Jason's Network

by Aiden Vaughan

  “Thanks,” Jamie said in a weak voice. “How did you find us?”

  “Let’s just say we went on a scavenger hunt of our own,” Jason replied. “Now I am going to call for help. Next I will do what I can to release you from those shackles holding your wrists.” Jason got up and went outside onto the porch to make a cell phone call. He decided the easiest thing to do was call his mom, since she was with Abigail and there was a deputy sheriff there who could easily bring in the authorities.

  Meanwhile Daniel was comforting Olivia who was in sad shape after being chained to the wall for over 24 hours. Olivia was in tears and very upset about what had happened to her and Jamie and her total loss of control while a helpless prisoner.

  He held her in his arms and said, “Don’t worry, Olivia. I won’t leave you. Soon you will be freed from this wall and reunited with your mom.”

  Olivia continued crying, but her tears were now of relief. “Please hold me,” she said to Daniel in a soft voice.

  A few minutes later, Jason came back inside the cabin. He put his cell phone up to Jamie’s ear. “It’s your mom on the line, Jamie.”

  “Jamie is that you?” Abigail’s voice came the cell phone speaker.

  “Yeah, Mom, it’s me,” Jamie said with relief in his voice. “We have been kept prisoner in this cabin by a weird pirate who pointed a gun at us and then tied us up. We thought we were on a treasure hunt. I’ll explain later.”

  “It sounds like a nightmare. I will be with you as soon as I can. You can tell me everything then, especially the part about how you got out of the day care center. I love you Jamie and am so happy that you are Olivia are safe. Now let me speak with Olivia.”

  The phone was handed over to Daniel, who held it up to Olivia’s ear. “Olivia, is that you? It is so good to hear your voice!”

  “Mom,” Olivia began, and then was overcome with emotion.

  “Don’t worry about a thing, honey. I will be there as soon as I can get there. I love you, Olivia.”

  It was decided that a med-evac helicopter would be flown in to take Jamie and Olivia to a hospital for examination and recovery from their ordeal. There was a frontage road around most of the lake, but the entrance to that road was seven miles away from the resort. For anyone at the resort, the quickest way to get to the cabin was by taking the same trail that Jamie, Olivia, Jason, and Daniel had used. After Jason ended his call, Abigail, a couple of resort staff members, and Evelyn Sosa, the deputy sheriff made their way toward the northeastern side of the resort and the lake trail.

  Back at the cabin, Jason and Daniel were searching for any kind of tool that could free Jamie and Olivia from the shackles that chained their wrists to the wall. The sight of Jamie and Olivia treated so cruelly greatly angered Daniel. “Why would someone want to treat kids like this?” he kept muttering to himself as he looked around. Eventually Daniel found an old toolbox with a hammer, chisel, and hacksaw in it. With the hammer and chisel, Daniel chipped away at the wood around the tip of one of the bolts fastening Olivia’s chains to the wall. Then he had Jason saw away at that bolt while he worked on one of the bolts holding Jamie’s wrist to the wall.

  The work of removing the bolts from the wall was slow and exasperating, but eventually they were able to free Olivia and then Jamie. Although the shackles were still around the kids’ wrists, at least they could relax their arms. They now had some mobility and could use the bathroom. Then Jason gave them each one of the snacks he had brought along.

  Jason told them, “I don’t have much for you to eat, but there is plenty of water. When the authorities get here, I’m sure that getting you both something to eat will be a high priority. In the meantime, I would like to work on sawing off these shackles, if you will be patient enough for me to do that. You will have to sit still while I saw; otherwise you could be hurt by the saw, and that’s the last thing I want to do. Outside help will arrive soon and they will have more tools and equipment.”

  Olivia was too freaked out to sit patiently. She just wanted to snuggle in Daniel’s arms, and he sat with her singing a simple folk song to relax her. Jamie did want the shackles off his wrists right away, so he sat at a table in the kitchen area while Jason worked on sawing them off. Just after Jason was successful in cutting the shackle off of Jamie’s right hand, the first outside help arrived.

  It was people from the resort, Deputy Sheriff Evelyn Sosa, and Abigail Newton. When Abigail saw her two children safe again, she burst into tears and quickly the three were in a long embrace. Meanwhile Jason and Daniel talked with Deputy Sosa.

  Within five minutes, they heard the sound of a helicopter approaching. Jason and Daniel went outside to watch it land on the lake. A medical team was soon on shore to check out the condition of Jamie and Olivia and bring them to a hospital. Jason and Daniel walked with them to the cabin, updating them on the condition of the kids.

  Chapter 12

  An Evil World of Pirates

  (Tuesday Afternoon)

  Over the next several days, the story of Jamie and Olivia’s unusual kidnapping and their rescue by Jason and Daniel was all over the news. Once the kids were safe and starting to recover from their ordeal at the cabin, the news stories began to focus on the ‘why’ of the case.

  It turned out that Abigail and her ex-husband Roger had gone through a very bitter divorce. Roger was still angry that Abigail was given full custody of their two children, although he still was allowed bi-weekly visits. Gradually his bitterness turned into hatred and a desire for a cruel revenge. Roger decided that since he could no longer have custody of Jamie and Olivia, neither should Abigail. That was why he concocted the plan to lure the two kids away from the resort through a scavenger hunt game.

