The nurse directed her to a room in the recovery wing. As she walked that way, she discreetly scanned the face of every other visitor she passed. She wouldn’t be surprised if someone else came looking for Seth Baker if they knew he was in the hospital.
She slipped on a pair of glasses from her bag. Her nerdiest pair, which she kept on hand for purposes of flying under the radar. She hoped that Seth would be so out of it from the accident that he wouldn’t recognize her as the same woman from the roadside where the Vermont state trooper had pulled him over. Or from that foot chase in the strip mall. Or from arresting his sister earlier this year.
He had a lot of reasons not to talk to her. This could be tricky.
She found Seth Baker alone except for a nurse checking his IV fluids. Even though he was clearly extremely woozy, he was already flirting with her, judging by the way she was smiling at him. His face was scraped from his collision with pavement, but he had an endearing, boyish quality to him with his tumbled brown hair and lanky build.
“Seth Baker?” Tina said as she strode toward his bedside. “I’m here from the police department.” She left out the Harbortown part. “I’m hoping I can ask you some questions about the accident.”
He blinked at her with no sign of recognition. “It hurt. That’s about all I know.”
The nurse giggled as she shifted over to a digital work station.
Tina didn’t laugh. From behind her horn-rimmed glasses, she held Seth’s gaze in a way that would tell him she was dead serious. “How are you feeling now?”
“Awesome. They gave me the good shit.” He winked at the nurse. “Ask me again after it wears off, you might get a different answer.”
“He has some pretty bad bruises,” the nurse explained. “But no internal bleeding and no broken bones.”
Seth smiled at the nurse as if she were a literal angel. “You are so beautiful,” he said with utmost sincerity. “Are you married?”
Okay then. “What did you give him?” she asked the nurse under her breath. “I might want a dose of that.”
“I know, right? Just the usual. Some folks, they react this way.” She raised her voice. “I have to go now, Seth. Do you mind talking to this nice officer?”
Seth’s eyes drifted closed as he shrugged his shoulders. Damn it. She was going to lose her chance to question him. She’d be stuck here in a hospital room with an unconscious man while Jack charged into the unknown down in Harbortown.
The nurse left, leaving the room quiet in her wake except for the beep of the monitor.
“What’d you say your name was?” Seth asked her sleepily.
“Officer Tina Chen.” She said it quickly, jumbling the words together. Even so, his expression shifted.
“Tina Chen… Do I know you? You look familiar.”
“That’s probably because I gave you CPR at the scene.”
He stared at her, fighting off sleep, clearly trying to organize his thoughts despite the morphine or whatever he’d been given. “Tina Chen. That name, I know it. You know my sister. She mentioned you.”
“Um…yes, that’s one way to put it,” she said uneasily.
“You’re the police. And you’re from Maine.”
“Yes. I need to ask you some?—”
“Hang on. Gotta focus. Hand me that water.”
He gestured at the little tray next to the hospital bed, where a tall glass of ice water sat. She handed it to him and he drank it down. All of it. Ice and all.
He shook his head as if desperately trying to clear it. “This oxy is fucking with me. I can’t stay here.”
“Excuse me?”
“More water,” he gasped.
She filled his glass from the plastic pitcher and he drank that down too.
“You have to get me out of here,” he said when he was done. He seemed much more alert now. “It’s not safe here.”
