In The Darkness (Project Artemis #1)(4)
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.
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.”