  Roger’s plan was particularly insidious and cruel. When Jamie and Olivia arrived at the cabin, they were already convinced that being captured by pirates was part of the game. Even as they were put in shackles and gagged, they still thought that Peter Pan would rescue them. Only the rescue was not ever to happen! Jamie and Olivia were to die a slow agonizing death in captivity, chained to the wall.

  The report about the two kids matching Jamie and Olivia’s description was a clever diversion set up by Roger. He had spent some time in the nearby town looking for two kids with a single parent mom that looked similar to Jamie and Olivia. Eventually, he found whom he was searching for, just by observing the neighborhoods and listening to what people had to say. After tracking the two kids that did look like Jamie and Olivia to their house, Roger went to the house, knocked on the door and talked to their mother.

  Roger told her that he was scouting locations for vacation commercials, and needed to make a quick video of two kids walking through the nearby resort. “I know it may seem a little forward of me, but you can supervise the whole video shoot, and as a reward you will receive three two day passes to Marine World in Vallejo along with a motel voucher and two hundred dollars for travel and food expenses. The only catch is that you have to use them right away because they are seasonal and the motel reservation is for Monday night. Our video should only take forty-five minutes to complete. If you then hustle down there, you can arrive in a couple of hours, spend the day in the park, stay in the motel overnight, have a second day at the park, and be home Tuesday evening. That’s a pretty good deal for a tiny bit of work Monday morning.”

  When the mother agreed, Roger gave her a couple of sets of clothing and sneakers for her kids to wear during the shoot. “There is a certain look we need, and it also has to do with lighting issues that will be important when the actual commercial is made. Your kids can keep the clothing. If the clothes don’t fit perfectly, they can change into their regular clothes later, after the shooting is over.” The clothing was actually some of Jamie and Olivia’s clothing that was left at Roger’s place during one of their visits.

  That was how Roger created the impression that Jamie and Olivia ran away out the south entrance of the resort, when in actuality they went out of the resort into the woods o
n the northeast side.

  Everyone was shocked and appalled by the motives of Roger Newton. How could anyone hate his ex-wife so much that he would be willing to sacrifice his own son and daughter to make her suffer? Even more shocking was that his plan included making his kids suffer agonizing slow deaths by starvation and dehydration. How could someone do that to his own innocent children?

  As things turned out, no one would ever find out for sure. Sometime after Roger Newton left Jamie and Olivia prisoner at the cabin, he drove to a scenic overlook and parked his car. While seated in the car, he took his own life with a gunshot to the head. He didn’t leave a note.

  Later when Jason and Daniel talked to Joe Connor about this case and Roger Newton’s suicide, Joe suggested that suicide might have been his plan all along. “It seems inconceivable to me that those kids wouldn’t have been found before they could starve to death. If you hadn’t figured it out, I’m sure the sheriff and the rescue team would have widened the search to include the areas all around the resort. And that cabin would have been a logical place to search. My gut feeling is that Roger Newton wanted his kids to survive in the long run, but he wanted them to go through some suffering and Abigail to experience the horror of having her kids go missing. It was his way of punishing them for abandoning him.”

  “I don’t get the part about him wanting to torture his own kids,” Daniel said. “It seemed like they were on good terms. If they weren’t, why would Jamie want to go ahead with the scavenger hunt?”

  “I think Newton manipulated his kids with the promise of an exciting adventure and the lure of gold,” Joe replied. “A nine-year-old and an eleven-year-old kid aren’t going to understand that they were being manipulated. And being innocent kids, they still had trust in their father even though they were separated from him most of the time.”

  “I don’t know who is creepier — this Newton guy or some of the other predators we have fought against!” Jason said with a little exasperation in his voice. “And now these kids will have to spend the rest of their lives knowing that their biological father hated them enough to kidnap them and leave them to die in that cabin chained to the wall and gagged.”

  “Eventually those kids will need some serious counseling to get through it all. Perhaps not so much now as later, when they are old enough to understand the true implications of what happened and what was done to them,” Joe concluded.

  “I’ll make sure that the Whatever Foundation is there for them when that time comes,” Jason said decisively. “When I think about what was done to those kids, I just want to go and hold them in my arms and say, ‘Most people are not like Roger Newton, they really aren’t!’”

  “As are the vast majority of other people, Jason,” Joe said. “I think that Jamie and Olivia will survive quite nicely just for that reason.”

  “I sure hope so,” Daniel added. “I still get filled with anger when I replay the scene of when Jason and I found those kids chained to the wall and suffering. Life is definitely not fair at times!”

  * * * * *

  Jamie and Olivia Newton spent a couple of days in a hospital recovering from their ordeal in the cabin. Then they were able to return home with their mother, Abigail. After spending some time with Jason and Laura (see Chapter 13), Abigail took them on an extended visit to their grandparents who lived on a farm in central California. She did this partly for the company, and to get away from all of the media attention, which had started to die away now that the children were safe and the case was solved.

