Utopian Day

by C. L. Wells

  He motioned to James with his thumb, indicating he should exit the SUV he was driving. As soon as James was out of the seat, Victor jumped in. Once his men were in, he hit the gas and tore down the alleyway and up the old mountain road, following the path Silas’ Jeep had taken. Victor took a tracking device out of one of the utility pouches on his uniform and turned it on. A blinking dot appeared towards the edge of the screen. He knew he had to keep that dot within a two-mile radius or the transmitter that he had put in the bottom of the cooler would be out of range.

  Silas stopped the Jeep and got out. He probably only had a few minutes head start before some of Nick Bartonovich’s hired guns would be storming up the mountain to hunt him down. He walked to the uphill side of the road, to a large pile of logs that were being held in place by three upright posts supported by a rope tied between two large trees. Silas took out his knife and quickly sawed through the rope, making sure to stand behind the tree and out of the way of the soon-to-be rolling logs as he did.

  Once the rope was severed, the mass of logs quickly rolled down onto the road below Silas’ Jeep, hopelessly blocking the road for any following vehicles. Silas jumped back in the Jeep and drove away. He wanted to be long gone when his pursuers arrived. While they couldn’t pass this point with a vehicle, they could still shoot him if he didn’t make it around the next bend in the winding road first.

  The SUV Victor was driving lurched up the mountainous road at a speed almost too high for safety, tearing around the corners and on up the next incline in an effort to gain on the man they were pursuing. As Victor rounded the next bend, he saw the mass of logs up ahead and brought the vehicle to a stop about twenty yards away. He peered through the window, looking around to see if there was someone positioned nearby to ambush them.

  “You two take the upper side; Miles and I will take the lower side,” he ordered.

  The men exited the vehicle with their weapons drawn, immediately taking cover behind the available trees as they worked their way forward and beyond the pile of logs that blockaded the roadway. Once they had ascertained there was no one waiting in ambush, they re-grouped on the far-side of the log jam from where they had parked their vehicle.

  Victor looked down at the mass of logs, estimating several of the logs weighed in at four or five hundred pounds each. There was no way they were going to move them quickly, especially since their SUVs didn’t come equipped with winches. The forest above and below the road was too steep and forested to drive around the log jam. He spoke into his two-way radio.

  “Tommy, is everything stable back down there?” he asked.

  “Yes. We’ve searched practically the whole town. No one else is here but us,” he replied.

  “Good. You and Vlad get up here ASAP. We need to move some logs that our man blocked the road with.”

  “O.k., we’re on our way.”

  Forty-five minutes later, Victor’s team was finished clearing the road so that the SUVs could pass. The exhausted team re-entered their vehicles and continued the search for the kidnapper. Victor periodically checked the tracking device on the off chance that the kidnapper’s location would re-appear on the screen. After about thirty minutes of driving, a blip suddenly appeared.

  “We’ve got our target on the tracking screen, a little over two klicks out,” he said to the rest of the team.

  As they approached the target, Victor began to slow down. He and his men were scanning the surrounding areas, trying to get a visual on the target. They were practically on top of the signal, but still they could see nothing. Victor stopped the car and said into his microphone, “Fan out and find this scum bag. We’re practically on top of the transmitter.”

  The team exited the vehicles and fanned out in practiced fashion, with three men sweeping uphill and three down. They located the cooler in a few minutes, discarded and empty on the downhill side of the road. They quickly re-entered their vehicles and resumed the drive along the mountain road, which had leveled off and begun to descend slightly. Around the next bend, the road intersected a paved road. Victor slammed his fist down on the dashboard of the SUV, realizing that their chances of finding the kidnapper had just plummeted.

  The team split up, taking opposite directions on the paved road. They drove for another hour before Victor called off the search and headed back to Toakama.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  “Are you o.k.?” Mia said to Sasha, looking at her bruised eye and cut lip. All she felt for the kidnapper at that moment was hatred. She prayed he hadn’t sexually assaulted her daughter. God help him if he had. On second thought, she hoped God wouldn’t help him in that case.

  “I’m o.k.,” Sasha said, giving Mia another hug. “I’m just so glad to be free now.”

  “Sasha, I need you to be honest with me,” Nick said. “Did that man touch you inappropriately? Did he rape you?”

  “No. No. he didn’t,” she replied.

  “Guys, you should come see this,” James yelled from down the alleyway that Victor had driven down earlier.

  Everyone walked en masse down the alleyway to where James and Laura were standing. There, behind the building, was the RV where Sasha had been held captive.

  “That’s where he kept me hostage,” Sasha informed them.

  Mia left Sasha’s side and walked determinedly towards the RV. She went to the driver’s door, opening it up, and began to look around the cab.

  “What is she doing?” J.T. asked Nick.

  “She’s looking for clues to who this man is or where he went. She’s quite good at it, actually. It’s a skill she developed years ago when she used to track down some of our more recalcitrant debtors,” Nick replied. “I’d wager, if there is anything he left behind that indicates who or where he might be, she’ll find it.”

  “I think I can help you with that,” Sasha replied.

