Chapter 671
“Maloney needs someone keeping an eye on him. Go on. She’s with me, she’ll be fine,” Marcus said mildly.
At his sides, Jarred’s hands clenched into fists, uncurled, and tightened again.
The veins stood out on his forearms, a testament to his agonizing restraint.
He hated this. He hated every second of it.
But he couldn’t force her, and he certainly couldn’t afford to push her further away.
He was the one who had lost her in the first place.
And now, she couldn’t even stand the thought of him getting close.
After a long moment, he let out a heavy breath, finally turning on his heel and silently making his way to the forward cabin.
The moment they stepped off the plane, Maloney was rushed directly to the Sterlings’ private medical center.
The entire ward had been cleared and locked down, the silence broken only by the steady beep of the heart monitors.
Subdued by a heavy dose of sedatives, Maloney lay motionless on the hospital bed.
His eyes were shut tight, yet his brows remained deeply furrowed.
Even in his drug-induced slumber, the sheer agony and struggle etched into his features were impossible to hide.
The bloodthirsty violence from earlier had drained away, leaving behind nothing but a fragile, broken shell of a man.
Sienna stood by the bed, two fingers resting lightly against his pulse point, her expression grim.
The heart-stopping scene back at the fishing village was still playing on a loop in her mind.
One second Maloney was a raging lunatic, the next he was completely catatonic.
There was no way that kind of extreme psychological fracturing could be chalked up to PTSD from a plane crash.
The test results came back quickly.
The medical center boasted state-of-the-art monitoring equipment.
But every single data point read out the exact same conclusion.
Maloney’s brain activity was off the charts, his sympathetic nervous system locked in a state of continuous overdrive.
It was as if some external force had wound his internal clockwork tight, refusing to let him power down.
Sienna stood in front of the monitors for a long time, scrubbing through the footage they had captured at the village frame by frame.
Suddenly, her brow furrowed, her eyes locking onto a specific freeze-frame.
Maloney’s pupillary light reflex was sluggish, but it wasn’t completely gone.
This wasn’t a pure psychological breakdown. This looked exactly like deliberate intervention via psychotropic drugs.
But as for what kind, its exact composition, how it metabolized, or if there was even an antidote, she had absolutely no clue.
This drug didn’t exist in any clinical database she had ever studied.
Lost in thought, she barely noticed when Thea pushed the door open and slipped inside.
Thea held up a vibrating phone, keeping her voice low. “Silas says it’s an emergency. He needs to talk to you p>
Sienna nodded, gesturing for Thea to hurry up and shut the door before anyone outside noticed.
The moment the video call connected, the dim lighting on the other end threw Silas’s harsh, angular features into sharp relief.
In Sienna’s experience, Silas had always been fiercely independent, coldly arrogant, and dangerously sharp.
But right now, his eyes were heavy. with undeniable exhaustion. His tone was as flat as ever, yet threaded with an urgency he couldn’t quite mask.
“My guys found something in the tall grass in the Mountain Woods behind the village. I had Thea bring it to you p>
Right on cue, Thea pulled a small box from her bag and handed it over.
Sienna popped it open. Nestled safely inside was the Ghost Syringe.
Along the inner barrel clung the faintest, almost negligible trace of a pale white liquid, barely visible to the naked eye.
Sienna held it up, angling it against the harsh overhead lights.
It was a standard medical-grade syringe. No branding, the needle was intact and the plunger was pushed all the way to the bottom. The residue left behind was pitifully small.
She unsealed the evidence bag and leaned in for a quick sniff. A remarkably faint, sour scent wafted out.
It smelled like an alkaloid base mixed with the sterile, chemical bite of a synthetic compound.
Silas kept his voice barely above a whisper. “It was tossed by the side of the dirt road. Could have been, dumped on purpose, could have been dropped by accident,
It’s a remote spot. The locals don’t go near there p>
Sienna’s gaze sharpened.
She had wondered why Silas had been missing in action the entire time they were at the village.
Given Maloney’s condition, there was no way he would just sit on the sidelines.
He had been out hunting for clues all along.