She sat down across from Maria.
"I want to ask you a question," Maren said."I want you to answer it honestly, and I want you to know that whatever you say doesn't leave this room."
Maria set down the magazine.
The reading glasses came off.She folded them and laid them on top of the magazine with the same care a surgeon might use to put down a clamp.Then she looked across the table at Maren, and her face did something Maren hadn't seen it do before.It got older.Not in a bad way — in the way a face gets older when a person stops pretending she hasn't been waiting for a particular question to be asked.
"Who did you file the discrepancy report with?"
Maria took a breath.Let it out.Looked at the closed break room door, then back at Maren.
"Her name is Ani Prescott.Materials management, third floor of the admin wing.She took my report on a Tuesday.By Thursday it was in a folder markedresolved — no action required.I went to her office to ask why, and she told me the pharmacy had reconciled the overage.No signature on the reconciliation.No name on the pharmacist who supposedly signed off.Just a sticker and a stamp."
"You asked her twice?"
"Three times.The third time, she told me to drop it."
"In those words."
"In those words."
Maren held the coffee cup in both hands.It was too hot, and she was grateful for it because it gave her hands something to do.
"Does Ani report to the board?"
Maria's mouth tightened."Her office is next to the boardroom.You put that together however you want."
"How did she get the job?"
"Three years ago.Came in through Montgomery's office.There wasn't a posting.She just showed up one Monday with a badge and a title."
The break room refrigerator kicked on and rattled for a moment before settling.Down the hall, someone paged a respiratory therapist to the fifth floor.
Maria reached across the table and covered Maren's hand with her own.Her fingers were cool and dry, and the grip was firmer than Maren expected.
"I don't know what you're doing, sweetheart.I don't want to know.But I've been a nurse in this building for twenty-two years, and I can tell the difference between someone who's asking questions because she's curious and someone who's asking because she's got a reason.You've got a reason."
"I do."
"Then don't let this go the way Rose's questions went."
The name landed in the break room the way it landed every time.Rose Embry.The nurse who'd asked the same questions and disappeared inside of two weeks.
"I won't."
Maria squeezed her hand once and let go.She picked up her reading glasses and put them back on, picked up the magazine and flipped to a page she'd already read.The moment closed like a door easing shut.
Maren rinsed her coffee cup in the break room sink, set it on the drying rack, and went back to her floor.
* * *
She found him in the cafeteria at three o'clock.
Graham was sitting at a table near the windows with a cup of coffee and a newspaper he wasn't reading.The blue vest was folded on the chair beside him, and his lanyard lay on the table next to his phone.Off duty.Or at least performing it.He looked up when she sat down across from him, and something moved behind his eyes — not the operational assessment she'd watched happen in the stairwell.Something warmer.Something he probably thought he was hiding.
"Ani Prescott.Materials management, third floor of the admin wing.Hired through Montgomery's office three years ago.She took Maria's discrepancy report and buried it.She's the one who killed the reconciliation paperwork."
Graham set his coffee down.