  Nick and J.T. both turned to look at Sasha.

  “Do you know who he is?” asked J.T.

  “Not exactly, only that he said that he had been ripped off by a gambling website that you owned, Nick. He also mentioned that he used to be a cop,” Sasha continued.

  Nick’s face showed a glimmer of recognition, which he quickly hid. “Describe him to me,” he said.

  A quick description of the kidnapper from Sasha confirmed Nick’s suspicions.

  “We’ll get a sketch artist to help draw a picture of him so that we can identify him and stop him from doing things like this to anyone else,” Nick said with finality. He was going to find him alright, and when he did, there would be hell to pay.

  Back in the RV, Mia had conducted a thorough search and collected all the receipts and paperwork that she could find. A quick review of the material indicated that the kidnapper had paid cash for everything except the RV rental, which had required a credit card. The RV rental paperwork she found in the glove box listed the name of Silas McGruder.

  Leaving his real name on the rental agreement was either stupid, sloppy, or a planned deception. Mia had encountered a few of the people she had tracked for Nick in the past who had used this tactic. They had deliberately used their real names to lead her off of their trail just enough to buy an airline ticket using an alias and temporarily escape to some far-off destination, supposedly out of her reach. If that was what Silas had planned, she knew just what to do. Whatever the reason for using his real name, she was anxious to find him as soon as possible.

  Mia exited the RV and walked back to where Nick, J.T., and Sasha were standing.

  “We need to get back to New York, now.”

  Nick nodded in agreement. He turned on his two-way radio, but got nothing but static when he tried to reach Victor. He tried Victor’s phone, but it only went to voice mail. He left a message telling Victor to call him with a report as soon as possible, and let him know they were returning to New York. If Victor had apprehended Silas, they would know soon enough. If not, they needed to get back to New York and start tracking Silas down from there.

  They collecte
d James and Laura, who had finished a cursory search of the remaining town. They had found nothing else that might be of help in tracking down the kidnapper. Everyone piled in to the remaining SUV and headed back to Roanoke. Three hours later, they were in Nick’s plane and headed back to New York.

  The next day, James, Laura, and J.T. boarded Nick’s plane and went back to the Cayman Islands. Even with their new identities, they reasoned it wasn’t safe to stay too long in the States. Before they left, J.T. arranged for Sasha to fly down and visit him in Grand Cayman on her spring break. J.T. and Sasha shared a tearful goodbye as he boarded the plane.

  Within a week, Sasha’s face had healed and life was beginning to return to the new normal. Mia and Nick had insisted that Sasha have a bodyguard for the time being, and she’d had to answer a million questions from her friends due to the fact that he followed her everywhere except to the ladies’ room. Over time, though, it became second nature to have the bodyguard around, and it only irritated her when she went on a date with her new boyfriend.

  Over the next few months, before Sasha visited him on spring break, J.T. kept in touch with her via facebook, twitter, and phone calls, trying to catch up for lost time. He was thankful that she wanted to have a relationship with him and was looking forward to seeing her when she came down to visit. He was determined not to let her slip away the same way he had let her mother exit his life. He had learned many things since going to prison and beginning recovery. He had learned that although relationships could be messy, it was worth it to work through your problems and continue to reach out and invest in relationships with those you loved.

  James had been in contact with a youth center in the United States for several months before the kidnapping episode. Once they were back home, he continued working out the final details to arrange for a yearly retreat in the Cayman Islands for at-risk teens. The youths would fly down and spend a week biking around the island, camping out, and fishing. He wanted to help other kids avoid taking the wrong path like he had. In addition to working on starting the youth camp, he finally convinced Laura to marry him. They had a quiet marriage ceremony in the garden at J.T.’s house. Laura continued to work at the women’s shelter, occasionally providing some extra unlisted services to certain women whose abusive former husbands or boyfriends just couldn’t take the hint.

  Nick and Mia continued to search for Silas. Mia recognized that one of the receipts she’d found in the RV was from a sub-shop in a part of town that she recognized. It was located near where they had obtained the identification documents for J.T., James, and Laura. A visit to the document forger, along with a memory-enhancing bribe, soon revealed the name of Silas’ new alias – Bob Conner. They put Silas’ new name and picture out through their usual channels in hopes of tracking him down, but it had been two months and they still hadn’t heard anything. It appeared that Silas McGruder had fallen off the face of the earth.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Nick and Sasha were sitting on a bench in Central Park. It was a beautiful day. Everything was beginning to bloom as spring made its reappearance, and all seemed right with the world. Walking in the park was something Sasha had done regularly with her mother when she was alive. It calmed her and helped her remember the good times she’d had with her mother. Nick had walked with her through this section of the park many times when Sasha’s mother was sick, and they had continued the practice in the years since.

  “Nick,” Sasha began, “I want to ask you something and I want you to tell me the truth.”

