Page 64 of Salt Kiss
“I’ll be back tomorrow to check on you,” Dr. Sutcliff says. “Donotget out of bed without help, and donotrip my stitches.” He leaves, and it’s a testament to how fucked up the night has been that I can’t even enjoy the experience of seeing Mark Trevena get bossed around by a man who looks like he plays doubles tennis on the weekends and loses.
As the doctor leaves, Goran and Nat come into the bedroom, their faces grim and tired. Nat has a dried streak of blood along her jaw. I don’t think it’s hers.
“Well?” Mark says. His knuckles are whitening on the blanket as he looks at them. The morphine has put Mark in a better mood, but better than lethally furious is still deeply,deeplypissed off. “Tell me.”
“None of our members or their guests were killed,” Goran says, and Mark’s fingers relax a little on the blanket.
“Injuries?”
“A dozen, give or take,” Nat says. “Mostly sprained ankles and knees from the evacuation. Three gunshot wounds, none of them critical. We also have seven unidentified bodies in the building, including the two in the server room.”
I think back to the hall, the rain of bullets sinking into walls and furniture. “There were more than seven.”
Goran nods. “My guess is that the rest of them escaped by blending into the evacuating crowd. It’ll be impossible to say until we can comb through the camera footage.”
“And Drobny? I didn’t see him.”
“Never showed.”
Mark looks up at both of them. “How did this happen?” he asks. The skin around his mouth is blanched white—with anger or pain, I don’t know.
Goran and Nat exchange a look, and then Nat speaks. “Drobny knew we’d be looking into anyone he brought with him. So he seeded the assailants into the guests, snuck them in through the open house.”
“And our background checks didn’t catch this?”
Goran bows his head. “It seems our standard checks can be fooled with a good enough cover identity. We’ll start the process of matching the attackers to the fake identities and then to the guests who sponsored them, and take appropriate measures.”
At my stricken expression, Mark gives an irritable sigh. “Expelling them from the club, Tristan. I’m not going to strangle them with my favorite necktie. Yet.”
Sedge’s phone pings, and he announces quietly, “The FBI will be here soon. They’ll want to talk to you, Mr. Trevena.”
Mark looks like a teenager who’s just been told to go to the principal’s office.
“This night can’t get any worse,” he mutters.
Together, with Mark growing increasingly drowsy, he, Goran, Nat, and Sedge outline what needs to happen over the next several days. The club will need to be shut down until it’s no longer a crime scene, the necessary repairs commissioned, the new furniture ordered, and a thorough audit of all server access to make completely sure nothing was compromised. Dinah will begin a press campaign to manage questions from the public; Andrea will reach out privately to members to assure them that their information is secure and that the club will be reopening with increased safety measures. We will cooperate with the local police and the FBI and hand over anything they ask for, save for the club’s proprietary information.
The security team will be pursuing their own leads to find out how Drobny did this—and why.
Goran says this last part, and Mark huffs, making his hair ruffle around his face. “There’s no elaborate motive forwhy. He just wanted to kill me.”
“But why you, sir?” asks Sedge. His forehead is creased and his mouth is turned down, and I can see a sheen to his pale eyes. He’s close to crying.
It hits me then that he cares for Mark. That he’s barely holding it together.
Mark drops his head back against the pillows stuffed behind him. “Why not? I probably killed his cousin’s best friend’s brother-in-law years ago or something like that. I’m at the top of many revenge lists, you know. I made myself quite famous back in the day.”
Sedge looks even more upset, and Goran shakes his head. “We’ll get to the bottom of it, sir.”
Mark lifts a hand, rather feebly. There’s an IV needle adhesived neatly to the back of it. “I think I need to be on my own for a while. Everyone go. We’ll talk later.”
Sedge, Goran, and Nat all leave the bedroom, and I turn to leave too.
A giant exhale. “Not you, Tristan.”
Despite everything, my heart lifts at that. He wants me to stay. “Sir.”
Mark gestures impatiently at the edge of the bed, like I haven’t gotten the hint fast enough.
