Chapter 221
Chapter 221:
Crawford stood just outside the sterile glass wall, arms crossed over his chest, dark eyes tracking her every movement. A heavy, possessive admiration burned in him as he watched her work.
June used sterile steel tweezers to extract one of the muddy yellow capsules from the evidence bag and set it in a glass petri dish. The hands that had been shaking in the car were now terrifyingly steady. She dissolved the toxic powder in a chemical solvent, transferred the liquid into a small glass vial with a micro-pipette, and slid it into the mass spectrometer. She hit the sequence button. The machine emitted a low, vibrating hum as it began dismantling the compound at a molecular level.
A green progress bar crept forward on the monitor.
While the machine worked, the encrypted phone in Crawford’s pocket vibrated sharply against his thigh. He read the incoming message from his hacker team, and his brow furrowed into a deep, dangerous line. He pushed open the heavy glass door and walked directly to June’s workstation, holding the glowing screen out to her.
“The forum servers were routed through seven encrypted proxy layers,” Crawford said, his voice a low rumble. “My team broke them. The money flows directly into a shell company registered in the Cayman Islands p>
June leaned in. Her eyes locked onto the corporate name highlighted in red on the screen.
Apex Holdings Ltd.
𝘔о𝘳𝘦 𝗇ove𝗹𝘀 𝘰n ѕ.𝖼𝗈𝘮
The air left her lungs entirely. Her eyes narrowed to lethal slits.
“They used our name,” June whispered, her voice vibrating with pure hatred. “They are slaughtering people, and they are doing it while wearing my company’s face. This is a deliberate, arrogant taunt p>
At that exact moment, the mass spectrometer let out a sharp, high-pitched beep. The printer beside the monitor whirred to life, and a thick sheet of paper slid into the tray.
June snatched it before it stopped moving.
Her eyes swept across the chemical breakdowns and molecular weight charts. As she reached the final toxicology summary, the remaining color drained from her face. Her stomach dropped, and a sickening wave of horror crashed over her.
The harsh fluorescent lights of the laboratory beat down on the printed toxicology report.
June held the heavy paper in her latex-covered fingers with a grip so tight the edges had begun to curl inward. A deep, sub-zero stillness had fallen over her — far more terrifying than any trembling could be.
Crawford noticed the drastic shift in her immediately. He took a heavy step forward, closing the distance between them, and without a word reached out and pulled the report firmly from her hands.
Crawford was not a biochemist, but he was a man who understood data. His dark eyes locked instantly onto the chemical symbols the machine had flagged in glaring red.
June forced a breath through her constricted throat. When she spoke, her voice sounded as though it were scraping over broken glass.
“That is not medicine,” she said, her tone dropping into a freezing, absolute register. “That is a heavy metal death sentence wrapped in a gelatin capsule p>
She pointed a trembling finger at the red figures on the page.