Chapter Nineteen Luisa Angelhart
Chapter Nineteen
Luisa Angelhart
Luisa pulled into Gabriel’s driveway, easing her small truck off to the side so she wouldn’t block the garage. The engine
ticked as she shut it off, the midmorning sun bright, making everything appear sharper than it should be.
She reached for her messenger bag and swung it across her chest with practiced ease. As soon as her low-heeled boots hit the
gravel, a prickle ran up her spine. She paused, the air suddenly still and quiet.
Someone was watching her.
She scanned the line of trees flanking the garage, eyes narrowing on the thick hedges. If someone were going to ambush her,
that’s where they’d be. Her breath slowed. Focused.
A flicker of movement, then stillness. Leaves shifted, but the wind wasn’t blowing.
Without a sound, she stepped around to the far side of her truck, using the metal bulk as cover. Her fingers slid into her
bag, closing around the familiar grip of her gun.
Then she saw him.
“Nate.” His name was a curse on her lips.
He stepped into view, coming from around the side of the house like he’d been casually out for a stroll. That cocky, lopsided
grin of his made her jaw clench.
“Don’t shoot,” he said. “I come in peace.” He put his hands palms up. He wore tactical pants and a black T-shirt across his
broad, muscled chest. She couldn’t read his expression because dark sunglasses covered his eyes.
Luisa scowled, her heart hammering. She let go of the gun, her hand emerging empty, but her pride smarted. She hated that
he’d gotten the jump on her. Hated that her pulse was still racing and her throat felt tight.
She was a Marine, dammit. She wasn’t supposed to spook.
Wordlessly, she pulled out her phone and texted Tess: I’m here.
As she walked toward the front door, she could feel Nate’s gaze trailing after her like a hand on her back. She turned, flipped
him off without breaking stride. It made her feel marginally better.
Then he laughed. Loud, amused, and totally unbothered.
Jerk.
The front door burst open. Tess stood there in sweatpants and a wrinkled white T-shirt, hair piled in a chaotic bun and no
makeup. Her eyes were wide with relief.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, pulling Luisa into a hug. “That woman just sent me all her notes and I’m completely overwhelmed.”
“That woman?” Luisa echoed, a corner of her mouth lifting. “You mean Dr. Nadine Pierce?”
Tess made a face and nodded. “I really don’t know what to think about her yet.”
“She wants to help,” Luisa said gently. “I don’t think she’s trying to tear Mom and Dad apart.”
Tess hesitated, then said, “I hope not.”
But Luisa could see the doubt in her eyes, the flicker of worry she didn’t want to voice. Tess wholeheartedly believed in
love. Every bump in a relationship felt, to her, like a betrayal.
“Our parents are solid,” Luisa said. “Mom talked to Nadine this morning and she was forthcoming. Dad didn’t keep the relationship
a secret from Mom and, to be honest, we really didn’t have a right to know, even if it feels like we should have. It was more than forty years ago.”
“I know, but . . .”
Luisa waited, eyebrows raised.
“Okay, I’m struggling with this whole thing,” Tess admitted, exhaling hard. “It’s messing with my head.”
Luisa sometimes struggled as well. She was surprised she’d shared so much with Margo last night. It felt good to say it out
loud, but she didn’t know if anything would change. If anything could change. She would always be the much younger sister of a close-knit clan. They couldn’t change who they were any more than
she could change how she felt. She had to accept it.
Instead of going into all that with Tess, who would understand less than Margo and also take it personally, Luisa said, “I
saw Nate out there. You banished him from the house?”
“No,” Tess muttered, “he banished himself. Took over the pool house, turned it into a full-on surveillance center. It’s like
some kind of war room back there with security feeds, cameras, whatever else he needs. He can see the whole street, every
inch of the yard. It’s 24/7 overwatch. I don’t think he sleeps.”
That explained how he knew she’d arrived. He’d watched her drive up, yet still decided to sneak up on her.
Her irritation flared again.
“I’ll check it out before I go,” Luisa said, though the last thing she wanted was more time with Nate. He always made her
feel . . . off-balance.
And she knew why.
When she was a senior in high school, Nate had pulled her out of the worst night of her life. She’d gone out with the wrong
people to Lake Pleasant. She didn’t completely understand why. Maybe a streak of rebellion. Definitely seeking adrenaline.
It nearly killed her. She hadn’t called her parents. They thought she was perfect, the golden child with straight A’s, varsity
letters, and hundreds of volunteer hours.
They didn’t know the truth. That night, she’d nearly drowned in it—in the truth, in her lies, in the lake itself.
Nate had been home on leave after his dad’s heart attack, and by some miracle he found her after she called him in hysterics.
He hauled her out of a bad situation, chewed her out like no one else ever had, then kept her secret. For over seven years,
he had never said a word.
Never told her parents. Never told Jack. Never threw it back in her face.
She’d always been grateful. Furious too because he knew her at her worst. And because in some twisted way, that night had saved her. It made her realize she didn’t want the path
her parents had laid out for her. The neat, polished life. And she didn’t want to throw it all away by being an adrenaline
junkie constantly chasing highs.
She wanted to earn her strength. Prove herself.
That night was the reason she enlisted.
And to this day, no one—not her parents, not her brothers or sisters, not even her high school boyfriend—knew that.
No one knew, except Nate.
