Page 3 of In The Darkness

“Thank you. When you get to the gate, tell the guard there your name. He’ll know to let you in.”

The phone went dead, and Nick stuffed it back into his pocket before searching for where his tie had landed hours before when he threw it off before the card game. As he did, he wondered who this Marshall Gilmore was to have a hundred grand to throw around and a guard with a gate protecting his house.

Whoever he was, he’d just made his night.

From behind him, he heard Marius say in a low voice, “Something tells me our guy Nick just got a new job.”

Nick turned around and smiled. “Someone’s got to pay for all this splendor. We don’t want to end up hanging out at Gideon’s and sitting on cardboard boxes, do we?” he joked.

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Chapter Two

Nick stood inan entryway that looked about the size of his entire apartment. Above him hung an enormous wrought iron chandelier he hoped was anchored properly. He shuffled his feet across the white Italian marble floor just in case that huge thing hanging overhead suddenly came crashing down, but a deep voice focused his attention on someone standing just outside the door to a room across the foyer.

“Mr. Hanson, please come in,” a tall, grey haired man wearing a dark three-piece suit said as he waved him toward where he stood.

He did as asked and followed him into a bigger room with dark wood bookcases that rose to the ceiling and took up both the left and right walls. A massive bank of windows made up almost the entire outside wall ahead of him. Everything around him seemed enormous.

Marshall Gilmore extended his arm to offer him a chair in front of the biggest desk Nick had ever seen. Entire villages in Third World countries could eat on that desk. The chairs in front of the desk seemed small in comparison. As he took a seat, he ran his hand along the brown leather arm rest and gold nail heads that made the piece of furniture look sturdy, if not large.

“I’m glad you agreed to come out tonight,” Marshall Gilmore said in a tone that made Nick feel that he had always expected him to do just that and his statement was a mere pleasantry to begin their conversation. “I get the feeling you don’t know who I am, Mr. Hanson. Is that true?”

Unsure if he wanted to admit that truth, Nick quickly scanned the room for any sign of who Marshall Gilmore was and why he should know him. Unfortunately, he found nothing in the stacks of books around him and on the desk in front of him.

He shook him head. “Sorry, I don’t. Should I?”

Leaning back in his chair, Marshall Gilmore nodded. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but yes, you should. If you’ve ever watched television in any part of this country or read a major newspaper on either of the coasts, you’ve met me in some small way. I’m the owner and CEO of Newscom America, the largest media conglomerate in the United States. When news happens in this country, my company brings it to the American people.”

That explained the mansion, security guards at the gate, and the wealth exhibited everywhere around him. It also explained how Marshall Gilmore could drop three hundred grand and not bat an eyelash. Nick had to admit he was impressed.

Regardless, he jumped right in and asked, “So the FBI is unable to handle the case? Why?”

Gilmore grimaced and shook his head. “I have no idea. It is their job, after all, but Persephone’s been gone a week and they have no more clues than they had when this all started.”

Persephone.

Nick hadn’t liked too many subjects in literature class, but he had taken a shining to Greek mythology. The irony that someone had named their daughter after the goddess Hades kidnapped and forced to live in the Underworld and now that very girl had been kidnapped wasn’t lost on him. He had a feeling her father wouldn’t enjoy that irony, though, so he didn’t bother to mention it.

“How old is your daughter, Mr. Gilmore?” he asked as he scanned the desk in front of him for any pictures of a small child.

He handed him an eight by ten picture of the girl, and for a moment, Nick stared at it in shock. Persephone Gilmore wasn’t a child. She was a gorgeous adult woman. Posing alone for the camera, she stood outside the mansion he now sat in wearing a strapless black gown with her long brown hair flowing over her tanned shoulders. Even as she smiled, she looked like a perfect mixture of sexy and sweet, with dark brown doe eyes that made her look innocent and vulnerable.

“She’s twenty-eight. She was taken by a group calling themselves the National Equality Militia last Tuesday night in a parking garage at the Christie Medical Center just outside of Front Royal. I don’t know what the hell their problem is. Probably just another bunch of crackpots who don’t want to work and want people like me to give them handouts. They contacted us with their demands and I immediately sent them exactly what they wanted.”

Nick tore his attention away from the picture of the beautiful woman’s face that sat in his lap and looked across the desk at her father. “How much did they want?”

“Five hundred thousand. I paid the day they told me to—Thursday morning—just like they said to in a black hard shell suitcase left outside a hotel in Alexandria just before nine a.m.”

“And the FBI didn’t catch them picking up the money?” Nick asked, confused they hadn’t been able to handle that.

Gilmore shook his head. “No. They found half a dozen people at that hotel who had suitcases just like it, but the one with the money in it somehow slipped through their hands.”

Nick had seen this happen before, and it usually didn’t mean a happy ending for the person who’d been taken. Once the kidnappers got their money, they had no use for the hostage anymore, so they often killed them.

“Have you spoken to your daughter since then?” he asked, afraid he’d have to be the one to explain to this father that if he hadn’t, she likely wasn’t alive anymore.

That would explain why the FBI didn’t seem to have done their job like he wanted them to. Once that money got into the bad guys’ hands, this became a completely different case.

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