Chapter 10 - Jason Calls Helen
At 2:13 a.m., Helen’s phone rang.
The number was blocked.
She answered.
Jason spoke before she could say his name.
“You need to stop.”
Helen turned on the speaker so Tom could hear.
“Where is Rose?”
“She is safe.”
“With whom?”
“That isn’t your concern.”
“She is our granddaughter.”
“She is my daughter.”
Tom moved closer to the phone.
“You arranged a funeral with another woman’s body.”
Jason remained silent.
Helen continued.
“The coroner found the medication.”
His breathing changed.
“You don’t understand what Claire was like after the birth.”
Helen’s voice hardened.
“I spoke to her. She was afraid of you.”
“She was unstable.”
“Then why forge the release?”
Another silence.
Jason said, “If you keep pushing, you may never see Rose.”
Tom grabbed the phone.
“If you hurt that baby—”
“I would never hurt my daughter.”
“You let her mother die.”
The line went dead.
Officer Shaw traced the call to a roadside tower near Sandusky.
Police narrowed the search.
Hotels.
Rental homes.
Clinics.
Monica’s relatives.
Helen replayed Jason’s words.
If you keep pushing, you may never see Rose.
He was using the baby as leverage.
Not hiding from police alone.
He wanted something.
At 4:30 a.m., an email arrived in Helen’s account.
The message demanded that she and Tom stop challenging Claire’s death.
They were to publicly state that Jason had acted as a loving husband and that the coffin confusion resulted from funeral-home error.
In return, Jason would “consider family contact” with Rose.
Attached was a photograph.
Rose lay asleep in a portable crib.
Beside her was that day’s newspaper.
She was alive.
Helen pressed both hands against the screen.
Tom called Officer Shaw.
The image metadata had been removed.
But in the corner of the photograph, reflected in a dark window, was a lighthouse.
Investigators recognized it.
Marblehead Lighthouse.
May you like
Jason was near the lake.
👉 Rose was alive—but Jason had turned his newborn daughter into the final shield between himself and arrest.
