Utopian Day

by C. L. Wells

  Sasha grabbed her backpack and tossed in a windbreaker, a flashlight, and her phone. She collected all of the papers spread out on her bed and put them back in the envelope, tossing that into the backpack too. Now all she had to do was wait until Nick and Mia went to bed. She didn’t want them knowing where she was going and she certainly didn’t want them asking a lot of questions or trying to stop her. She was eighteen, after all – old enough to do what she wanted.

  Mia came and knocked on her door around 10:30 p.m.

  “Yes?” Sasha responded.

  “Are you o.k.?” Mia said without opening the door.

  “Yeah, I’m o.k. I just want to be alone right now.”

  “O.k. If you need anything, just come and get me.”

  “Alright. Thanks.”

  Sasha heard Nick and Mia’s bedroom door close down the hall. She waited another thirty minutes until she no longer heard any sounds coming from the direction of their bedroom. She slipped on her backpack and quietly opened the door, looking down the hall to make certain the light was off in her parents’ room. She had practiced going downstairs without making a sound, marking each place she would need to step without making the floors creak. She paused before each floor to carefully peer around the wall separating the stairs from the rest of the floor before coming down to the landing, making sure Nick wasn’t still up. She went all the way down to the basement, punched in the security code to turn off the alarm, and exited the door that led out to the sidewalk. She closed the door as quietly as she could, locking it with her key.

  She started walking in the direction of Marty’s house. She turned the corner and was about to walk past an alleyway when she was grabbed roughly from behind. She tried to scream, but there was a cloth over her mouth. As she inhaled, she felt weak and couldn’t keep her eyes open. In seconds, she lost consciousness.

  Silas McGruder dragged her into the alleyway, out of sight of anyone who might be passing by.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Sasha’s phone didn’t have a password on it, which was good for Silas. That way, he didn’t need to use the burn phone he had purchased to send a message to Nick Bartonovich. It was 6:00 a.m., time to get the ball rolling. Silas took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. This text was about to start the events moving that he had planned for so long. He had checked and double-checked all of the details. Everything was in place. Now all he had to do was send this text.

  He scrolled through Sasha’s contacts and selected both Nick and Mia’s numbers, and then he typed out the message:

  I have sasha. 10 million in cash, one hundred dollar notes, or you never see her again. Put the money in a big cooler with wheels on it. J t thornbacker must deliver the money. Will contact you in 24 hours to tell you where to meet me with the money. No cops or else.

  He checked the message twice to make sure he had all the details right, then hit the send button. He then took a picture of Sasha, duct-taped to the captain’s chair in the RV, and sent it through, as well. Once the message and picture were sent, he removed the phone’s cover and popped out the battery. It was just a precaution so that they wouldn’t be able to track the phone. He checked Sasha’s restraints one more time before climbing in to the driver’s seat of the RV and driving away.

  As Silas drove along, he thought about the events that had led up to this moment, and a smile came across his face. All of the planning, all of the time spent surveilling and researching, the investment he had made in the miniature microphones that he had placed around the Bartonovich’s house – it had all paid off. Now the brass ring was in sight.

  Many months before, when Silas began to focus on Nick Bartonovich as the key to his future success, he had started looking for a way to spend more time staking out their house. He’d found a basement efficiency apartment on the opposite side of the street from the Bartonovich’s home, down on the corner. It was the perfect place from which to surveil all of the comings and goings at their residence. Besides, he had needed a place to stay since he’d lost the house in the divorce.

  He had purchased a set of high quality remotely accessible microphones that he was going to use to bug their house, but he needed a way to get inside undetected in order to plant them. One day, the HVAC company that the Bartonoviches used was out doing routine maintenance on their system. Silas was home and was watching the Bartonovich house that day. He noticed that Nick and Mia left together shortly after Sasha headed off to school, leaving the HVAC technician alone in the house. Silas had simply walked over with a box containing the bugs, tipped the HVAC tech a hundred dollars to let him in the house, and planted the bugs.

  He had been settled on the kidnapping scheme for some time. He decided that nothing else would provide the leverage he needed to get what he wanted. He had everything planned out except how he was going to get Sasha alone so that he could grab her. Breaking into the house would set off the alarm, and doing something in broad daylight near their house was too risky. Then, when he had heard from the bug in Sasha’s room about her plan to leave the house after dark without her parents’ knowledge, that problem was solved. Finding out that J.T. Thornbacker was her father from the bug in the library was just icing on the cake. He couldn’t resist using J.T. as the courier. The last thing Nick wanted was for J.T. to get caught by the cops – then he would be connected to the prison breakout he had orchestrated and go to jail. Every bit of insurance Silas could get to make certain the authorities stayed out of his way was welcome. Yes, this was going to be sweet revenge indeed.

  Nick Bartonovich reached over to the night stand and picked up his phone. He looked down at the sender and wondered why Sasha was texting him this early in the morning from the next room. He opened the text and read the message. Then he saw the picture that came through next and he immediately jumped up out of bed, ran down the hall to Sasha’s room, and threw open the door.

