Chapter 35
Tina had no choice but to call on her police badge at the Concord Hospital. Only next of kin was allowed, unless you were law enforcement hoping to question him about the accident.
“He just regained consciousness,” the nurse told her. “He was real lucky. No broken bones.”
“That’s good news. Can I speak to him now?”
“Sure, but you’ll have to keep it short. He needs rest.”
“Not a problem.” All he had to do was tell her where Jessie was, explain his whole smuggling operation, and maybe reveal who had killed Benny Clyde, and she’d leave him alone.
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.”
A chill swept through her. “What are you talking about?”
“Will you help me? You have questions, right? I’ll answer everything, but I can’t just wait here for them to find me.”
“Who is ‘them’?”
“Later!” Urgency rang through his voice. “We have to leave. We’re both in danger here. Those bullets at the hospital? They weren’t just for you.”
“Bullshit. You set us up.”
“Yes, but just so I could see who you were. I didn’t try to shoot you! I had nothing to do with that!”
Did she believe him? She wasn’t sure, but his fear was certainly real.
He clutched at her hand. “Please, I need your help! I don’t think I can walk yet. These painkillers are messing me up.”
“Okay. I’ll help. But you gotta give me something first. Who’s after you? Who shot at us?”
“I think it was someone working for that South African dude dating my sister. Everyone on that boat reports to him. They probably overheard me talking to Celine.”
That made a lot of sense, actually. “And you aren’t working with him?”
“No! He wants to take something good and twist it around so people suffer. I don’t want that.
I just want people to be happy. He’s a scary guy, I’m telling you.
Hendrik something, I can’t remember now.
” He rubbed his forehead as if still trying to get his brain working.
“He owns a security firm and they’re probably on their way here right now. Come on!”
Everything he said matched up with the state of play. Tina decided she couldn’t take a chance that he was being paranoid. Better get the hell out.
“Let’s go, then. But you have to do exactly what I say. Understand?”
He nodded. She quickly unhooked him from the IV and his various monitors. No doubt medical staff would come running, so they’d have to be fast. She changed the position of the hospital bed so Adam lay flat, then pushed it from the room.
When she passed a laundry bin parked outside a room being cleaned, she snatched up a dirty scrubs coat and pulled it on. After that, no one looked twice as she propelled the bed—now a gurney—down the corridor. If only her parents could see her now. They’d always wanted her to be a doctor.
As they waited for the elevator door to open, she adjusted the sheet so it covered half of Seth’s face.
When the elevator arrived, an overly muscular man got off, his cold eyes moving past her to scan the room numbers.
She kept her gaze lowered, shifting imperceptibly to block his view of the patient on her gurney, until he’d moved onto the floor.
She didn’t breathe again until they were inside the elevator with the door closed. Seth was right. They were going after him.
In the ambulance bay, the only other person she saw was a paramedic who was busy resupplying her van. “This patient is supposed to be transferred to Rutland Medical Center, the psych wing.” It was the only hospital name she could come up with at the moment.
“Psych wing? Jesus, what’s wrong with him?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t want to leave him alone here. It might not be safe. Can you check with the desk and see if they’ve gotten the order yet?”
“Yeah, hang on.” She stepped away, while Tina scanned the area for a good escape route. Her car was close, so if she could just leave Seth and the gurney here for a moment…No way. She couldn’t take the chance. For all she knew, that muscle guy was already coming after them.
She called to the paramedic, who was still on the phone. “The van from Rutland’s here. They pulled around to the side, so I’ll just take him that way. Thanks for your help!”
Without waiting for an answer, she pushed the gurney out of the bay into the sunlight, then steered it around the corner, out of sight. At that point, she ripped off her scrubs and glasses and attached her badge prominently to her shirt.
“You have to get off this gurney now,” she told Seth. “Can you walk, with my help?”
“I can try.”
He was more awake now; the adrenaline of their escape from his hospital room had done wonders. He swung his legs off the gurney and reached for her arm for support. She helped him, holding him steady as he tried a step.
“Fuck.” He winced as his foot touched the ground. “Kinda missing that morphine right about now.”
“You’re okay. She said it was just bruises. Now come on.” She took his arm as if she was hauling him into a police station.
“You aren’t arresting me, are you?” he asked uneasily.
“Should I be?”
“No! I’m the good guy.”
“Really? Does Marigold Olson know that?”
He jerked against her arm, but she had the upper hand and he got nowhere. A few minutes later they were safe inside the Escalade she’d picked up at Avis—the only vehicle available—with Seth stretched out on the back seat, seemingly exhausted.
“I never meant to hurt Marigold. Ending an engagement isn’t a crime, is it?”
She started up the Escalade. If only it was her official vehicle with the flashers, she could get out of here more quickly. She eased out of the parking spot, keeping an eye out for more potential South African security firm employees.
Something touched the back of her neck—soft, like a bug flying against her skin—and she brushed it away.
“Where are we going?” Seth asked from the back seat.
Good question. Now that she’d made it into the car, she felt exhausted and out of ideas.
Her mind seemed frozen in place. She wanted to interrogate Seth about Jessie and Marigold, about the car that had caught on fire in the Rutland Hospital parking lot, and the map that was in Jessie’s pocket.
The smuggling…right, that too. What were they moving in and out of Lightkeeper Bay?
Why was a South African ultra-kazillionaire getting involved?
But she couldn’t even get her mouth to open. Maybe she should just take a nap first.
“See, I’m thinking we should go to Sea Smoke Island,” said Seth. His voice sounded oddly compelling. Hypnotic, as if she could listen to it forever.
“Wh…why?” she managed to ask.
“You said you wanted answers. All the answers are on Sea Smoke. We should go there now.”
That made all the sense in the world. Who needed a nap? The only thing that mattered was getting to Sea Smoke Island.
She exited the parking lot and made the turn that would take them east, toward Maine.
She was feeling so funny…not bad, really.
No, not bad at all. Happy, even. A smile spread across her face.
She was going back to Sea Smoke! She was going to get answers!
Best of all, she didn’t have to make any decisions about any of it!
She looked in the rearview mirror, and blinked. Why did Seth look like a bear? She blinked again, and he turned into a balloon. Another blink and he was back to himself. Smiling at her. So beautiful, like an angel from heaven.
“What…what did you give me?” she whispered.
“I gave you just enough, no more. Don’t worry, you’re going to love it.
I know policing is a high-stress profession.
Lots of trauma, right? I bet you’ve been through a lot, especially as a woman in a macho type of environment.
Throw in the challenges of being a minority, possibly an immigrant…
life has been tough for you, hasn’t it?”
His empathetic tone told her he understood just how difficult her life was.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“That’s why you’re the perfect candidate for Night Light. Wouldn’t you like to erase all that trauma from your life? You got so lucky, running into me.”
“Night…light?” That term had come up before, but the way her head was swimming, she couldn’t quite remember where or how. It really didn’t matter, anyway. She felt so good, so free…all that old stuff from the past should just stay there.
“We’ll talk about it on Sea Smoke. I’m going to sleep now, wake me up when we reach the harbor. Oh, and just to be safe, better give me your phone.”
She couldn’t think of a single reason not to, so she handed him her phone. He turned it off, and a moment later was asleep. She kept driving.