she could only assume must be a threat me.

I wonder what she thought was happening.

I never found out.

He spoke two words to her and she was gone. Jane was gone.

He showed me that he controlled her. That the red line was his. That he could control the lines, the directions, the path.

She held me so tight. Her right hand holding tightly my shoulder, fingers painfully digging into my shoulder and her left hand around my throat. I couldn't move. Her eyes were vacant and her body still and stiff. There was no emotion only blind obedience.

I could feel her slender fingers tighten slowly around my neck. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I tried to swallow but couldn't. I could feel her strength and knew fighting was futile, I could only injure myself by struggling so I stayed still and stared into her cold hard eyes until my own started to secrete lacrimal fluid. I couldn't control it.

There wasn't enough pressure to render me unconscious but enough that I started to feel light-headed. Another 15 seconds and I would loose consciousness.

Deep down I somehow believed she wouldn't kill me. Jane wouldn't. Jane couldn't. Jane was in there somewhere. She would let me go.

Time moved slower than I ever remember it moving.

It felt like my face was swollen and I needed air. I was about to panic.

I stared into her eyes pleading her to stop with my own.

But Jane was gone.

...to be continued...

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