  Nick raised an eyebrow and looked over at Sasha with interest. Whenever she asked him a question like that, he knew what came next was going to be serious. He remembered the first time she had used that phrase with him, “I want you to tell me the truth.” It was after her mother had died. She had asked him then if he believed in Heaven. Nick had never been one to prevaricate. He had always told the truth boldly and without reservation. He was always direct in asking for what he wanted. He admired that same quality in Sasha. And so, when she had asked him that question, he’d told her what he really thought. He simply said, “I don’t know if Heaven exists or not. I can’t say I believe in something that I’m not certain exists.” That seemed to satisfy her and she had never asked him that question again.

  “Go on,” Nick prodded.

  “When that man kidnapped me, he told me that you were a crook and that the money you were paying him for my ransom was stolen from someone else. Is that true?”

  Nick smiled in spite of himself. He regretted what Silas had said to her, but he admired the fact that she was bold enough to confront him about it directly. He looked her in the eyes as he answered.

  “Many years ago, I made a lot of money by conducting illegal business deals. I was convinced that nothing mattered but making money. A lot has changed since then. Now, I’m not going to tell you that everything I do to make money today is completely legal, but I don’t do things the same way anymore. I’m more selective about my business dealings today.”

  “Were my mom and J.T. involved in what you did before?”

  “Yes,” Nick responded flatly, wishing she hadn’t gone in that direction.

  “What did my mom do?”

  “She was an accountant. She helped us launder the money and disguise the transactions so that we didn’t get caught.”

  “But J.T. did get caught. He went to prison for what you all did, right?”

  “Yes, he did.” Nick looked at Sasha, watching the wheels turn in her mind, both regretting the end of her innocence and feeling proud that she was ready to tackle the muddy truth of it all on her own.

  Sasha didn’t ask any more questions. She just turned and watched a man playing frisbee with his dog in the field across from where they were sitting.

  About a week later, Sasha knocked on the door to Nick’s office.

  “Come in,” he said.

  She came in and sat down in one of the big wing-back chairs facing Nick’s desk.

  “What can I do for you today, m’lady?” Nick asked playfully.

  “Be careful what you ask for,” she said in reply.

  “Ah, methinks the lady doth have something weighty on her mind. What is it, my dear?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that conversation we had in the park the other day.”

  “And?”

  “And I want to ask you a few things.”

  “The usual part about telling the truth applies, I suppose,” Nick responded.

  “Yep.”

  Nick prepared himself. “O.k., fire when ready.”

  “Are you and J.T. still working together?”

  “No, my dear. We stopped working together a long time ago. Now we are simply friends who share a relationship with you.”

  “O.k. Next question, sort of. I’ve been thinking a lot about what you all did to make money back then, and I’ve been having a hard time reconciling the fact that I love all three of you, and Mia, too, whom I assume was involved in it with you, as well. I need to be able to process it all somehow, to make sense of it.” Sasha fidgeted with the corner of her shirt with her fingers as she paused before blurting out, “Well, I’m having a hard time with the fact that you were all doing illegal things to make all of this money. There, I said it. I want to undo it but I can’t. So instead, I want you to help me set up a foundation to do good things with that money. I want to do something good with the money you made doing something bad. I want to know that our family is doing something to make the world a better place, not a worse one.”

  Sasha slumped back into the chair, obviously relieved at having spit it out, but unsure about what Nick was going to do with the request she had just made. Nick sat behind his desk with the inscrutable poker face which she could never read. It was the same way he’d looked at her the first time she had asked if she could go out on a date with Teddy Fromeyer. That look betrayed nothing. It was stone. She waited.

  Nick looked off to a painting that hung on the wall behind Sasha. It was
a painting of ancient Rome being re-built after the fire that had burned it down in 64 A.D. He’d always liked that painting. It symbolized something good coming out of a tragedy. Like his marriage to Mia coming out of his battle with cancer, like Sasha coming into their lives out of the tragedy of Katrina’s death. And now he was being given another opportunity to bring something good out of a past that had produced wealth, but no happiness. A past that had produced riches with emptiness that was devoid of more than temporary fulfillment. It provided power and influence, which was nice, but ultimately, it lacked the power to fill one’s soul with real contentment.

  He was not the same man as he once was. True, he was no saint and probably never would be. He still ran an illegal gambling business along with many legitimate gaming enterprises. But as he grew older, he began to see the point that J.T. had made to him years ago on the yacht while they’d been moored outside of Grand Cayman. He wasn’t sure exactly where it came from or if he even believed in God, but he did feel a sense of guilt about some of the things he had done to gain the wealth he had acquired – especially in the early days with J.T.

  His greed to get that money back from J.T. had ultimately paved the way for Sasha’s abduction. Silas wouldn’t have even known she existed if Nick hadn’t hired him to track down the money in the first place. Now, Sasha of all people was beckoning him to come over from the dark side, to turn over a new leaf, to rectify some of the past wrongs. It was as if some cosmic force in the universe, call it God if you like, was luring him to change his ways and become a force for good.

  He stared at the picture for a good few minutes. Sasha could tell he was deep in thought, so she didn’t interrupt him or demand an answer. That’s one thing she had learned from Mia. When dealing with Nick, it was best to wait it out and not push him. He would answer when he was ready.