by Kathi Daley
“Okay, so what then?” Parker asked.
Our conversation was halted when Jemma heard from Halo, who was unwilling to give his real name but did admit that he was a Gooseberry local who knew the three boys who went missing. He knew a meeting had been set up with Reaper but wasn’t sure where the meeting was supposed to take place, but he had talked to Trevor, who’d shared with him that an in-person meeting wasn’t really within his comfort zone, so he hadn’t intended to show up.
“At this point, I’m going to assume the meeting was set for Saturday. Of course, the only teen to go missing on Saturday was Kalen, but according to Halo, Trevor knew that whatever the prize at the end of the rainbow was, it required an in-person meeting, and he’d already told Halo he wasn’t interested in anything like that, so maybe Zane felt the same way. Perhaps Kalen was the only one of the three who was willing to attend an in-person meeting Saturday, so he went alone.”
“And then?” Josie asked.
“And then when he got there, he found out that Reaper was only interested in bestowing the reward on the team as a whole, so he enlisted Kalen to convince the other two to show up.” I took a stab at an explanation.
“Exactly,” Jemma said. “Kalen goes to work on Zane and Trevor. Maybe he finally talks Zane into it, and Zane meets up with Kalen Sunday. It sounds like Reaper still wants Trevor, so the other two ask him to meet them, which could be the meetup the man on the boat saw.”
“And then?” Josie asked.
“Maybe Trevor still won’t budge and goes home, so someone, probably Kalen, intercepts Trevor on his way home from school Monday and either convinces him to change his mind or maybe they forcibly take him to Reaper.”
“Okay. I’m following,” Parker said. “But once all three boys are together, then what?”
“I’m not sure,” Jemma said. “I suspect that Reaper might have had a boat. We know that Kalen’s dirt bike was found in the parking lot near the marina, and Zane headed out on a paddleboard, so maybe he met up with the boat somewhere. I don’t know why he would have left his paddleboard in the water, but for now, let’s just say he had a reason for doing so. If Reaper was in a boat and his intent was to take the boys somewhere, they could be anywhere by now.”
“We talked about a cult,” I reminded the group. “There are a lot of private islands in the area. If I was a cult leader, I would think that a private island was a good place to set up camp.”
“Of course, the first group of boys lived in New Mexico. If they had made the meeting with Reaper, he wouldn’t have been on a boat,” Parker pointed out. She looked at Jemma. “When you chatted with Halo, was he willing to tell you anything about the game?”
She nodded. “Halo’s team hasn’t reached as high a level as the missing kids had, but basically, he told me that while the first fourteen levels are mostly a singular quest, once you reach level fifteen, you are assigned to a team. The point of the game from that point on is to work as a team. All three players need to be logged on for anyone to play, so he assumes the game has a way of knowing which players live near the others.”
“Okay,” I said. “So you’re put on a team, then what?”
“Then the team is dropped into a post-apocalyptic world with challenges to meet. There are mutants who want to kill you, acid rain, giant bugs, and man-eating reptiles. You are dropped into this world without food, water, or shelter, all of which you need to find quickly. If you don’t find water before the clock ticks down, you are dead. If you don’t find food or eat the wrong thing, you are dead. If you don’t have shelter and a giant bug or man-eating reptile eats you, you are dead. If one person on the team dies, the game restarts for the entire team, so you have to be as invested in watching everyone else’s back as you are in watching your own.”
“So the game teaches team building and cooperation,” I said.
“Yes, it seems to,” Jemma agreed. “It also teaches survival skills. If the team comes across a berry bush, they must decide if it’s edible or if it’s toxic. They don’t have Google in this world, so they have to find other ways of getting their answers. In a way, it sounds like a game that might teach some valuable skills.”
“I take it the higher you climb, the more difficult the obstacles,” Josie stated.
“That would seem to be the case. Halo said that if at any point it appears as if the team isn’t working together, there are penalties. This isn’t the sort of game you can win or even play on your own.”
“So what now?” Josie asked. “We have to assume the meet-up took place, so whatever was going to happen to the group has happened to them. How do we figure out what that was?”
“There is the team from California who also won the game,” I reminded the gang. “Maybe we can find out what happened to them.”
“I haven’t been able to find real or usernames for this group yet, but I’ll keep trying,” Jemma said.
I think at this point, we all felt sort of stuck, but we had made progress. Still, assuming we were on the right track with the game and the face-to-face meeting that could very well have led to a kidnapping, where were we to go from here? If this Reaper had kidnapped the boys, then chances are they were long gone by now.
It wasn’t until later that afternoon that Jemma was finally able to track down one of the three team members from the group in California.
“So, did this guy know anything?” I asked the minute Jemma ended the chat session.
