Page 45 of I’ll Be Watching You

“Is this the same person you told me to find?”

“Probably,” Georgia said. “I didn’t know her full name.”

“Why lie about her relationship with Devin?”

Georgia’s jaw tightened. “Because your mother made my life hell. She said if you were killed, your blood would be on my hands. I was angry. Ava told me to give you the runaround, send you looking for something that you’d never be able to find. I gave you the name to jab at Ava because I was both scared and angry about what was going on, and I didn’t even know what had happened to Devin. I mean, I didn’t know who killed him, and if it was related to the drug trial there’s so many people it could be. One? Two? All of them conspiring? How could I know?”

“Nadine,” I pressed, uninterested in her justification.

“I figured you’d dig and find her yourself, but I guess I shouldn’t have said she was attached to Devin. I never knew her last name, and Devin only spoke to her on the phone.”

My voice rose. “So who is she? The Nadine Pierce in Austin or the one in New York?”

Georgia actually smiled. “Wow. You narrowed it down. I didn’t even know her name was Pierce. The Nadine who spoke to Devin is a doctor for the VA.”

Austin, I thought.

“That helps,” I said.

“Your dad knows her too.”

“Right, she met with him in prison.”

“I mean, he’s the one who told Devin to call her if he had questions about drug trials.”

“He knows a lot of doctors.”

“Well, he knew her very well,” Georgia snapped. “Considering that she’s his ex-fiancée.”

I glared at her. “What? Devin’s ex-fiancée?”

“Your father’s.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

Georgia shrugged. “When Devin first talked to her, I walked in near the end of the conversation. He didn’t wave me off, so I stayed, but they were wrapping up. I heard him tell her he’d give her good wishes to Cooper. When he hung up, he told me that Cooper and Nadine had been engaged in college. She was two years older than he was and when she graduated, she got cold feet and broke it off because Cooper had always said he wanted kids and she didn’t. But they split on good terms, and she got married years later. It was Cooper who told Devin to call her because she had worked with Neurovantix on a different trial a few years before.”

I swallowed hard. I didn’t want to believe a word she said, but couldn’t figure out why she would lie about something I could easily disprove.

My parents had a perfect marriage. Or was it? Did Mom come second? If Dad knew that Pierce had worked on a trial years before with the same company, he must have kept in contact with her. How close of contact?

I shook it off. A lot of people dated before they found the one. Next year, my parents would celebrate their fortieth anniversary.

But it still bothered me that I hadn’t known.

Georgia looked from Luisa to me. “I left the VA because I was scared, but had no tangible information to give to the police. Devin was dead. Your dad had been arrested. I knew if I stayed, I might be next. They might think I knew more than I actually did.”

“They,” I muttered. “I hate the elusive ‘they.’ ”

“I don’t have a name,” she said quietly. “And I don’t see how only one person can be responsible for all this. Data was deleted. More than one person had to be involved in that.”

“You mentioned Willa Blankenship. Who else?”

“That’s all I know. Willa ran the trial. Neurovantix sponsored it.”

Luisa tapped her phone. “We can trace them, find out who was in charge of the project at the VA. Someone who is still there who was alerted when Liz Swanson accessed that particular file. And I’ll track down Blankenship.”

“We also need to talk to Nadine Pierce,” I said with a glance to my sister. She nodded. Good, we were on the same page.