Page 63 of Every Last One
“What are you talking about?” the woman eventually asked.
“He shot a doctor on the fourth floor. This person is bleeding out and needs treatment.” Sandra held back Maddox’s name intentionally, and she never mentioned the young girl in need of a new heart. She couldn’t know how this woman would respond. In a way, the child’s fate was out of her hands, out of her control. But one of her “friends” had shot someone. Possibly more than one, another tidbit Sandra didn’t share.
There was ruffling on the other end of the line and sniffling.
Brice wrote on a note,Sounds distressed by this news.
“That wasn’t part of the plan, was it? Someone getting hurt,” Sandra said.
“No. But I told you we would do what we must.”
“Well, he didn’t need to do that. And what he did doesn’t need to affect you. You can still walk away from this.”
“No. I’m not ready to let them off that easy. They need to start listening to me, but it’s like I’m invisible. They don’t see me. I don’t matter to them. Fat cats.” She spat the condemnation.
And that term reared up again. It almost sounded like she’d been brainwashed. “You don’t matter to them?”
“No, I’m just a number like everyone else that comes through those doors.”
“Well, I’m listening to you. Who are you talking to in there? Can you tell me their names?”
“I don’t know all of them. Just Megan Beal and Murray Berkshire.”
Sandra remembered the name from Luis’s recap of the board of directors, but she looked at Gibson. He nodded, seeming to have received the unspoken request she’d want information when she got off the phone. “Could you find out the names of the others in the room?”
“Why?”
“I’d be able to let their families know they are okay. Can I do that?”
“Everyone’s fine. And okay. Say your name, one at a time. You start first,” the woman told those in the room, and Sandra imagined her pointing someone out.
Every name felt like a victory. “That was great…” She allowed time for the woman to volunteer her name, but she didn’t, and Sandra didn’t think it was wise to push her. “You can trust that I’m going to bat for you, but I’m not going to lie. Since your friend shot that doctor, it’s getting more difficult to hold ERTback from storming in there. Can I tell them you’re willing to surrender and come out peacefully?”
“Pfft. No way. Not until we get what we want.” With that, she hung up.
Sandra had pushed too hard, and it blew up in her face.
“You did your best,” Brice assured her.
“We all know who Megan Beal is, but Murray Berkshire is the CEO of Bright Future LLC,” Gibson said. “The company specializes in oncology drugs, including, but not limited to, chemotherapy drugs.” Gibson updated the board with key takeaways from the call.
Hostages ID’d in boardroom, eighth floor
Special interest in Beal and Berkshire?
HT not confirming nor denying friendships with conspirators, seems to be about money
Sandra was fixated on the two names. “We might have been wrong earlier to think this was only about Megan Beal. The shot caller was ready with Murray Berkshire’s name just as quickly. Maybe her goal was to get into that boardroom with the two of them. She would know they’d be there because, as Luis told us, the members are listed on the hospital’s website.”
“Okay, and those two people could make sense if the shot caller also owes money to the hospital, say, for cancer treatment,” Brice suggested. “She might think Beal can write off her debt while Murray might absorb costs.”
“So she’s running her own negotiation in that boardroom,” Neal said.
“That seems possible,” Sandra admitted. “We all know that chemotherapy isn’t cheap. And we could be looking at someone who had cancer or still does.”
“If that’s the case, she has nothing to lose,” Gibson said.
“Or it’s a relative whose debt passed on to her, as we suspect was the case for Feeney,” Brice inserted.