“He did. He told me that like the group in New Mexico and the group in Gooseberry Bay, once his team beat the final level and had the final key, they were offered a face-to-face meeting with someone named Reaper. They were told they would receive a valuable prize for completing the game but that they had to show up in person. The kid I spoke to, who finally shared that he was a sixteen-year-old named Carl, told me that the two other guys on his team didn’t want to meet with this random guy no matter how cool the prize might be, so he went alone. When he arrived, he was told that the prize was only available to the team as a whole. The man who showed up told Carl that if he could get the other two members of the team on board, he’d give them a chance and set up a second meeting. Carl shared that he really wanted to find out what the prize was since he just knew it would be something awesome, so he agreed to talk to his friends, and a second meeting was set up for all three to meet with Reaper. Once Carl met with the others, they managed to convince him that the whole thing seemed creepy, so none of them showed up for the second meeting. Like the first group, all their games reset to the first level at this point.”
“So if this Carl met with Reaper, then he can describe him,” Josie pointed out.
“Sort of. Reaper wore a black mask that covered the lower portion of his face. Carl described the guy as tall, at least six foot five, with black eyes and black hair. He said he was thin, and his complexion appeared to be pale, although he could only see a strip of flesh between the mask and his hairline. He wore black clothing, black shoes, and a black cape. Carl said that Reaper reminded him of Zorro.”
“Doesn’t sound like a lot to go on,” I admitted.
“It doesn’t, but the man did have a distinctive ring. The ornament was worn on the man’s right hand and featured four small circles overlapping in the center. The way Carl described it, I pictured a Venn diagram. One circle, the one at the top, was gold and held no stone. The other three circles were silver. One of the silver circles had a small black stone, while one had a green stone, and the other stone was red.”
“So, if we can find the ring, maybe we can find the man,” I said.
“Sounds like a longshot,” Parker commented.
“It sounds pretty near impossible,” Jemma admitted, “but unless anyone has a better idea…”
We all agreed we didn’t, so Jemma got to work searching the World Wide Web for some trace of the man we believed had taken three innocent kids for reasons we could only guess at.
Chapter 15
Either by luck or by fate, Jemma wa
s actually able to track down someone who recognized the ring once she’d posted a sketch in every relevant chat room she could think of. The man who hit her back told her that a man named Darryl Quinn, who lived on a private island off the coast of Oregon and spent most of his time gaming and attending gaming conventions, owned a ring that fit her description to a T. Apparently, he was also a guru of sorts who’d linked himself to the game through the software the man at the comic book and video game store showed us after he’d discovered that the game taught many of the same lessons in self-reliance and teamwork he tried to teach his followers.
Even though we’d figured out who the man was and where he could probably be found, we weren’t equipped to storm the island and rescue the kids, so Parker took all the evidence we’d managed to gather, along with the theory we’d worked up and once again went to talk to Deputy Todd. This time, he took things seriously and called in the FBI, which I thought he’d done in the beginning, but hadn’t. The FBI located the island, and by the end of the day, all three boys had been found.
The thing I found the most surprising was that all three boys had ended up voluntarily going with Darryl. Once he had them on board his boat, he made them see that the only way out of the pain they’d found themselves living in was to take back their power and learn to make their own decisions. Reaper used the lessons learned through the game to convince them that they had what it took to take care of themselves, even in a hostile environment.
Of course, even though the man had been able to talk the kids into voluntarily going with him, they were only fifteen, so he was arrested for kidnapping and would face trial at some point in the future. I still wasn’t sure why he’d targeted the boys or how he knew what was going on in each player’s life. I wasn’t sure why he insisted on having all three boys on board before making his offer of asylum either, but it did seem that teamwork was a big theme with him.
All of the other followers living on the island were adults who chose to be there, so they hadn’t proved to be a threat to Darryl’s freedom. The fact that he seemed to have targeted minors seemed odd to us, but I supposed he must have had his reasons. The boys all reported that they’d been treated well during their stay, but I supposed that might have changed if they’d been there longer.
Josie had to work today, and Parker had a story to file, so it was just Jemma and me who met to talk things over.
“The fact that this man sought out three fifteen-year-olds and then convinced them to go with him is super creepy, but after we identified the man, I took a look at exactly what he is doing on that island,” she said.
“And?”
“And in theory, the ideas he teaches are pretty functional. He’s big into the concept of being part of a team and the game, which he apparently helped develop, only allows for a team to succeed. If one member of the team goes off on their own, the entire team suffers, but if the team works together to make decisions and handle any work that needs to be accomplished, they flourish. Of course, the idea of teamwork and selflessness when interacting with a team isn’t a new concept. It’s been around for years, but there aren’t a lot of people who are really adept at putting others before themselves and working for the greater good rather than focusing on what is best for each individual.”
“I wonder what will happen to the colony on the island now that Daryl is in jail.”
Jemma shrugged. “I suppose if Daryl did a good job teaching teamwork and group survival, the men and women who live there will be able to figure it out. It is an interesting social experiment. Actually, I kind of like the part of the game that dictates that if one team member dies in the game, all the team members die. It seems like a good lesson in watching the back of your fellow man as well as your own.”
“Yeah. The man seemed to have insight, but he was crazy. Any stable adult would know you can’t just recruit a group of kids to join your little cult and not find yourself in a whole lot of hot water.” I paused and looked out the window at the bay. “Have you heard if the boys came home willingly, or were they upset to leave?”
