Page 98 of The Session

“Who indeed, Mark?” Diane handed the textbook back to him with his father face up.

“Who the hell are you supposed to be?” Mark asked loudly, not caring.

Diane picked up her coffee cup and phone. “Let’s stay in touch,” she said as she walked away.

Study Break

Mark walked through the crowded streets of Nassau, doing his best to detect whether he was being followed. He knew his sudden request to take a commercial flight from Exuma to Nassau to Santa Fe to visit Holly would raise questions. But he couldn’t think of any other way to get an opportunity to investigate his new lead free from the watchful, albeit helpful, eyes of Summit Strategies personnel.

He made his way past throngs of cruise ship travelers, who tended to move in sunburned, gawking clusters. Mark felt he could trust Tru, but he wasn’t certain.

His questions needed answers that he’d have to keep close to the vest. At first he’d thought he could manage studying and researching Summit here. But the return of the woman with the foreign accent who called herself Diane was the final push Mark needed to stop being complacent and letting things unfold around him.

He walked into a store that sold custom-printed hand towels and linens, at least to give the impression that he was actually shopping. In one of Lightman’s books, his father had recounted a conversation with an expert spymaster who explained that stopping to look in store windows, like you see in movies, is something people only do in movies. Most people just walk into the shop and have a look around. This is far more convincing. His point was that it’s better to pretend to do the thing people actually do than to mimic what we think they do from movies.

Mark set down an apron with a sea turtle on it and casually walked back out the door. He crossed the street, then took a left around the block. He made a point of checking his phone for directions longer than necessary, again, to check if anyone was following him. Nobody was. He walked two more blocks toward the ocean and entered a sporting-goods store that rented everything from scuba equipment to electric bikes.

A friendly salesperson offered to help, but Mark politely declined and continued inspecting the items on the shelves. He grabbed a bottle of sunscreen, then found a nylon knapsack. At the endcap of the row, he found the last thing he was looking for. He went to the counter and paid in cash.

He stepped outside and checked his phone again to see if anybody was in pursuit.

After he left a small grocery store and saw there was nobody on the street, he felt fairly confident that he was alone.

He’d checked the timetable to make sure that when he got on board the ferry, he would be one of the last people boarding and able to detect a hidden escort.

Mark took a seat inside, near the gangway, where he’d see any last-minute boarders.

The captain made an announcement and the crew began to untie the ferry from the pier. Mark confirmed he was the last one on.

Two hours later, the ferry pulled into the pier at Governor’s Harbour, in the middle of the island of Eleuthera.

Exuma, the location of the Summit Strategies Executive Center, was just south of Eleuthera, and it would have been a much shorter trip to fly directly, but Mark was certain that asking for transportation there would draw too much attention.

Traveling by ferry at least gave him a chance at anonymity. The problem was time.

The return ferry to Exuma departed at 4:00 p.m., which should have allowed Mark plenty of time, assuming he was able to find a bicycle to rent. While there were several cab drivers on the island, Mark was certain that anyone at Summit Strategies or elsewhere who wanted to keep tabs on him would have a direct line to them. He wanted to avoid leaving an obvious breadcrumb trail of direct contacts or digital fingerprints.

Mark was able to convince the manager of Island Bicycles to take a $300 cash deposit instead of a credit card by explaining that he had already reached his charge limit. The shop owner seemed blasé about the whole transaction, probably because the only way Mark would be able to steal the bicycle from the island would be to take it on the ferry, and there was little chance the crew would let that happen.

Mark had noticed that Caribbean islands had their own form of small-town codes of conduct. Not only did everybody know everybody else—with the exception of the tourists—but the geographic isolation also meant that car or even bicycle theft were effectively impossible to get away with.

As Mark pedaled his way down Queen’s Highway, the main road running from the north to the south of the island, he looked back from time to time to see if he was being followed. With the exception of a pickup truck that overtook him, the only traffic was going in the opposite direction.

By the time Mark reached Kevin’s cottage, he felt he had done the best he could to keep his tracks covered. As he climbed the steps onto the deck that wrapped around the house, his eyes drifted toward the sky, and a lingering unease settled in—dealing with an organization that wielded its own private army and drone pilots made the odds feel impossibly stacked.

When Mark was here with Tru, she’d had a key to unlock the door. Not having it wasn’t going to be a problem for him.

As a trained paramedic, he had to respond to a variety of situations, including ones where people were having medical emergencies alone inside their locked homes.

Back in his ambulance, there was a crowbar and a door knocker he could use to gain entry. While Mark had neither of those on him, the last time he was at the beach house, standing in front of the large sliding glass doors, he’d made a mental note of how little protection they provided from trespassers and burglars.

Mark walked around the deck to the back, which faced the bay. He grabbed the door handle, slid it to the side, pushed it in, then lifted it until he heard the sound of the latch slipping from the hasp. Given the weight of the glass, it wasn’t an easy feat, but Mark had done this before. He slid the door open and stepped into the living room.

Tru had mentioned that nobody had been to the house since Kevin died. Mark took that to mean nobody had occupied it since then, since either a family member or somebody from Summit would have retrieved Kevin’s personal belongings, like his wallet and electronic devices. But that didn’t mean that everything else had been erased.

Mark walked around the small house, going from room to room, taking photos and searching for anything that stood out.

The home was fairly simple. There was the main area with the couches and Kevin’s photography that faced the bay. There was also a photo of a smiling woman sitting at a beachside bar holding a drink.