  “Sasha!” Nick exclaimed. “Sasha, if this is a joke, it isn’t funny. Where are you, sweetheart?” There was no answer.

  By this time, Mia had put on her robe and was walking down the hall to Sasha’s room.

  “What is going on? Where is Sasha?”

  Nick handed Mia his phone.

  “Oh, my God!” Mia exclaimed.

  Mia and Nick began a hurried search of the house, each of them calling her name as they checked each floor, hoping and praying this was all a joke. When they had gone through every room, they met back up in the kitchen. Nick placed his hands on Mia’s shoulders and looked straight into her eyes to make certain he had her full attention.

  “Mia, I need you to call the airport and have them get the plane fueled and ready to go to Grand Cayman. You stay here and get the money. I’ll call you once I’m in the air and we can work out the details.”

  Nick dressed quickly and left the house for the airport. He pulled out his phone and dialed a number. It was 5:00 a.m. in the Cayman Islands, so it was a long shot that his office administrator would be awake, but he dialed anyway. It rang several times before finally going to voicemail.

  “This is Nick Bartonovich. Drop everything you are doing and call me as soon as you get this message. This is an emergency.”

  He hit the disconnect icon on his phone. His mind was racing. How had Sasha been kidnapped? Why was J.T. being pulled into this? He could only speculate at this point as he drove as fast as he could to reach the airport.

  When Sasha came to, she was sitting in a captain’s chair in the back of an RV. Her hands and feet were duct-taped to the chair, and her mouth was gagged. She could tell by the road noise that the RV was on the move. The drapes on the windows were all drawn, and a curtain which separated the cab of the RV from the rest of the vehicle was also drawn. She could hear country music playing on the radio.

  She began breathing faster as the fear hit her. She tried desperately to break free of her restraints and to scream. After a few minutes of struggling, she realized that she was getting nowhere, and stopped pulling against the restraints. She star
ted looking around to see what information she could gather from her environment that might help her escape or notify someone that she was a captive.

  It was an hour or more before the RV slowed to a stop. Sasha could hear the driver getting up from the driver’s seat. She heard the curtain rustle as the driver stepped back into the main cabin. Sasha’s chair was turned to face the rear of the vehicle, so she couldn’t yet see her kidnapper. A mixture of fear and curiosity gripped her as she waited to see who it was and what they would do next. Silas stepped in front of Sasha and sat down on the couch across from her.

  “I’m glad to see you are awake,” Silas began. “I’m not planning on hurting you, Sasha. You are simply a means to an end. You see, your daddy has a lot of money. And he owes me. But what you need to know right now is that, as long as you do what I tell you to do, I won’t hurt you. On the other hand, if you try to escape or start screaming, then I will hurt you. Do we understand each other?”

  Sasha nodded her head up and down to indicate that she understood.

  “Good. Right now, we are off of the interstate and pulled over on a side road. There’s nobody here to hear you if you scream, so don’t even try it. I’m going to let you go now so that you can go to the restroom here in the RV and get something to eat and drink. If you cooperate with me, this doesn’t have to be a horrible experience.”

  Silas produced a knife and began cutting away the restraints from one foot, then the other. He did the wrists last, letting Sasha remove the gag herself. Sasha eyed him warily the entire time, wondering if he was going to assault her or if he was telling the truth. She massaged her wrists where the duct tape had been constricting the blood flow as she walked over to the lavatory.

  The bathroom ventilation window was too small for her to fit through and the privacy glass obstructed her view, but she was able to get a look at the surrounding area. All she saw was the woods. After she had relieved herself, she began looking around for anything she might use as a weapon or to cut the duct tape with, but she didn’t find anything. She finally decided that she couldn’t stay in the bathroom forever and came back out.

  True to his word, there was a bottle of water and a pre-packaged sandwich sitting on the table for her when she came out. Silas motioned for her to sit down opposite him, where the food was placed, and she complied. She ate the sandwich, which tasted just shy of edible, and drank half of the water before Silas looked at his watch.

  “O.k., time’s up, back in the chair; we have a long way to go yet.”

  “Where are you taking me?” Sasha asked.

  “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that,” Silas replied.

  Sasha thought about making a break for the door on the way back to the chair, but Silas had positioned himself strategically in front of the door as he motioned for her to sit back down in the captain’s chair. She reluctantly complied and sat back down. He picked up the duct tape and began securing her to the chair once more. When he was done with the duct tape and gag, he went back to the front of the RV and soon they were back on their way to wherever it was that they were going. As they drove down the road once more, Sasha prayed to God that Nick and Mia would give this man whatever he wanted so that he would let her go back to her family.

  Chapter Forty

  Nick Bartonovich exited the plane practically jogging down the steps to the awaiting car. Tammy, his local office administrator, was sitting in the back seat. The driver opened the back door for Nick and then sprinted around the front of the car to the driver’s side. Nick had prepped Tammy on the phone about what he needed done while he was in the air. He turned to her as soon as the door was shut, hoping everything was taken care of.

  “Give me a status report,” Nick said.

  “He is in the house out on Rum Point. I have a local resource out there right now watching him. Sam was seen this morning watering his garden and hasn’t left the house since,” she reported.

