Page 47 of Careless Whisper

I scrolled through my contacts and called Dr. Lars Klevberg, Chief of Cardiology at Mass Gen. He was anArmitage Foundation reviewer and had informally been one of Maren’s advisors.

I hesitated, thumb hovering. I felt foolish bringing this up. It was going to be nothing.

In which case, Elias, just have the damn conversation.

I hit call, and a part of me wished he wouldn’t pick up. I had a bad feeling about what was coming. And, like always, my instinct was to walk away before it got messy.

If you looked up “avoids confrontation” in the dictionary, you’d probably find my picture. I’d always told myself that as a surgeon, I dealt with enough pressure in the OR, which was why I’d earned the right to avoid it everywhere else. Over time, that excuse had turned into a habit. And eventually, a pattern.

Lars picked up on the third ring. “Klevberg.”

“Lars, it’s Elias Graham.”

“Elias,” he said, surprised. “Good to hear from you. How are things in Seattle?”

“Complicated.”Understatement of the year. “Listen—I need to ask you something. Off the record. About the Armitage grant. Maren Loring’s project. Five years ago.”

There was a pause, just long enough to make my skin itch.

“Why?” he asked, his tone suddenly more guarded.

“You know I hired her here and...”

“I also hear you’re engaged. Met your old man the other day, and he said?—”

“Christ!” I muttered. “Lars, Maren, and I arenotengaged. She’s just a colleague, that’s all. Look, she told me her abstract was accepted, and she was dropped due to some internal politics. But I’m starting to think that wasn’t the full story.”

Lars let out a slow breath. “It wasn’t.”

I stood up and began to pace my office.

“She took herself out,” he told me. “The committee flagged issues with data integrity. Inconsistencies in the patient samples. A few source files had been altered—someone had overwritten baseline data.”

I stopped mid-step.

“She blamed a research nurse,” he added.

I already knew the answer, but I asked anyway. “Was it Reggie Sanchez?”

Another pause.

“Yes, Regina Sanchez. She was new, had just started at Stratford, and was quite inexperienced, so…we thought it was a genuine mistake.”

“But?” I coaxed.

“Butthe internal audit didn’t back that up. From what I remember, the nurse had actually escalated concerns before the edits were found. If anything, she tried to stop it.

The floor felt like it tilted beneath me.

“Why wasn’t it made public?”

“Because Maren pulled out of the project beforethe committee could escalate it. It didn’t rise to the level of a formal ethics investigation.”

“And Reggie?” My voice sounded distant even to myself. Was this why Maren had it out for Reggie?

“What about her? She was cleared.”

I lowered myself into the chair, slow and heavy, like gravity had doubled.

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