Chapter 30
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Doreen sent Mack a text but got no answer, probably because he was heading over to the storage locker to figure out what was going on there and to see what they might find.
With a frown and her inner instincts saying something was wrong, she went down to the reception desk and spoke to the woman there. “Annabel isn’t there,” she shared.
“I just heard that from another nurse,” she noted, frowning. “We do sometimes have people who check out on their own, but …”
Doreen nodded. “But you do realize that she was a kidnap victim in the first place?”
“I know,” she confirmed. “I’ll contact the people on her list to make sure she didn’t just get scared and run. It’s possible she heard that her attackers have been released from prison or got out on bail or something.”
“I don’t think that is the case here,” Doreen replied.
“Yet it does happen,” she noted. “This woman had already been traumatized, and, if they panic about the possibility of their captors getting loose, their victims may run. It’s not like we can force them to stay here. So it’s possible she just got up and walked out.”
“Right,” Doreen agreed. “I might well have done the same thing.”
The receptionist smiled at her. “Exactly, I mean it’s not hard to understand when you see how much she’s gone through already.”
“I agree.” Doreen sighed. “Do you have an address for her?”
The woman nodded but grimaced. “I can’t give that to you.”
“Of course not,” she replied. “I’ll just contact Mack. I didn’t even think to ask her …” Doreen got outside, and she was worried that somebody had decided Annabel needed to be shut up permanently.
She drove home slowly, not sure what to do, but feeling a deep uncertainty. When Mack phoned her a little bit later, she answered, “Annabel’s left the hospital.”
“Ah, I was afraid that would happen, especially as we get closer and closer to finding out what’s been going on,” he explained, “and there was a chance that her kidnapper or his partner might have gotten bailed out too.”
“Has Mike been charged with kidnapping?”
“Not yet, and we can only keep him forty-eight hours. I did warn Annabel about that possibility. Even if he did get charged in time, there was still a chance that he would get bail.”
“Oh, good God, so now she’s panicked and on the run.”
Mack sighed. “That’s quite possible.”
“Dang,” she muttered. “And I don’t even have her address.”
“And it’s not for you to go check on her,” he pointed out. “I’ll take care of that once I’m done here. I’ll run by her place and make sure she’s okay.”
“If you could do that, I would really appreciate it because it just feels so wrong.”
“Okay,” he muttered, “but only for you.”
She laughed. “And you say it like that’s such a hardship, when we know that you’re just a big teddy bear and would do it anyway.”
He sighed. “Don’t ever tell anybody that,” he muttered. “That would totally blow my reputation.”
She snickered. “I highly doubt it, but I hear you.”
If it weren’t this time of night, she would have been already walking Mike’s neighborhood again. As it was, she didn’t have an address for Annabel, and Mack couldn’t give it to her. Doreen needed to sort it out. But who would know?
She did a search for Devon, Birdie’s grandson, who had died, to see if any social media pages had something helpful and to see if Annabel had been tagged in them.
If they had been together, as Annabel said, there should be some evidence online of that.
Then she stopped herself. “No, there’s no should be, but there could be some images that pointed to her relationship with him. ”
She searched social media and the local newspaper online but found nothing. Frowning, she decided to make a quick trip to the library. Thankfully it was still open, and, as she made her way inside, she saw her favorite librarian there.
Lillian looked up and smiled at her. “What are we working on today?”
“A woman named Annabel,” she began, with a laugh. “I know that she was the girlfriend of a young man who was recently murdered.”
“Oh my, is that the one found here in the brush?”
“Yes, in the bushes on the water side at the entrance to the bridge.”
“Right, and that would be bad enough, but I think I also heard something about his grandmother passing as well.”
Doreen raised one eyebrow, then nodded.
“Why so surprised? You’ve said yourself that I’m pretty good at gathering information.”
Doreen chuckled. “Not surprised, just happy to hear there is always a network of people who pass these things around.”
“You mean gossip, don’t you?”
“Yes, for some, for most even, but there are always those who genuinely want to know the truth. What I really want to know is where this young woman, Annabel, lives.”
“Is it important?”
“Well, she was kidnapped, and we rescued her,” Doreen explained.
“We’d caught a guy casing the murder victim’s house.
That led us to pick up his boss, and we found he’d been heavily involved in stealing, then fencing stolen goods.
When we went to check out his boss’s place, we found this poor Annabel tied up in one of the rooms.”
“Oh my,” she muttered.
“I went to visit her at the hospital a little bit ago, and she was gone. Mack had spoken to her earlier. At this point, my theory is that she got spooked, thinking her kidnapper might get out of jail, and she booked it. I just wanted to make sure she’s okay.”
“So why do you want to go to her house?” Lillian asked. “I don’t know that she would go there if she were worried about this guy, assuming he knows where she lives.”
Doreen frowned, as she considered that. “That just goes to show how tired I am because that makes total sense. In which case, I really can’t find her, can I?”
“No, but you gave her your phone number, right?”
“Yes.”
“So, if she needs help, she could call you.”
“Yes, but I suspect she’s too spooked and probably won’t call,” she added, with a sigh.
“Then maybe it’s just time to let it go. Go get some rest, and, if she calls you,” Lillian noted, rolling her eyes, “you’ll be there if she needs help.”
“Right.”
And, with that solid advice, Doreen headed home. As soon as she got inside, the animals went crazy, racing around in complete joy. She laughed as she bent down and spent some time with them. Obviously she’d left them too long.
“What’s going on guys? Did you miss me?”
She made a cup of tea and sat with them as she drank it. By the time she headed up to bed, she felt more than a little tired. She quickly crashed and fell into a deep sleep.