In The Darkness (Project Artemis #1)(16)

A mixture of disgust and disappointment rushed through her brain. Not held against her will? Didn’t they look at those pictures? She couldn’t have been more obvious with how terrified she was in each and every one. For God’s sake, in some she had to force back the tears as that awful man screamed at her to look happy.

“So there’s just you trying to save me?” Persephone asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer to her own question.

Nick lifted himself up so he was eye-level with her. His dark eyes stared into hers and made her feel like what he had to say meant something important to him. At least he seemed to care.

“Your father hired me because this is what I do. I know you don’t trust me, but I’m doing everything I can to make sure you’re safe while you’re with these men, and I’m going to get you away from here as soon as I can.”

“What are they planning to do with me?”

“I don’t know yet. They don’t seem to either. Most of the guys here are just drifters or unemployed guys who have nothing else to do but a lot of anger about it. They have this belief that the world has given them a raw deal, and their leader has told them the way to remedy that is you.”

“Me?” she asked incredulously.

How the hell could she be the way to remedy their unhappy lives?

Nick nodded and rolled his eyes. He didn’t seem too convinced by what he had to say. “Yeah. I think the idea was that they’d kidnap you and get money for their cause, but something must have happened because your father already paid them five hundred grand and you’re still here.”

Suddenly, panic tore through her body. She’d seen enough movies and documentaries to know that once kidnappers got the money they demanded, if they didn’t release their prisoner that person wasn’t long for this world. Tears welled in her eyes as all hope she’d had of escaping slipped away.

“They’re going to kill me, Nick. I know how this works. They got the money, so now it’s just a matter of killing me. Did they send you in here to do it?”

Tears began to roll down her cheeks as her short life flashed in front of her eyes. She’d never married or had children. She’d never even been engaged. All those years she’d spent devoted to becoming a nurse and then getting ahead at the hospital now seemed for nothing. She’d die in this terrible place or the next terrible place they planned to take her to and her life would end as if she meant nothing to the world.

He shook his head and cradled her face in his strong hands. “No! Don’t think like that. Persephone, I’m not going to let them kill you. I promise you that. Something must have changed anyway because they demanded another five hundred thousand from your father already. I think they didn’t plan on this actually succeeding, so now they just figure they’re going to milk it for everything they can. To do that, they need you alive.”

“But what if my father already paid that second half a million? What then? They aren’t going to keep this going forever,” she sobbed.

Nick slowly dragged the pads of his thumbs across the tops of her cheeks to dry her tears and smiled. “I think they’re just not very good at this. Most of them spend half the day sleeping because the leader is drugging them to keep them calm. This Clayton guy hasn’t been around since I got here, but Drist says he’ll be around soon.”

“Drist?”

“Short blond hair and way too many tattoos on his face,” he explained as his hands slid from her face. “The one who brought me when I first got here. He has a thing with guns. Probably means he’s compensating for something.”

Persephone couldn’t help but smile. There she sat in some rundown house tied to a chair and this man who claimed to be there to help her was making jokes about one of the men outside that room having a tiny penis.

She’d seen enough of Drist’s anger to make her want to believe someone had cut off his penis. Even that may have been too good for him, though.

Then it dawned on her that the name Clayton sounded familiar. “What’s the leader’s name? Clayton what?”

Nick moved his hands away from her face, and suddenly she felt alone, even as he crouched in front of her. Maybe she could trust him. God, she wanted to.

“Berger. My guess is that the FBI has kept him busy these past few days since he doesn’t make any secret of the fact that he’s the leader of the National Equality Militia,” Nick explained. “But Drist gave me the impression we might see him soon.”

Persephone looked up toward the ceiling as the name Clayton Berger settled into her brain. Where had she heard that name before? She had definitely heard his name, but where and why?

Focusing on Nick again, she looked down at him as he sat crouched in front of her and asked, “What does he look like, this Clayton Berger? Have you ever seen him?”

“Just a picture of him online but never in person. He doesn’t look like any of these guys, to be honest. He has short brown hair, light eyes, I think. Maybe blue. I’m not sure. He has a look like any regular businessman from what I could tell by the picture I saw. My guess is he’s the respectable face of the organization. Why?”

Persephone thought back to a night a few weeks before at the hospital. “Is he tall and thin?”

Nick nodded. “Yeah. Pretty much. Why?”

She knew there had been something strange about that man that night on her last shift of the week. He hadn’t seemed in as much pain as he claimed, so the doctor had refused to give him any meds for his supposed pain. He’d seemed more interested in talking to her about what made her choose nursing as a career than actually being in the agony he claimed he was in, and she’d suspected something was wrong with him.