Page 60 of Annika's Aurora

“Johanna?” he said more loudly for her to hear him as the two of them ran for the parking lot. “Graham is mobilizing the team. He’s having everybody meet at the lake house. Jansen and I are on our way. Stay inside.”

Logan broke quite a few traffic laws as he raced back to the lake house. Every possible scenario raced through his mind as he tried to figure out what happened to her. She wouldn’t have gone near the bluff again. He was sure she’d learned her lesson on that front. It was possible she had lost track of time as Jansen had suggested, but he didn’t think so. He had a bad feeling deep in his gut, and it revolved around Rob Petersen. They needed to know where that man was. If he were lost in his bottle in his living room, Logan knew he’d breathe a lot easier.

As soon as he shoved the car into park, he was out and running down the road, following Annika’s usual route as Jansen went into the house to be with his wife. After about a mile seeing no sign of … anything, he spotted the water bottle lying on the side of the road. He approached it cautiously, not wanting to disturb any evidence that might be left behind. Swallowing hard, he crouched next to the bottle trying to block the rush of emotions that threatened to pull him under.

There was still some slushy snow that the plows hadn’t completely removed from the road, and he spotted marks that looked like something, or someone, was dragged away.

Graham and Ian caught up to him as he crouched by the marks. “What are you thinking?”

Logan pointed to the lines. “I’m thinking she was dragged.” He stood and followed the marks. “Tire tracks?”

“Possibly. But those could be anybody’s from any time,” Ian reasoned.

“True, but I don’t think so.” Logan pointed to something else lying in the slush. Annika’s phone with the earbuds still attached lay there, the screen cracked. And then he spotted the thing that drove an icy fear racing through his veins. A syringe. Logan’s heart nearly stopped dead in his chest at the sight of the syringe. Then with a painful jerk, it turned over and began to race out of control. “He’s got her.”

“My deputies are checking on him.” His phone rang then. “Here’s one now. You’re on speaker.”

“No sign of him at his house,” the deputy said. “In-laws haven’t seen him. Nobody’s seen him since you guys put him in that cab the other night. His truck is no longer in Jolene’s lot.”

“He’s got her,” Logan repeated. “He threatened her again that night. And that syringe …” The fear turned into anger. He could still hear Petersen’s angry threats from that night after Annika had taken the little girl over to the jukebox. The man had watched her walk away with his daughter with an evil glint in his eye that had set Logan’s hackles rising. When he’d muttered, “She should be torn from your life like my Carlie was,” Logan had nearly lost it. Graham’s hand on his shoulder was the only thing that had held him back. If Annika were hurt or worse … he couldn’t complete that thought. He refused to entertain any notion that didn’t involve Annika safe in his arms again.

“Never thought he’d actually do it, though,” Graham mused.

“We’ve got an APB out for him and his truck. Somebody will spot him.”

“Okay. Thanks, Ian. Keep us updated,” said Graham as they made their way back to the house.

“You too,” Ian told them, then told the deputy on the phone to get someone out to the bluff to gather the evidence Annika left behind.

“David’s got the maps at the house. He’s working on a search pattern,” Graham told him.

“She could be anywhere. We don’t even know where to start.” Where could he have taken her? And if she was inside somewhere, what then? They couldn’t search every house in Michigan. Their only hope was for someone to have spotted him and reported it. Otherwise, they were working blind. His lungs felt aflame with the need to roar. Feeling as if each second that ticked by was life or death, he needed to find Annika now.

Anxiety ratcheted up in him. As a SEAL, his missions were well planned out. Information was double-checked and verified, ensuring success. When things went FUBAR, as they inevitably did, they had contingency plans in place to get the objective accomplished and ensure they all went home. But this was different. There was no intel. There was no military drone flying over the area to gather intelligence, with an army of analysts poring over every detail. It felt like an impossibly hopeless mission that went FUBAR from the very beginning.

“Finch will go up in the helicopter. He can cover more ground.”

Pulling himself back from his spiraling thoughts, Logan focused on his training. “Good, send Evan with him. He’s got the best eyes.”

“Agreed.” They returned to the house just as Natalie arrived with her father and Graham’s parents. “They’ll stay with Annika’s parents while we work,” Graham explained, and Logan was grateful.

With his emotions suddenly lodged in his throat, he fought the sting of tears he felt behind his eyes. “Thanks for coming,” he said to them, knowing Graham’s parents would take good care of his family which lifted a little bit of the weight he felt on his shoulders.

“Anything for family,” Graham’s mother answered. Logan’s heart swelled. He’d been without family for so long he’d forgotten how it felt. But he knew without a doubt that if he lost Annika, nothing would ever be the same again. She was his family, his heart.

Annika fought her way out of the darkness, her eyes heavy, struggling to remember where she was. She vaguely recalled going for her run, but the rest was blank. She was so tired her eyes drooped, and her head dipped down. With a jerk, she pulled herself out of her stupor.Come on, Annika, wake up.She shivered, noticing the air was chilly. Whatever she was sitting on was hard and felt like it was moving slightly. Or maybe she was just dizzy.Wake up!

Finally, she was able to blink her surroundings into focus, but all she could see was darkness. Were her eyes even open? She tried to focus on the little stuff instead of the big picture, thinking that would help. Annika tried to lift a hand in front of her face, hoping she could focus on just that, but it wouldn’t move. She tried the other hand; her breaths quickened and grew shallow as the reality of her situation started to sink in. She was trapped. Her heart beat harder against her chest as she tried to pull her hands free. When she couldn’t move them, she panicked, thrashing her body, trying to break free. She tugged and pulled, not feeling the sting of the ropes slicing into her skin. Suddenly, she stopped her struggles remembering what happened.

Mr. Petersen.

He’d caught her by surprise and stuck her with something. It must have been a pretty powerful drug to have knocked her out for as long as it did since it was nighttime now. She tried to wiggle around, hoping again to loosen her bindings but couldn’t move anything except her legs. Looking down her body, she saw an excessive amount of ropes were wrapped around her torso and waist.

The ground below her moved again. Like the motion of a boat. Could she be in a boat? Was that why she was rocking? She tried to focus on what she was sitting on. It looked like some kind of metal. She stretched her fingers out to see if she could feel it, ignoring the burn of the rope on her wrist. It was cold and felt metallic. The aftereffects of the drug were affecting her concentration; Annika couldn’t remember what the deck of a boat was made of.Come on! Focus!

Turning her head to the side, she tried to see behind her to figure out what she was tied to. Reaching out with her fingers again, she wrapped them around what felt like metal poles. There was a blinking light above her head that caught her attention. The blinking light with an antenna sticking up next to it sat at the top of something rocking behind her. None of this was making sense.

A pain in her leg made her gasp. She stretched her legs out straight to try to relieve the pressure but bumped into more metal in front of her. She looked down in an effort to concentrate on what was below her feet. More metal, a small boat. Her feet hit a bench seat stretched across the width of the boat. From the long hardness behind her, she assumed she was tied to another bench seat.

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