  “Good work, Tammy. Jared,” Nick said, addressing the driver, “I want you to come with me to the door just in case the greeting is less than amicable.”

  Jared nodded as he glanced at Nick’s face in the rearview mirror. Jared was one of a few local heavies that worked for Nick from time to time as drivers and/or security personnel. He was a first-rate martial artist, not to mention that he was also a body builder who could probably bench-press a small car.

  It took less than fifteen minutes to arrive at the house. Nick didn’t wait for Jared to come around and open his door. He exited the car and briskly walked up the ramp to the side door of the house. Jared had to jog the first few steps to catch up. Nick rang the doorbell and looked down at his watch impatiently as he waited for someone to answer the door.

  J.T. had just finished his morning coffee and was about to log in to his online brokerage account to check on his investments when he heard the door ring. He glanced over at the security camera monitor that he had installed on the side of his desk before getting up. When he saw who it was, he couldn’t believe his eyes. He switched the view on the monitor to single out that lone camera for magnification, just to make certain. His heart started beating faster. He grabbed his cell phone and quickly sent out a text, and then he opened a side drawer and pulled out a Smith and Wesson .45 caliber revolver before he went to answer the door.

  Nick was reaching his finger down to depress the doorbell once more when the door finally opened. J.T. was standing there with the gun in one hand, pointed down at the floor. He said nothing, but stared at Nick warily, waiting.

  “Hello J.T.,” Nick said without smiling, “I need your help.”

  J.T. was shocked a bit at Nick’s introduction. This wasn’t the Nick he knew from years before, who demanded cooperation at the point of a gun.

  “What are you doing here, Nick?”

  Nick reached his hand into his coat jacket pocket. J.T. started to raise the pistol and Jared started to grab Nick to pull him to the side of the door, out of range of the gun. Nick put out his free hand and said, “Hold on, I’m just going to retrieve my phone.”

  Once J.T. lowered the gun, Nick slowly retrieved his cell phone and pulled up a picture of Sasha. The resemblance to J.T. was unmistakable. He turned the phone around and handed it to J.T.

  “J.T., this is your daughter, Sasha. She is also my adopted daughter. She has been kidnapped, and I need your help to get her back safely.”

  J.T. slowly reached forth his hand and took the cell phone from Nick. He looked down at the face smiling back at him on the phone and felt like he had been hit with a sucker-punch in the stomach.

  “Come in,” he said as he turned around, still clutching the phone in one hand and the gun in the other.

  He walked slowly over to the couch. Once they were seated on the couch, J.T. took his eyes off of the phone and looked up at Nick.

  “This is impossible. This is a young woman. She would’ve been born sometime when I was in prison,” J.T. said.

  “True,” Nick replied.

  “Assuming this is true,” J.T. continued, regaining some of his composure, “who is the mother?”

  “Katrina Byers.”

  J.T.’s mind recalled back almost nineteen years before, to when he had met a young woman who’d worked for Nick. She was an accountant who would give J.T. information from Nick that was deemed too sensitive for email or other forms of communication. They had hit it off instantly. She was funny and vivacious, full of life. J.T. asked her out to dinner after their second meeting. It was a risk that they might be seen together and his connection with Nick might be discovered, but she was worth it.

  Then the investigation began. Nick and J.T. terminated communication with each other. They wanted to avoid being discovered working together, bilking the company that J.T. was currently working for as a CEO. He and Katrina continued to meet on the weekends at a hideaway in the countryside so they wouldn’t be discovered together. During one of their rendezvous, Katrina had asked J.T. what he thought about starting a family one
day and what he thought about children. J.T., always the self-confident, self-centered business man, told her that he didn’t think that would fit in with his plans. He didn’t want children, he said.

  He remembered the fight they had after he made that statement. She accused him of not loving her. He said that he wanted to be with her, but that love, marriage, children – those weren’t things he was interested in. She stormed out of the house and drove back home that night. J.T. tried to contact her, but she didn’t return his calls. Shortly after, he was arrested, and he never heard from her again.

  “How do I know you are telling the truth and that this isn’t just another one of your scams?” J.T. said warily. “And if this girl whom you claim is my daughter is in so much trouble, why isn’t Katrina here to help convince me all of this is true?” he demanded.

  “Katrina is dead, J.T.” Nick replied somberly.

  J.T. could tell Nick was telling the truth. Nick was many things, but in all the years he had known Nick, J.T. could never remember one time that Nick had lied to him.

  “How?” he asked.

  “Kidney failure. She died eight years ago. It’s a long story that I don’t have time to get into, but Mia and I got married. We helped watch Sasha when Katrina was sick. Katrina asked us to adopt her when she knew she wasn’t going to make it. We did. It’s all here.” Nick put his briefcase on the table and opened it up, dumping out a set of papers that included Sasha’s birth certificate, the adoption papers, pictures of Sasha with Katrina, Katrina’s death certificate, and pictures of Mia, Nick, and Sasha together. He waited as J.T. looked through the information. Finally, J.T. looked up at Nick.