Chapter Thirteen Tess Angelhart
Chapter Thirteen
Tess Angelhart
The sun had just dipped behind Camelback Mountain, bathing the exclusive Alvarado Historic neighborhood in the kind of golden
light that hummed with old money. Gabriel’s brick and adobe home, which looked modest on the outside, but was drenched in
class and elegance on the inside, was set far back on the street. Tess loved her fiancé’s house, even though she occasionally
felt out of place. Sometimes, she didn’t know how Gabriel had fallen for her. They had been raised completely differently,
and Gabriel was perfect. Handsome, smart, kind, a pediatric surgeon who saved the lives of children. Maybe not perfect, but close to it.
But she tried not to question their relationship, though her self-doubts always seemed to creep in when she was stressed.
She’d had two failed engagements and her self-confidence had taken a huge hit. Yet, she loved Gabriel, and they were getting
married. He had shown her his love in a multitude of ways, and accepted her family and how important they were to her.
She didn’t think it was necessary to have a bodyguard, but Jack and Mom both insisted, so Nate Lorenzo had followed her to Gabriel’s.
She wasn’t quite sure how she was going to explain everything to Gabriel.
He wasn’t going to be happy. He already thought her job was too dangerous.
In May, she’d been caught in the middle of an arson fire, and in September she’d been held at gunpoint, and while he didn’t come out and tell her she should quit her job, he had suggested she work from home whenever possible.
She loved that he worried about her and cared about her, but it could also be a bit cloying. Still, she did work from home
more now than she had in the past, and that seemed to appease him. She wasn’t going to quit working with her family; she loved
it far too much.
She pulled into the garage while Nate parked to the side where there were several spaces for guests. She met Nate in the driveway
and he asked, “Security system?”
“Yes.”
“And you always put it on?”
“I don’t live here.”
He gave her a look that told her he knew she stayed here most of the time, and she felt a tiny bit embarrassed. Yes, she and
Gabriel were getting married in April, but she hadn’t wanted to move in. Some people thought she was old-fashioned. And she
was about some things. She didn’t want to live in the same house until they were husband and wife. Gabriel respected her wishes.
Yet, she did sleep in his bed more nights than she stayed at her condo. Did that make her a hypocrite? She tried not to think
about it.
“I know how to use the alarm,” Tess said, trying to cover up her sheepishness.
“Is Gabriel here?”
She shook her head. “He’ll be home around seven.”
“I’m going to check out the grounds.” And he walked off.
Tess let herself in through the front door and disabled the alarm.
She breathed deeply. She loved the aged leather scent and hint of citrus cleaner that permeated the old home, as well as the
history of the antiques and the modern kitchen and the elegant colors throughout.
Tess walked to the back of the first floor where the large, richly decorated library was her favorite room in the house. It
was warm, comfortable, and where she liked to work. Gabriel had a desk in here, but as a doctor he rarely worked from home
and told her she could use it whenever she wished. It had slowly become her desk in her own beautiful office.
She first went to the entertainment center and put on a playlist of classical music she’d created that was calming, a good
mix of Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt, and Tchaikovsky. The piano concerto played throughout the first floor of the house, the kind
of ambient noise both Gabriel and Tess enjoyed.
Tess made a full pot of coffee and, when it was done, brought a cup with her into the office, setting it carefully on a coaster
so it wouldn’t scar the antique mahogany desk. As her computer booted up, she gave herself a moment to reflect and gather
her thoughts.
Her thoughts and her emotions.
She’d always been the good daughter. The dependable one. She followed the example her parents and grandparents had set: responsible,
respectful, civic-minded, always ready to help. Not for praise, she never cared about that, but because doing the right thing
made her feel good. If someone needed her, she showed up.
When Iris lost her husband suddenly, Tess stepped in without hesitation—listening, cooking, cleaning, sitting in silence when
words didn’t help. That was who she was.
So when her parents told her that her father, a man she had always revered, had killed someone and was going to prison, Tess wanted to reject it outright. But they’d never lied to her before. And if Mom said it was true . . . wasn’t that enough?
