Chapter 220
Chapter 220:
Crawford didn’t waste a breath on questions. He tossed the towel aside, shifted the massive SUV into drive, and pressed his foot to the accelerator. The vehicle roared away from the curb, its tires slicing through the flooded gutters like a black beast hunting in the rain, aimed directly at Manhattan.
A heavy silence settled over the interior. The only sound was the rhythmic, aggressive thud of the windshield wipers fighting the downpour.
June forced her lungs to expand. She took a deep, sharp breath and actively pushed the devastating image of Mr. Miller’s blue, dying face from her immediate consciousness. She needed her brain to function. She needed to revert to her clinical baseline.
“This packaging is too perfect,” she said aloud, her voice dropping into a rapid, mechanical cadence. “The holographic sticker, the font kerning, the blister pack seal. A random underground operation cannot produce this level of replication p>
She turned her head slightly, studying Crawford’s sharp profile in the dim glow of the dashboard.
“There is a massive, highly funded black-market supply chain behind this,” she continued. “They may even have our internal packaging data. Someone leaked it p>
а𝘤𝘁𝗂𝘷𝖾 𝘤𝘰𝗺𝗺𝗎𝘯і𝗍𝗒 𝗈𝗻
Crawford kept his left hand steady on the wheel. With his right, he pulled his encrypted smartphone from his coat pocket and dialed a secure direct line to the Love Group’s Chief of Cyber Security. The line connected in under two seconds.
“I want a full, unrestricted trace on every IP address associated with the underground patient forums discussing the generic Apex Bio drug,” Crawford ordered. His tone was absolute ice. “Follow the money. Break through whatever proxies they are using. I want a physical location and a corporate shell name in twenty minutes p>
He dropped the phone into the cup holder.
June watched his jaw clench. The sheer, terrifying speed of his execution sent a strange, grounding wave through her chest. The chaotic panic of the situation steadied itself against his raw authority.
Thirty minutes later, the SUV descended into the private, heavily guarded underground parking garage of the Apex Bio tower. The vehicle had barely stopped before June shoved her door open.
Her heels clicked against the concrete at a pace just short of a sprint. She was conscious of her previously injured ankle, but every line of her body was taut with urgency as she moved toward the private executive elevator, her wet trench coat flaring out behind her. Crawford matched her pace without a word, his long strides keeping him right beside her.
The elevator shot upward. The doors slid open to reveal the pristine, blindingly white environment of the core laboratory — a room housing the most advanced molecular mass spectrometers and toxicology testing equipment in North America.
June marched straight to the decontamination airlock. She stripped off her wet coat, pulled a crisp white lab coat over her shoulders, and snapped the buttons shut with sharp, aggressive precision. She slid her safety goggles into place and stretched a pair of tight latex gloves over her hands.
In under a minute, she had transformed from a drenched woman into an apex predator of science.