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What would it mean for his career if Olivia had killed one of his patients? Nothing good, that much was sure. He’d been proud of how far he’d traveled up the ladder at his age of thirty-four, but it might all explode in an instant. He clenched his fists and rose to finish putting away the groceries.
***
Annie was nearly to the dock at Tremolo Marina and Cabin Resort when her phone sounded. The phone screen showed Unknown, but in her line of work as a law enforcement ranger, that happened a lot. “LEO Annie Pederson.”
The caller was a man, but that was all she could tell from the garbled, “Annie.”
“Hello? This is Annie.”
“Help me.” The words were a harsh whisper. “He’s going to kill me.”
She cut the engine and let the boat idle in the Superior waves. A gull landed almost immediately on the bow of her boat and stared at her with hungry eyes. “Who’s going to kill you? Who is this?”
“Took me, eh. Hospital.”
Something in the man’s Yooper accent tickled her memory. She knew that voice. “Glenn? Glenn Hussert?” Annie glanced at Kylie, who thankfully didn’t seem to be paying attention as she tossed bread crumbs to a gull.
“Glenn. Yaass.” His voice vibrated with relief as he drew out the word.
“Where are you, Glenn? I’ll come right now.” She turned on the speaker so she could hear while she called up her message app and shot off a swift text to Mason.Track my number. Glenn is on the other end.
If she could only keep him on the line long enough, Mason might be able to track him. But it was a long shot. That kind of thing wasn’t instantaneous even if Mason happened to be in the office at the moment.
“Need help. Kill me,” Glenn muttered again.
He hadn’t spoken much since he’d come out of the coma.Just mumbling and nonsense. The doctor had said he might have some memory loss, and there was no guarantee they’d get much information out of him. Should she press for more information about who had him or try to find out where he was?
Maybe something more personal would keep him on the line. “Have you seen Lissa? Was she trying to get you help?”
“Lissa?” His voice held bewilderment. “No Lissa.”
Before Annie could ask anything more, she heard an angry shout on the other end. It sounded like a man’s voice, but she didn’t recognize the speaker. The sound ended a few moments later.
“Hello? Glenn?” She pulled the phone away from her ear and checked the screen. The call had ended, and she was sure it hadn’t been long enough to track, but she called Mason to check anyway.
“You didn’t get the location, did you?”
“Not enough time,” Mason said. “You sure it was Hussert?”
“Positive.” She told him about the man’s garbled words. “I think he’s in trouble.”
“He certainly wasn’t well enough to walk out under his own power. Makes sense with what we gathered from the hospital cameras. Keep your phone on you in case he calls back, and I’ll have your calls monitored until we find him.”
“Okay.” She throttled up the engine and motored for her dock.
The gull flapped its wings and took off to skim across the white caps on Lake Superior. The wind tugged at Annie’s blonde strands and blew them around her head and into her eyes. The humid air cooled with the breeze as night began to fall, and it felt good against her skin, baked by the sun on this hot day.
Kylie turned off her tablet. “Who was that, Mommy?”
“The sheriff,” Annie said.
“The call before that. It sounded like he was in trouble. Are you going to help him?”
“He didn’t tell me where he was. The sheriff is in charge, and he will take care of things.”
Annie’s work usually involved much lower-profile cases than she’d investigated recently, and she didn’t like Kylie knowing about the more dangerous circumstances. Her little girl worried enough about her when she was checking out a car break-in. It was time for life to settle down here for them, but so far, there’d been no sign of normalcy.
By the time she tied up at the dock, the sun had sent its dying rays into the fading light of the evening sky. The scent of ginger and garlic wafted her way, and her stomach rumbled.