Margo always insisted something was off, that their father couldn’t have done it, and Tess wanted to believe her. Of course
she did. Their dad was a doctor, a healer. He was gentle, principled. He’d never so much as raised his voice. He wasn’t capable
of violence.
But Mom was certain. And if anyone knew the truth about Dad, it was her.
So Tess stood with her.
It gutted her to take sides, but the more Margo pushed, the more Tess dug in. Because Mom had lost her husband. Because she
had begged them to let it go. Tess believed that honoring Mom and Dad’s request was the right thing to do.
Margo needed answers. Tess didn’t. She trusted her parents. They had always done the right thing. Yet . . . her dad had killed
a man. How could he justify it? In fact, thinking back, he hadn’t justified anything. He was remorseful and sad—those emotions
were etched on his face the night he told them he was confessing to murder. But wasn’t confessing to a crime you felt remorse
for the right thing? You make a mistake, you fix it. That was what Mom and Dad always said. Dad was fixing his mistake.
But everything had changed.
Now Tess didn’t just question that decision, she questioned everything. Her judgment. Her instincts.
She’d been engaged twice. Both men left her, one only a month before their wedding. Three years ago, she had chosen loyalty
to her parents over truth. Now she knew: Their father hadn’t killed Devin Klein. Her parents had lied. Why almost didn’t matter
to her, because what did all this say about her and her judgment?
She had turned thirty-five last month and felt as lost as she had at nineteen when she’d been sweet-talked by a college senior into losing her virginity and realized what a huge mistake it had been to sleep with someone she didn’t love—and who hadn’t loved her.
But wallowing wouldn’t help anyone. She shoved the self-doubt aside.
What she could do was research. That was her strength. If there was information to be found, she would find it. She always had.
Pharmaceutical trials were new territory for her, but learning was part of the work, and part of what she loved about research.
So she’d do what she did best: dig until the truth surfaced, no matter how deep it was buried.
It didn’t take Tess long to understand the basics of clinical trials, and the unique hoops a pharmaceutical company would
have to go through to conduct a trial through the VA, even if it wasn’t funded by the government. Her fingers moved quickly
over her laptop’s keyboard as she navigated a labyrinth of VA documentation, clinical trial registries, and government funding
portals. She had already bookmarked four studies, each connected to PTSD treatments using novel medications—ketamine, MDMA,
and a few experimental compounds with government project numbers that led to dense, bureaucratic PDFs. She downloaded everything
to read in greater detail, while also creating a spreadsheet of each trial starting five years ago—eighteen months before
Dr. Klein was murdered. Every additional study she found she added to the spreadsheet and linked to the appropriate documents.
The only information her mother had about the trial was that it was for PTSD, which made sense considering Dr. Klein’s specialty.
And until they could ask Dad for more details, it was all they had to go on right now.
Nico had given her some advice. Follow the money, he’d said. That’s usually where the bodies are buried.
She tracked every grant for each of the trials she had identified—but there were two trials that had no federal money behind
them, and the funding source wasn’t immediately obvious. While all the trials appeared to be standard with proper protocols
and clean reporting, she wouldn’t be able to know just by looking if something was wrong.
Tess cross-referenced each trial she cataloged against the public ClinicalTrials.gov database. By law, that was where the
data had to end up. But what if it never got there? Or what if the information was falsified, as Dr. Klein had feared?
How would she even begin to know what data was accurate and what data she needed to question?
It should be difficult to upload data that couldn’t be verified, but she could see ways it might be done, even though this
wasn’t her area of expertise. But to know without a doubt that something was wrong, she would need to have access to the raw data, and that information was not available
online for most of these reports. They would be available through the Freedom of Information Act if they were government funded. Private? She would have no access at all.
And FOIA requests took time, sometimes months. They didn’t have months, and she didn’t know which trial information to ask
for.
She opened a file on her screen and whispered to herself as she typed, “To falsify data on a VA-sponsored trial, you’d need
someone on the inside, either at the research site or running the study. Probably both. The manipulation would have to happen
before submission of the data to the online portal, at least that’s my best guess. Raw data can be manipulated, but bad data
may be excluded entirely. Incompetence or intent? How to prove either?”
“What good is an alarm system if you don’t use it?” a deep voice said.