Drained (Edgars Family #6) - Suzanne Ferrell Page 0,12
six months.
“Since he started his classes at the community college, Kirk F has been helping me with some investigation work on the side. He can get into places I can’t.”
“So, you want him to come stay with Paula?”
Aaron looked her straight in the eyes, his green ones void of humor. “Unless you want to. Which, given your barely controlled breathing and pallor since we entered the ER suggests you’d end up in the bed next to your friend before the night is out, I doubt that’s a good choice.”
Damn. He was right. God, she hated feeling weak. “You’re right. I want to get out of here as soon as possible, but I’m not sure how comfortable Paula will be with a young man she hardly knows sleeping in her hospital room.”
“We both know him and trust him. That should help her feel better about it. We’ll see how it goes once he gets here. In the meantime, we have a bigger problem.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “And what’s that?”
“We’re going to need some sort of description of her friend Art, unless she has one on her phone.” He glanced in the door. “Looks like the respiratory guy is done.”
An idea popped into her head. “You go in, I’ll be right there.” Leaving him looking a little bemused, she headed for the nurse’s station.
“May I help you?” the salt and pepper-haired nurse looked up over the rims of her glasses.
Brianna smiled her most, I-mean-you-no-harm smile. “Do you happen to have some printer paper? I need only one or two pieces. And maybe a pencil?”
“Of course,” the nurse said and reached in the printer to pull out a couple of sheets, then snatched a pencil from the pencil holder on the desk. “Anything else?”
“No, this is just perfect. Thank you.” Brianna headed back to Paula’s room. It had been years since she’d sketched a person’s face. Probably back when she was still at the orphanage with Abby. She’d been pretty good at it, so maybe if Paula gave her the homeless man’s description, she could come up with a useable image for her and Aaron to use.
When she got back in the room, Aaron was seated in his chair, with Stanley at his feet. Paula was sound asleep, but her breathing sounded a little better to Brianna.
“She drifted off as I came in the door,” Aaron quietly said, then looked questioningly to the paper in her hand. “Planning on writing something?”
“I’m not an expert, but I used to sketch some. I thought…” Brianna gave a shrug.
“Good idea. Way better than what I’d draw. My stick figures barely look like stick figures,” he said with a grin.
“You two don’t…whisper too quietly,” Paula muttered from the bed.
Brianna hurried over and took her hand. She felt cooler. “I’m sorry we woke you.”
“Was just…dozing.” Paula finished, coughing hard once more. Brianna held her while she struggled to bring up more crud from her lungs and Aaron handed them the box of tissues. Finally, she relaxed back into the bed.
“Do you think you can give me a description of Art? I’ll try to draw one of him.”
Paula drew her brows down in confusion. “Why?”
“We thought we’d see if we could go look for him,” Brianna said.
“Unless you have one on your phone we can use?” Aaron asked.
“No picture. Art didn’t…like them. But I can tell you…what he looks like.”
“Good. While you two do that, I’ll take Stanley out to do some business. We don’t want him making any kind of mess in here and get us kicked out,” Aaron said, backing away from the bed with a wink.
Brianna watched him saunter outside with Stanley in his arms.
“Like I said, nice…and sexy,” Paula said behind her.
With a dismissive shake of her head, Brianna pulled the bedside table over and perched herself on the end of the hospital bed. “Let’s focus on Art and not worry about whether I think the detective is sexy or not.”
By the time Aaron returned with Stanley, Brianna and Paula had come up with a fairly workable sketch of Art—an elderly, thin man with a scraggly grey and black beard that covered his neck to his t-shirt collar, and a long face and nose. Brianna noted that Art had bright blue eyes on the side of the paper and he usually wore a black hoodie, but now had a new down-filled coat he’d gotten from one of the charity groups to wear overtop of it.
Exhausted from the effort of describing her friend, Paula