Page 28 of The Session

“It would seem so,” Tru said, “but the news reports keep quoting people on background from the police department.”

“It sounds like somebody’s trying to spin a story,” Nichols said.

“I’d like you to look into this,” she told him.

“I can have a researcher keep you up to date,” Nichols offered.

“No. We need more than that. Can you get people into the field?”

“That’s asking a lot right now.”

“You know who he is,” Tru replied. “I think we should have a clear idea of what happened, because if there’s any fallout from this, we need to be prepared. I’m asking for full activation.”

“All right. I just had a team return. I can send them out in the next few hours,” Nichols assured her.

Tru knew he wasn’t doing this as a favor or out of the goodness of his own heart. Nichols understood that if there was any potential negative outcome that could blow back on Max Lightman or Summit Strategies, he’d be in a better position to handle it. If he understood what had actually taken place, the response could mean something as simple as preparing a statement disassociating them from Mark or altering records and creating what they called a “convolution” to make it hard to trace things back to them.

The worst outcome wouldn’t be a PR cleanup—it would be the fallout landing on her. Tru saw a path ahead of her that had been denied: If she played things right, there might be opportunity. If she played it wrong . . . well, there were worse outcomes at Summit than simply being fired.

Wounds

Holly clasped Mark’s hand between hers, doing the best she could to reassure him. The shooting had taken place twelve hours ago, and Mark was trying to process it along with everyone else. He had accepted stitches in the emergency room but refused to be admitted as a patient, confident that the repair job the attending physician had done would hold.

He was more concerned about Officer Bettencourt, who had been in surgery for several hours while physicians worked to prevent any further hemorrhaging.

His own injury had been superficial: The bullet had passed through the fabric of his shirt, grazed his deltoid, then exited. It was the width of the wound that had caused the bleeding.

“Do you want to come back later? Maybe take a nap?” Holly asked.

“I can nap in the employee lounge if I need to. Although I’m technically not medical staff anymore, now that I think about it.”

Holly nodded, then rested her head on Mark’s good shoulder. By the time he had called her, she had already seen the news, and any chance he’d hoped for to downplay what had happened was gone. She was nearly hysterical when she answered the phone.

She had raced over to the hospital, but by then the last suture was already in place and he was focused on finding out Bettencourt’s condition.

The doors to the operating rooms opened, and Dr. Amanda Ruten emerged with her mask dangling from her ears and blood spatter on her blue scrubs. She spotted where Mark and Holly were sitting and headed toward them.

She offered them a smile. “She’s gonna make it.”

“Thank God,” Mark replied. “I was afraid I packed the wadding in too tight and caused more damage.”

“We can talk about your dressing another time. I have a few pointers, but it did what it needed to do. And I’m sure she’s going to be very grateful for that,” Ruten assured him.

“Does she have any family here?” Holly asked.

“No, but her mother is flying in. I just left her a message so she knows her daughter will be okay.”

“When can we see her?” Mark asked.

“We’re still finishing up. Post-op is going to last awhile. Probably best case, tomorrow. But there’s going to be a line.” Ruten gestured toward a group of police officers huddled in the lobby.

Mark had made a statement earlier to one of the detectives in the gaggle and had clarified details for two others about what had taken place. He hadn’t had a chance to check the news or learn more about what had happened. By the time the ambulance carrying him and Bettencourt arrived at the hospital, one gunman was dead and the other was in custody, being treated for gunshot wounds at a different hospital. Aside from Mark’s grazing wound and a bystander hit by shards of glass from a broken window, Bettencourt had suffered the worst of it.

“I suggest you go home and check in tomorrow,” Ruten told him.

“Understood,” Mark said, still not feeling ready to leave the hospital yet.

“Your stepdad’s here with somebody else,” Holly noted, indicating the entrance to the emergency room.