Page 4 of In The Darkness

But Gilmore nodded and sighed before answering, “Yes. She called just tonight. I know you probably thought they’d killed her after getting the money, but they say they want more. Another five hundred thousand.”

“Will you pay it?”

“I’ll pay anything, Mr. Hanson. Anything to get my daughter back. Look around you. Five hundred thousand is a drop in the bucket compared to what I have, and I’d give my last cent to have Persephone back safely. But I don’t think the FBI can do it. That’s why I called you. I’ve been told you’re the man who can take care of this. I’m told your past experience makes you the perfect man for this job, in fact. Because this isn’t just about finding her and then telling the FBI. This is about finding her and getting her out of the hands of these maniacs. I want someone who can do that and do it fast. Is that you?”

Nick didn’t have to think twice about his answer. Yes, he was the man Marshall Gilmore needed to find and rescue his daughter from whatever this National Equality Militia was. He’d gone undercover more times than he could remember when he was with the bureau, so yes, he could find Persephone Gilmore and get her away from her captors.

“A hundred grand and you tell no one you hired me. I don’t need the FBI getting in my way, and that’s exactly what they’ll do if you tell them I’m working for you, Mr. Gilmore.”

Shaking his head, he frowned. “Fine. They seem more focused on the idea that my daughter is some airheaded debutante out cruising around with this month’s bad boys anyway after the kidnappers sent those pictures to my competitors. I have no compunction to tell them much of anything.”

“What pictures? Did the kidnappers send pictures of your daughter?”

Marshall Gilmore looked confused for a moment at Nick’s ignorance about the pictures and then handed them across the desk with a look of disgust on his face. “They think this shows she’s not a prisoner at all. I told them to go to hell. I know my daughter, Mr. Hanson. She isn’t some poor little rich girl looking for excitement. She’s a nurse, for God’s sake. She’s devoted her adult life to helping people. She’s the most honorable person I know, and to say it looks like she’s having a good time—”

His voice caught on that last word, and Nick looked up from the pictures of Persephone Gilmore at what appeared to be some farm sitting outside on a hay bale and seeming to be as happy as a clam. He wondered if her father might be wrong about how honorable she actually was since the pictures looked pretty damning.

“None of your competitors know where the pictures came from?”

“No.”

“What about how they got here? Courier? Anything that can be traced?” Nick asked.

Marshall Gilmore shook his head. “No. They were left at the guard shack in the middle of the night. Goddamn cowards.”

“If they threatened her, they could get her to do anything they wanted,” Nick said, trying to be supportive as he considered the possibility that this whole case was simply some bored socialite just trying to have fun.

Then again, why would she have some people calling themselves a militia demand money from her own father? Or was it a case that daddy held the purse strings too tight?

“Does your daughter have money of her own?”

Marshall Gilmore nodded. “More than enough for most people, I would say. She draws from a trust fund each year that pays for anything she could want.”

“Then why didn’t they just take that money?” Nick asked, hoping to get Gilmore to give more details about this trust fund.

“It can’t all be taken out at once. It’s meant to give her money for years, not to be blown all at once. It’s how my grandfather did it for his children, how my father did it for my brothers and sisters and me, and it’s how I did it for my three daughters. Anyone who wants a large sum of money would have to come to me.”

“Has anyone come to you for a large sum of money recently? Anyone you turned down perhaps? Anyone who would be desperate enough to kidnap your daughter?”

“No. They say this is to fund their anti-media, anti-wealth militia. It sounds like a bunch of utter nonsense to me, but then again, I’d never heard of any of them until last week when they kidnapped my daughter.”

“Let me see anything else they sent you. A letter, perhaps, explaining why they took her and their demands?”

Frowning, Gilmore shook his head. “The FBI has it. All I know is they don’t like money or the media, and I’m both. Now, can you get her back for me, Mr. Hanson?”

Nick nodded. “I’ll get her back for you.”

He took one last look at the picture of Persephone Gilmore in his lap and silently promised her he’d do whatever it took to get her home safely to her family. Something about the kindness in her eyes made him want to protect her, and no bullshit militia group with delusions of changing the world was going to stop him.

A few callsto friends who worked cases like he did got him little more on the National Equality Militia other than the question of who the hell they were, and as he opened up his laptop to search for details on the group, Nick wondered if they were actually anything at all. A tiny voice in the back of his mind began to doubt Marshall Gilmore’s story. Or maybe it was his daughter’s story that didn’t ring true.

Whichever it was, before he could begin the case, he needed to know what he would be walking into and who the hell these militia people were.

He typed their name into the search bar, expecting to find at least a page of articles and sites about them. What he got was three listings and then a bunch of results about other groups with similar names.

As he clicked on the first article, he mumbled, “Some bunch of revolutionaries. I guess that’s what you get when your main goal is equality. Nobody gives a damn about that anymore.”

Scanning the page, he found out the group’s main beliefs. They had some problem with wealthy people making more money and media companies making money or some idiotic notion like that. Nick rolled his eyes. The foolishness of groups like these never ceased to amaze him. People made money. It wasn’t a crime. Well, not usually, and when it was, the authorities found out and made them pay. Sometimes in jail time, and sometimes in money.

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