Tess led her to the library, which had also become a war room in its own right, with a computer humming on the desk, a laptop full of numbers on the coffee table, and stacks of paper everywhere.
A whiteboard had been rolled in and blocked one of the bookshelves.
Tess had written a timeline of the Neurovantix drug trials and a list of everyone who might have been involved.
“Speaking of not sleeping,” Luisa said. “You did all this?”
“Gabriel helped last night before he had to go to bed. He left early for a scheduled surgery.”
“Did you sleep?”
She bit her lip and stared at the leather couch where there was an afghan blanket and pillow. “For a few hours when the numbers
started blurring together.”
“Show me what you have so far,” Luisa said. She pulled out her laptop and put it on the coffee table next to Tess’s.
Tess took her to the whiteboard and gestured to the timeline. “You know most of this already, but I like to see it in front
of me when I’m working. When the Phase 1 trial started, when it finished, when Dr. Klein noticed the missing data, his murder,
and when Dad confessed. We don’t have much more information yet, other than the names of two patients who may have been affected.”
The clinical trial lasted, start to finish, six months; Klein was killed two weeks after the official end of the trial, a
week after he noticed the missing data. He had spoken to Nadine Pierce two days after the discovery.
“We can assume he saw the clinical trial results posted on the public website, so I printed them out—” Tess waved to one of
the stacks on the desk “—but they look legit. No one can tell that something is missing simply by reading the report. They
would have to have known specific details during the trial.”
Luisa noted that Tess had added Jim Novak to the board as Patient One and Christina Aberdeen as Patient Two.
Novak was listed as MIA because they didn’t know where he was, and next to Aberdeen was the date she died.
A printout from the computer was posted next to her name.
On closer inspection, Luisa noted it was her obituary.
The photo they included was her official military headshot.
“According to your interview with Klein’s assistant,” Tess said, “there were ten people excluded from the final results, but
we only know about Novak and Aberdeen. I haven’t been able to locate Novak.”
“Margo is going to Honor House to see if they have a current address,” Luisa said. “He could have left Phoenix. The name is
common, so I don’t have anything on his family yet, but I have my computer running a program based on his age, service, and
birthplace and I might be able to narrow it down.”
Tess started writing on the board. “If we take what Dr. Pierce said at face value, that Dr. Klein was going to blow the whistle
on the trial, whoever killed him must have figured that out in this three-day window.” She circled the days.
“Someone who worked with them, who knew about the adverse effects, but helped cover it up. And they would need to be privy to what Dr. Klein was doing. Maybe someone Klein talked to, either he accused them of wrongdoing
or maybe he exposed the crime to the wrong person.”
“That’s my thought exactly.” Tess stared at the board. “Dad was involved only on the periphery—hooking Dr. Klein up with Dr.
Pierce. But Dad wasn’t involved with the trial itself in any way.”
Tess tapped the day Klein was murdered. “An hour before his death, Klein called Dad. Dad went to the VA to meet with him and found him dead. I texted Mom and asked her about it. She said it was in the evening and Klein was upset about something, but she didn’t know what at the time.
Dad went to talk to him, arriving fifty-five minutes after the call.
I had Nico send me a copy of the autopsy.
There was a short window where Klein could have been killed, the end of which was when Dad got there.
Or, he could have been dead the minute after Dad talked to him on the phone. ”
“Do we know if Dad actually talked to him or was it a text message or email?” Luisa asked.
“A call, according to Dad’s phone records. The police included the phone records in their report. And Mom said that Dad told
her he was going to the medical center because Klein wanted to talk to him about something important. He didn’t tell her specifically
what, and we don’t know what he actually knew.”
“Who are these people?” Luisa pointed to a list of names on the board. One she remembered, Willa Blankenship, as the supervisor
from Neurovantix. The others she didn’t.
“Zachary Ames is the VA administrator. He runs the facility and should know everything that is going on within its walls,
but he primarily delegates. He has several assistants. I listed them here, but they all do different things. Peter Stockman
is the current head of research, but back then he was an assistant.”
“Who did he replace and when?” Luisa asked.
Tess pointed to a name at the bottom of the board. “Mildred Maddox retired from the VA last year, now splits her time between
Scottsdale and Wyoming. She’s in her late sixties.”
“So that means she can’t be corrupt?” Luisa asked.
“No, but—”
“We need to follow up nonetheless.” Luisa added her name to the board, ignoring Tess’s frown. “You continue going through
the paperwork and pull any names that are directly connected to the medical center. Focus on the money trail. I left a message
for Willa Blankenship’s daughter, and I’m going to keep calling until she calls me back. Toss me anything you need me to dig
into, and we can split the list.”
They had their work cut out for them, but Luisa was excited to get started.
“One more thing,” Luisa said. “Georgia mentioned that nurses and doctors can delete encounters—anytime a patient comes in for anything or goes to a test or whatever—but they have limited tools in that regard. The medical records department can do anything to a record, and may even be able to delete it. Do you think you can find out who is working in Medical Records now who might also have been there when Dr. Klein was killed?”
“Maybe,” Tess said, biting her lip as she considered. “The administrators and department heads are posted on their website,
but most staff isn’t public information.”
Luisa had an idea, but it wasn’t legal and she’d need someone to be a distraction. She figured Margo would be up for it.
They just couldn’t get caught.