Page 129 of The Session

Mark’s eyes adjusted to the SUV’s dark interior and took in Marnie Lightman sitting at the far end of the seat.

“Have a seat and close the door,” she ordered.

Mark’s pulse was still pounding at the shock of finding someone in the vehicle. At least it wasn’t Nathan Morris.

Unsure what to do, he followed her instructions and climbed inside.

Marnie wore a navy-blue jacket and large sunglasses. “What’s your plan, Mark?”

“My plan?” Mark echoed.

“You know—the next step, your playbook, whatever you do when you set foot on a football field. Clearly, you must have some idea what you’re going to do next,” she pressed.

“About what?”

“Nathan Morris isn’t stupid. He may not have been paying attention the last time you came here and started looking into what happened to Kevin. But since you’ve shown yourself to be a little more clever than he assumed, he’s not going to make that mistake again,” she warned.

“You think Kevin was killed?” Mark asked.

“Of course I do, and Nathan had his hand in it. My question is what you’re planning to do next.”

Mark was still processing his conversation with Lisbeth and thinking about the phone in his pocket. Should he tell her?

“I don’t know. I was thinking I would tell you or Max.”

“I need you to step back and think about the world we’re in right now. Kevin was killed, and you had a bounty put on your head in Haiti. What do you think you’ll accomplish by telling Max about Morris?”

“He has to know,” Mark insisted.

“I agree—eventually. But what do you think is going to happen if you tell Max that Nathan Morris, his best friend, the man he depends on for everything, killed his son? You’ve read the books on pattern matching. Think it through,” she urged.

Mark played out the scenario in his head. “He won’t believe me. He’ll think it’s some sort of misunderstanding. Morris will have an alternate narrative—something to convince him otherwise.”

“Probably even proof. If he knows you’re here right now and puts two and two together, chances are he’s already got an airtight alibi.”

“But the bartender saw him talking to Kevin right before Kevin was killed, and Morris said he hadn’t been on the island in forever. He pretended not to know about the medical clinic with the doctor who did the examination.”

“Morris knew Kevin was having problems. He’ll say he reached out to try to help him. He didn’t tell you about the clinic or having been here because he was still trying to protect what really happened—or at least the version we’ve been trying to tell people,” Marnie explained.

This was exactly what Mark was afraid of. Going to the police seemed like a nonstarter, given Morris’s connections across the Caribbean. The only solution was going directly to Max with whatever evidence he had and, at the very least, putting his father on guard. Now Marnie was casting doubt on that approach.

“When did you realize it was Morris?” Mark asked.

“I’ve never fully trusted him. And I think I was in a bit of shock after Kevin died, but pretty soon I realized things weren’t adding up. When your name started circulating and the Vault got broken into? That convinced me.”

“You think Morris stole the files?”

“He didn’t need the files. Anything he needed to know, he already knew. If he wants to blackmail Max, Arnold, me, you—whoever—he already has that information. What he needed was a plausible reason for that information to get out that didn’t point to him.”

“Why go through all that trouble?” Mark asked.

“If he wants to use any of it as blackmail indirectly, he needs to make it look like someone else stole it. Maybe he’ll leak some of it to destroy Max’s credibility. He won’t do it overtly, though. It won’t be adversarial toward Max. It’ll be framed as a gesture of support—to make things easier for the company,” Marnie said.

“Why don’t you just call all this out?”

“I have no proof, and Nathan will go scorched-earth the minute I try. We need an actual strategy.”

“What about Tru?” Mark asked.