Jeremy Finley - The Darkest Time of Night

I closed my eyes. William quickly turned around, but I didn’t need to. I recognized the voice.

The woman who I thought was my husband’s press secretary, who once sat in my own kitchen giving us political advice, who then showed up in the FBI’s raid of Steven’s hotel room, was now wearing a black suit.

Deanna Ruck had her hair pulled back in a ponytail, just as she had when she drove me from the Murfreesboro motel back to Nashville. Walking up briskly behind her were two men dressed in white scrubs.

“Please let us go,” I whispered, placing my hands on William’s shoulders.

“I wish I could, Mrs. Roseworth,” she said. “Hi Alan. We haven’t met. But you know Josh and Rick. Josh is going to take you back to your room.”

“But this lady says she’s my grandma.” He looked up at me. “She showed me pictures of my family. She says my name is William.”

“I understand it’s confusing,” Deanna said with a sympathetic smile. “Tell you what: I need to talk to Mrs. Roseworth first, and then when we’re done, we’ll try to come to see you. OK?”

“Just let us go.” I pulled William close. “I swear to you, I won’t say anything.”

“Mrs. Roseworth, you’re only making this more difficult.”

“She said my name is William,” he grumbled with a sullen tone, pressing up against me.

It was that movement that made me grab William’s hand and run for the door. As I seized the door handle, a strong grip clamped down on my arm. I tried to pull away, but the man held tight, closing the door with his other hand. The other tore William from my grasp.

“William!” I cried out, trying to yank my arm free, knowing the strength of the man would leave bruises.

“I’ll come for you!” I struck out, trying to peel away from his grip. “Let me go!”

As I struggled, I saw William lift his hand towards me, his eyes wide with confusion, as he was carried back into his room.

“Right in there.” Deanna motioned to a door across the hall. With a good one hundred pounds on me, the man led me with ease, despite my attempts to wrestle away. He opened the door and sat me down in a swivel chair resting by a row of file cabinets. Shelves lined the walls, filled with thick plastic binders.

“Give us a few minutes,” she said, following us in. The man at last let go, giving me a stern look as he walked out.

“How can you be doing this?” I exploded, rubbing my wrist. “You know William’s alive! You know he’s my grandson! I thought you were an FBI agent! You’re supposed to be protecting people like us—”

“That’s exactly what I am doing, ma’am. There’s only one person responsible for this situation, and it’s you. I told you back in Tennessee to let this go. I told you what could happen. When we’d learned you and your friend suddenly decided to skip town in the midst of your family’s worst tragedy, I knew you’d disregarded my counsel.

“I suppose I should be grateful to that teenager in the airport terminal who tweeted out that he saw you. We’ve been monitoring all social media for you. He took one photo of you walking away, but failed to earn even a single retweet from his seven followers, or everyone would know you’re here. That tweet, by the way, no longer exists anywhere, in case you thought someone in your family might find it. We had to fly a helicopter through that storm to get to you. Do you know how dangerous that was? Just to come and find you? I don’t know how much Dr. Richards told you about Argentum, but you really made a mistake coming here.”

“Made a mistake? What kind of person are you? You have seen yourself what this has done to my family. And you’re telling me it was a mistake to come find him?”

“It was a mistake because what your family will now have to go through.”

“And what does that mean?”

She pulled up another swivel chair and sat down, leaning forward. “Because you can’t go home now, Mrs. Roseworth. I wish you could, believe me. I don’t want to see your family suffer any more. I don’t know ultimately what my superiors will decide, but I do know with certainty that some sort of story will have to be arranged—”

“I promise you, I will say nothing about what I’ve seen.”

Her lips pursed in a frown. “Really? You’ll just show up with your grandson and not explain where you found him? And you just won’t ever explain why he doesn’t have a memory? This is why we go to extraordinary lengths, such as keeping this facility secluded in this godforsaken corner of the world and blocking it from Google maps and internet searches; to avoid exactly the kind of situation we are in now.”

Deanna reached down and pulled out a laptop from the satchel she’d been carrying. She tapped on the rectangle below the keyboard and turned the screen to face me. She touched the play button and frantic green pulses raced across the screen.

“Please listen.”

She turned up the volume, and at first all I could hear was rustling. Then, my own voice. “You know nothing about my life.”

“Listen,” came Steven’s voice. “I think I know where William is.”

“You think he’s still alive?” I heard myself respond. Then, a pause. “Steven, please. You owe it to my father to tell me. Tell me what you know—”

Deanna hit the pause button. “You know this is coming from that hotel in Tennessee. Obviously, we had the room bugged. You need to know that this audio—along with photographs of Steven Richards being forced out of the hotel room by FBI agents, and you and I leaving afterwards—is compiled in a file that can be sent, with the click of a button, to FOX News and The Washington Post . Can you imagine what they’d do with this after what’s already been released about you in that basement with Richards’s supporters? What it would do to your family? Because this is where we’re at now, Mrs. Roseworth. You either agree to go quietly into obscurity, or we release this. It will show you in a hotel room with your former lover. Agreeing to do anything he asks. Is this the last memory you want your family to have of you? For your husband to have of you?”

I heard it then, a slight tapping, coming from the corners of the room. As I glanced over, Deanna snapped her fingers. “Stay with me, Mrs. Roseworth. I need to know you understand. If you will agree to vanish—with our assistance—the recording never goes anywhere. It’s also imperative that you tell me how it is you found this town. We didn’t hear the two of you discuss Argentum in the hotel room. How did Steven Richards tell you about it?”

The tapping sounds grew louder now. They came from the corner of the room, directly behind where Deanna sat. Over her shoulder, I could see a tall pneumatic tube stretching from floor to ceiling. Something tiny was inside, popping.

“They have a right to know,” I said softly, looking at the glass tube, then back to her. “Families all over the world spend their whole lives dying a little more every day wondering what happened to their loved ones, and you’ve had them all the time. And if anyone tries to find them and tracks them here or to any of the other bases, you have no qualms about murdering them, too.”

“It’s not that simple, Mrs. Roseworth. Surely you must realize that. We’re in the containment business, not the killing business. Back to my earlier question. We need to know how you got here. The more open you are with us, the more we can be lenient in letting you see your grandson before…”

“Before what? The man ordered to kill us obviously failed. My husband will soon know where I am—”

“I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your friend didn’t make it. And it’s no one’s fault but your own.”