  Jamie and Olivia had a good time interacting with their grandparents and other relatives who made a point of visiting them on the farm. They enjoyed being with the farm animals and the slower pace of country life. But to close this chapter in their lives, they really needed to return to school and their circle of friends their own age. After two weeks, Abigail, Jamie, and Olivia returned to their home and started to resume their normal lives again.

  Chapter 13

  The Fight Against Predators

  (Thursday and Friday)

  After his experience with the Newton kids, Jason was more determined than ever to fight against predatory behavior. Thursday, the day after he returned from his vacation with his parents and Daniel, he convened a special board meeting at the Whatever Foundation to discuss new ways to root out predators and predatory behavior. During the meeting, the board discussed the Newton case.

  “I don’t know if there was any way to prevent what Roger Newton did to his children,” Jason stated, “but just the fact that Daniel and I were in communication with them made it possible to put some clues together and figure out what had happened to them. I only wish we were able to do so sooner. Jamie and Olivia had a very miserable 24 hours while kept captive in that log cabin.”

  “In other similar scenarios, those kids could have been killed,” Joe Connor responded. “That is normally what happens to most kids who are kidnapped for predatory reasons. However, in this case there was the family element, except that Roger Newton didn’t take his children to protest his lack of custody. His plan all along was for revenge.”

  “I was so angry when I saw had been done to those kids,” Daniel said with an edge to his voice. “They didn’t deserve what they were put through, although I am happy that they weren’t killed or injured further.”

  “It sure was a deadly game that Roger Newton played with his kids,” Jason said. “Now what can we do as a foundation to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future?”

  “We are getting set up for your school assemblies later this month,” Jill Baines, the foundation office manager added. “Maybe we need to make a bigger splash when we do have the assemblies.”

  “I can arrange for media coverage, if that’s what you would like,” Ruth Fiorre, the foundation’s publicity director suggested.

  “I have been working on a web presence for your plan,” the foundation’s Webmaster said. “After all Jason’s Network is a natural for the Internet. Most teenagers are already on there daily with their smart phones, tablets, and computers.

  “Our goal is to get at least one or two kids in every neighborhood to participate in the program,” Jason stated. “We want to make it easy for them to get involved or report any suspicious behavior.”

  “How do we filter the information that comes in?” Joe Connor asked. “After all we are dealing with kids, some of whom might not be all that reliable in what they report.”

  “We have to make it very clear to them how serious what we are doing is,” Daniel replied. “They need to know that everything that is reported will be investigated. If someone is giving us bogus information then they will get into trouble. I think most kids could understand and respect that.”

  “Abusive situations often go on for a long time before they are discovered, especially when it is another family member responsible,” Joe Connor continued.

  “I think that you need to make it clear to the kids joining your network that this is not an instantaneous solution by any means,” Ruth Fiorre said. “At the same time they must be told that doing nothing is even worse.”

  “And the most important message for these kids is that abuse can only exist in privacy. The thing that a predator fears more than anything is public exposure of what he has been doing. That is our goal: to keep predators away from children and put a stop to their evil and harmful behavior!”

  After further discussion, it was agreed to put more emphasis and funding into the Jason’s Network campaign. Jason was pleased about that. After the meeting he talked with Daniel for a few minutes.

  “I like the direction we are going,” Jason told Daniel. “You and the band are going to be an important part of it when we start having our assemblies.”

  “That is quite a responsibility for us,” Daniel replied, “not only performing but talking about how some of us were affected by abusive situations. I hope that the band will remain comfortable with the idea once we get started. From a musical standpoint this will be very good
for the band, getting some good public performance time in with the same type of audience we will encounter on our tour this summer.”

  “You guys are a natural fit for this kind of assembly,” Jason said encouragingly. “I sure hope the assemblies work out. As we give them, we can tweak things that need improvement.”

  “I’ll tell the band about this meeting at our rehearsal tomorrow. We want to have the right music and stories to present at these assemblies.”

  * * * * *

  Jason devoted the next day to follow up with the Newton case. He personally went to deliver aid and assistance to Jamie and Olivia and their mother, Abigail, who was devastated by what was done to her children and the fact that it was her ex-husband responsible for attempting to murder them as a way to get back at her. He brought Laura with him, and they took the kids and their mom out on a shopping spree.

  Going out shopping was a great diversion for the Newton family. Jamie and Olivia had just been released from the hospital the day before and then Abigail drove them to their home in the Bay Area. Next they were planning to stay with their grandparents for a couple of weeks. Knowing this Jason wanted to get in some time with the family before they left, because he was aware of some of the things that Jamie especially might be experiencing.

  After they returned from their shopping spree, Laura, Abigail and Olivia got involved putting away the clothing they had purchased and doing stuff in the kitchen. In the living room, Jason sat down with Jamie and gave him a pep talk. First they just talked about sports and other typical kid things like the latest games and shows and movies on television. Then Jason gradually steered the conversation around to Jamie’s inner emotions and feelings. “Is there anything you would like to ask me about, you know, things that are bugging you or you don’t understand? After all, you have been through a lot lately. I think I know what you are going through because I have experienced some of the same feelings myself.”