“I’m not sure. I guess if the boys didn’t want to leave, their parents are going to need to keep an eye on them. It seems to me they might prove to be a high risk for running away again. I get that they were coerced to run the first time, but now that they’ve had a taste of freedom…”
“Yeah. I can see someone like Zane chucking it all and trying again on his own. Kalen too, for that matter.”
Jemma got up and grabbed a couple bottles of water. She handed me one. “So now that you’ve solved Cora’s case by helping to find Zane and you’ve solved Ellery’s case by identifying the woman who most likely owned the charm bracelet, what’s next for you?”
“I actually got a call this morning from a man who wants to track down his daughter. She’s an adult, not a kid, so I’ll need to consider things carefully. I’d hate to put a father and daughter in touch with each other if the daughter doesn’t want to be found.”
“So, what’s this guy’s story?”
“He said that he and his daughter fought when she was just eighteen, and she took off. He never saw or heard from her again, but he’s tracked her to Gooseberry Bay. He doesn’t necessarily think she’s here now, but she was here a year ago, and he’s hoping I can pick up her trail. Like I said, I’m hesitant. This young woman might have a good reason to want to avoid the man. Still, he told me that his wife has been diagnosed with cancer, and while she’s getting treatment and her prognosis is good, having to face a life-and-death situation has made him realize that it’s time for the silly fight with his daughter to end.”
“I guess you can track the girl down and explain things. If she wants to reconnect with her parents, it can be her call.”
I took a sip of my water. “That’s what I was thinking. I’m going to meet with the man in person Thursday. I guess I’ll decide what to do then.”
Jemma and I decided to take a walk. It was a gorgeous day, and it seemed that the dogs were feeling antsy. It was nice to have friends to share the everyday moments of my life with. I didn’t come to Gooseberry Bay looking for friends, but at this point, I didn’t know what I’d do without them.
Chapter 16
It had been two weeks since we’d found Rosalie, and it almost two weeks since we’d figured out how a seemingly innocent video game had led to recruitment for a real-world cult. Adam had called to let me know he was back in town, and we had plans to meet for lunch so I could fill him in on everything he’d missed while he’d been away.
In the meantime, I’d decided to go for a long walk along the waterline with the dogs. Like most days in Gooseberry Bay, the weather was absolutely perfect. I’d let the dogs take a long swim, and we were on our way back to the cottage when Ellery called.
“Ellery. It’s so good to hear your voice. How are things?” I asked.
“Really good. I finally decided to be brave and call Rosalie.”
“And?” I asked.
“I briefly explained the reason for my call, and after a much longer stretch of silence than I was comfortable with, she eventually began to cry. Once we got past that, I explained in detail who I was and why I’d tracked her down. I shared that I had the charm bracelet, and I shared the details of my trip to Gooseberry Bay, looking for answers. When I finally got around to the details of how we’d ended up with her name, she admitted that she had been the one who abandoned a baby in a church north of Seattle.”
“So, are you going to meet?” I asked, hoping that the woman didn’t simply tell her that she was uninterested in a relationship and blow her off.
“We are; next weekend. Rose said that her family doesn’t know about me, so she’s coming to me so we can really talk. She admitted that it is a complicated situation and that she needs to figure out how to handle things, but she very much wants to meet me.”
“That’s wonderful, Ellery. I’m glad it all worked out.”
“We still have some things to figure out, but I feel
like a huge gap in my life has been closed. I really can’t thank you enough.”
“No need to thank me. I was happy to help. Did Rosalie tell you why she left you in a church?”
“She told me that her parents were super strict and that her dad tended to rule with an iron fist. He was a preacher by trade, but he was the sort of preacher who was all about penance and punishment. Rose told me that it was her opinion that her father simply ignored all the parts of the Bible that weren’t directly related to those topics. In his world, there was no room for tolerance or forgiveness.”
“That sounds awful,” I said.
“That’s what I thought,” Ellery shared. “Rose told me that she was just seventeen when she got pregnant. She also shared that by the time she found out she was pregnant, the father of the baby, who’d been in the Navy, had shipped out. Rose was all alone and couldn’t go to her family, so she ran away. She wanted the baby to be raised in a kind and loving Christian family, and she wanted to be sure her parents would never know about the baby, so she decided to leave me in a church that she’d attended a few times in the past. Rose told me she loved me and hated to leave me, but she also assured me that if her father had found out about me, he would have forced her to let him raise me in his house of hatred and intolerance, and that was something she’d never allow. She admitted that there might have been a better way to go about things, but she did what she knew to do at the time and then prayed that her baby would find the sort of family she’d always wished she’d had. She was happy to hear that I adored my adoptive parents and couldn’t have asked for a better childhood.”
Ellery and I chatted for over an hour before she said that she had to go. I was happy with the way things had worked out, and she’d told me that she was happy as well. I knew that Adam would be by to pick me up for our lunch date in just over an hour, so once I’d arrived at the cottage, I headed inside to get ready.
