Page 6 of In The Darkness

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Chapter Three

Thirteen days. Onelong, awful, terrifying week followed by six more horrible days.

Persephone stretched her mouth to relieve the pain of the gag one of her captors had forced onto her while another tied a rope around her hands behind her back, around her ankles, and her waist to hold her to the old wooden chair they kept her in day and night for the whole time they’d held her. The rope tore at the delicate skin on her wrists every time she moved. If only she could just sit still, but every fiber of her being screamed day and night she needed to move.

That she needed to do whatever she could to escape from these men.

They’d taken her to that farm and ordered her at gunpoint to dance around that pasture like some frolicking fairy loving life out in the country. Her legs nearly gave out half a dozen times, weak from fear as her whole body shook in terror while they barked out orders for her to look happier and to smile bigger.

“Look like you’re fucking loving this, bitch!” they screamed as she ran around in the green grass hoping someone somewhere could see her and how terrified she truly was.

That had been the only time they let her off that horrible old wooden chair, except when she begged them to let her use the bathroom. A half hour feeling the sun on her face out of nearly two weeks held against her will by them.

She still had no idea who they were. All she knew about the men who came into the room with her was they were young, white, and angrier than anyone else she’d never met in her life. She didn’t know if all of them where they held her were as angry as the ones who tended to her, but the four or five she’d met so far made her believe that one wrong move and she’d end up dead.

That is, dead before the moment they intended to kill her.

Persephone had seen enough news in her life to know how this would end. They’d kidnapped her to extract money from her father. When they got it, they’d have no more use for her. That’s how this went.

She knew her father well enough to know that he’d hand over any amount to get her back. Marshall Gilmore may have been cutthroat in business, but when it came to his family, he’d move heaven and earth for his daughters and wife.

But just as she knew the reality of her situation, he did too and maybe he wouldn’t give them the ransom quickly. He hadn’t made his fortune by being outsmarted by others. Maybe he’d try to bargain with them. She wasn’t what they wanted. Surely, they wanted money more than her. The problem was she didn’t know if that would help her or hurt her.

Holding back tears at how much everything hurt as she sat there tied to that chair for more than half a day since her last bathroom trip, she looked around at the room they held her in. Nondescript white walls that looked like they were covered in plaster made her think the building was older. Beneath her, a worn hardwood floor reinforced that belief.

Was she being held in a house? She knew they’d moved her after the farm trip, but she’d been gagged, blindfolded, and bound, so she couldn’t even guess where they’d taken her to. Nothing the men around her said gave her any clue as to where they were. In fact, they said little at all, and when they did speak, it was mostly to threaten her to keep quiet and stop crying.

Which she did a lot of.

She wasn’t ashamed of that either. She had every right to be scared for her life, and she’d seen enough patients in the hospital break down when they found out their cases were terminal.

And that’s exactly what her case was.

Terminal.

These men wouldn’t let her live much longer. Once they got what they wanted, they’d get rid of her.

So she had to find a way out and now.

***

Slowly, she liftedher head and opened her eyes to look around at the room in front of her. With the windows blacked out, she couldn’t tell if it was day or night. She listened for sounds from her captors and heard voices talking low somewhere nearby in the building. Their conversation made no sense, mainly because she only heard a few words every so often, but she tried to understand what they said in the hopes that it might help her escape from this wretched place.

Footsteps coming toward where she sat made her heart slam against her chest, and for the hundredth time, Persephone prayed to God this wouldn’t be the one when they pressed the end of a gun to her head and pulled the trigger.

The door opened behind her, creaking on its hinges in the way it did every time. It never failed to send chills down her spine as that ominous sound hit her ears.

She craned her neck to see which one it was. The one with the crew cut and tattoos of a skull and crossbones on his face? Or the one with slightly longer dark hair and eyes that harbored such rage she worried each time he appeared that he’d unleash that horrible anger on her?

The one with the brown hair pulled back into a ponytail who sneered in that terrifying way every time he had to come in to feed her or take her to the bathroom?

Or worst of all, the one who always pointed his gun directly at her as she swallowed spoonful after spoonful of that awful food they forced on her. They all liked to let her know they carried guns, but he went beyond using his to warn her.

The pleased look in his nearly black eyes said he got off terrifying her with that gun of his.

Oh God! It was the one with the gun!

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