Page 100 of The Session

The last time Mark was here, he’d examined the nylon straps that crisscrossed the front and back of the kayak, used for storing gear. At first nothing stood out in his photo of them. But after studying it carefully, he noticed one cord caught the sunlight differently—subtle enough to escape a first glance. Looking at the kayak’s straps now, Mark saw that one set of straps, the one on the rear of the kayak, was tighter and noticeably darker than the other.

Mark used his pocketknife to cut the cords and placed both sets of straps into Ziploc bags he’d bought at the grocery store in Nassau. To cover his tracks, he replaced them with matching straps from the sporting-goods shop. While he wasn’t sure if removing potential evidence from a crime scene was the smartest idea, the straps had sat here for close to a year untouched, either overlooked or deemed unimportant.

Mark placed them into his backpack, reset the sliding glass door in its track, then got on his bike to make it back to port to catch the ferry to Nassau.

Research

Mark sat across from Holly in a Denny’s booth, staring at his cup of coffee and regretting turning down a flight on a private jet. He’d managed to get some sleep on the trip, but the connecting flights from Nassau to Albuquerque made it difficult to get any one long stretch.

He needed the caffeine to come anywhere close to Holly’s energy level—she was a notorious early riser.

He’d just reached the part where he decided to take a trip to Haiti.

“Are you kidding me? When you texted me about a trip to Haiti, I thought you were just stopping there. I didn’t realize you were working there!” Holly demanded.

Mark had been vague with Holly, mainly to keep her from worrying, but he had to admit it was also to avoid her skeptical questions. Her analytical mind had a way of asking honest but sharp questions that often stung.

“They needed backup medical support,” Mark replied, leaving out the part where he was serving with a private military unit to earn Valor points.

“Is it, like, a humanitarian thing?”

“Very much. They’re in Haiti to help the government make sure that fuel convoys get to hospitals and power stations and that food gets distributed.”

“So is this part of some nonprofit?” Holly asked.

“No, this is a security company that’s part of Summit Strategies,” he explained. “How has your work been?” he asked quickly.

“It’s been fascinating. We’re starting to do animal trials on the AWM in a few months, and I’ve been helping prep the lab facility for that.”

Mark nodded enthusiastically but worried she was going to ask if he knew what “AWM” stood for. In his defense, his brain was already so full of Max Lightman’s acronyms that it seemed unfair to blame him for not recalling something that she must’ve mentioned in passing weeks. But his nodding failed to work. Clearly, she knew he had no idea. “I’m sorry, AWM?”

“Artificial womb membrane,” Holly replied.

Right. The company was working on some kind of artificial womb solution. He didn’t understand much about it, though it related to Holly’s work on how nutrients function in the body.

They’d first met when Mark had wandered into the university laboratory where Holly worked to ask questions about nutrition and physiology. She mistook him for a grad student—for the first three minutes of the conversation—then realized he was actually a curious jock.

They came from different worlds, but their chemistry was undeniable. Breaking up hadn’t erased it; it just forced their connection into the background while their lives kept moving. Holly’s excitement about work confirmed it: For the foreseeable future, a relationship was going to be a nice-to-have and not a priority for her. And while Mark ultimately wanted a committed relationship, he had his own priorities too.

Since arriving at the airport, Mark had tried to keep things clean—polite texts, no promises. Seeing her pull up at arrivals still made him feel warm. Long-dormant butterflies fluttered in his stomach for a moment.

“So this AWM—what exactly will it be used for?”

“There are a lot of open questions, and it’s really just the starting point for the research. But long term, it could be used for helping everything from premature babies to lab-grown meat.”

“Never offer those two examples in the same sentence again,” Mark joked.

“Oh, that does sound awful,” she said, eyes widening at the thought. “I’ll make a note of that.” She pulled a yellow pad from her purse and wrote it down.

“I’ve been helping them work on some of the core science communication messaging,” she continued. “That’s a very good note, by the way.”

Mark found it surprising that such a simple suggestion—don’t make the one-liner sound like a pitch for a horror movie—was helpful.

“I read a pretty good book on the topic, Thoughts and Words,” he told her.

“Really? Who wrote that?” Holly asked.

“Well . . .” Mark hedged.