Dr. Erin Monaghan
Let’s talk next week.
She sent her answer with a few quick keystrokes, then moved just as quickly to the parking lot. She was waiting for Ethan by the Modern Physics bicycle racks when his hatchback pulled into its spot, striding to his passenger door before he’d cut the engine, rapping her knuckles against the window.
Morning, she mouthed, ignoring Marco Rossi exiting his sedan and almost tripping over a curb. Then, when Ethan rolled down the glass, “Can I come in?”
“What…” But he unlocked the door.
She didn’t give either of them time for questions. She slid into the blast of air conditioning, Mumford & Sons, and dog hair on his seat, rolled up the hatchback’s window, silenced his radio, and said, “I’m investigating Dr. Kramer for fraud.”
Shhhhrreeeeeeeeecccchhh!
Tires squealed. The hatchback lurched up over its wheel stop when some reflex saw Ethan stamp hard on the accelerator pedal.
Rossi stumbled back.
He ignored their colleague. So did Erin, hurriedly grabbing the transmission lever to shift the car intopark.
“You’re investi—what?”
“Yes.”
“No.” In the sudden silence and a rising stink of rubber, he turned with tendons jumping in his neck, lips rigid. “Erin, don’t.”
“I’ve already started.”
“Please.”
“I’m sorry. I have to.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t have to risk—”
She caught his hands fisting around his keys before the serrated metal broke skin. “Ethan—if it were just you, I’d respect your wishes. I’d leave him alone. Let him continue. I’d hate it. But I’d do it.”
“I—”
“It’s not just you, though. Not just us. It’s all the others. The ones who came first. The ones he hurt first. There’s a forum called STEMinist Online with so much data on what he’s done, who he’s sabotaged. Years and years of it! He’s not going to stop, and I—I have a responsibility to those women…”Ally. “To the next ones. To myself, too. I hope you can understand.”
“You don’t know what he’ll do.”
“I won’t involve you. Or implicate you. He won’t know. If I fail, you’ll still be safe. If that’s what you want.”
“No. No, that’snotwhat I—fuck!” and he abruptly wrenched out of her grip, seizing his phone. He thrust the device at her. “Look.”
“Ethan—”
“Stop talking andlook.”
Dr. John R. Kramer + quantum units
“…oh.”
“I just wanted to know,” and now, his voice was quiet. Terrifyingly quiet, as shocking in its low, taut intensity as his outburst. “What you said yesterday? You were right. His first conceptual articles about quantum units were publishedafterI’d defended my doctoral dissertation at Berkeley. When he recruited me to the Quantum group, he claimed he’d conceived the idea several years earlier during the recession, and now there was finally funding available at SVLAC to pursue experimental research on it. But there wasn’t. I had to write grants for every penny spent on the holometer. There was no money to study quantum units except for what I brought in. I was grateful that he believed in my ideas, but he… he lied to me.”
“He lied to everyone.”
“Which is why you’re not going to stop.”
