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Chapter 560
Chapter 560:
In the leather booth, Crawford slowly turned the large ice sphere in his whiskey glass. His dark eyes never left the stage. He watched her with the absolute, unblinking focus of a man who has identified the one thing in the world he refuses to lose.
In a dark corner of the bar, a group of local college students had their phones out, captivated. One of them hit record on an Instagram story.
When the last note faded, the bar came alive with applause. June smiled brightly, bowed, and turned to make her way down the steep, narrow wooden steps.
Crawford had already left the booth. He was standing at the bottom of the stairs, hand extended.
The heels and the dim light made the gesture feel natural. June placed her hand in his palm without thinking.
As she stepped down onto the main floor, Crawford’s other arm moved — smooth, unhurried, entirely unremarkable in its execution. He wrapped it around her waist and drew her securely against his side, steering her through the pressing crowd.
It was an intimate gesture. A possessive one. And it was caught perfectly in the background of the college student’s Instagram story, still recording from the corner.
Crawford guided her back to the booth. June, slightly warm from the cocktails and genuinely grateful to the man who had saved her life the day before, didn’t pull away. A faint flicker of unease moved through her at the weight of his arm — something in the gesture felt like more than simple courtesy — but she pushed it aside. She was overanalyzing. He had taken a knife-wielding gang member apart to protect her. A steadying hand through a crowded bar was not something worth reading into.
She let herself settle back into the booth, and the jazz washed over them both, warm and unhurried, while Crawford watched her over the rim of his glass with eyes she didn’t look at closely enough to read.
The sound of shattering glass cut through the silence of the executive office.
Cole stood over the broken tablet, chest heaving, his breathing ragged and uneven — the sound of something wounded and barely contained. He tore his silk tie from his neck, threw it to the floor, and turned a trembling finger on his terrified assistant.
𝘑oi𝗻 𝘵𝗵𝖾 𝗰𝗈𝘮𝗆𝘂n𝘪𝘁у 𝘢𝘵.с𝗼m
“Get the Chief Security Officer down to the war room,” Cole said, his voice tearing at the edges. “Right now p>
Three minutes later, he kicked open the heavy steel door of the underground tactical operations center beneath the Compton building. The room hummed with server racks and glowing monitors. The CSO was already at the main console, visibly sweating. On the central screen, a short looping video played — Crawford’s arm sliding around June’s waist in the dim light of a jazz bar.
Cole brought both fists down on the metal console.
“I want their exact coordinates,” he said. “The street name. The building number. Find them p>
The security team moved immediately, tracing the Instagram upload through its IP address and embedded geolocation data.
“Sir,” the CSO reported, “the video was uploaded from a bar called The Blue Note in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California p>
“Hack the city traffic cameras. Pull CCTV from every building on that street. Find Crawford’s license plate p>