Chapter 144 Companion

Chapter 144 Companion

Michael didn't press for details. He set the files on the desk and turned to leave.

"I'll trace the IP address of that number. You need to halt the clinical trials for now." At the doorway, he glanced back at her. "Whether he's telling the truth or not, we stop everything. Safety first."

Grace was already at her computer, fingers flying across the keyboard. She pulled up the last set of core code and began checking it line by line.

Liam, one of the researchers, heard the commotion and rushed over from the adjacent room.

"Mr. Harrison, what's going on?"

"The data may have been tampered with." Grace's eyes never left the screen. "Pull up the raw files from batches three and four. Cross-reference them with the version I'm running now. I need to know exactly which line was altered."

Liam immediately returned to his workstation and got to work. The lab fell into an unnatural quiet, broken only by the staccato rhythm of keyboards.

Grace's fingers froze on a single line of code. She stared at the string of characters for a good ten seconds, her pupils contracting slightly.

"Found it." She pointed to line 4,589 on the screen. "He added a methyl group here. This group is extremely stable at room temperature, but once it enters the human body and encounters specific liver enzymes, it breaks down. The byproduct is cyanide."

Liam leaned in to look, his expression darkening. "This is poisoning."

"He wanted the new drug to cause deaths during Phase III trials. The company would face lawsuits, and I'd go to prison as the head of R&D." Grace's voice was tight with anger.

She hadn't expected Charles to have this card up his sleeve. She'd underestimated him.

Michael strode back from the far end of the hallway. "Got it. The call came from Marseille Prison in Lumaria. He hasn't escaped—he bribed a guard named Pierre, used the guard's satellite phone to make the call."

He walked over and turned his phone screen toward her, displaying a satellite map with a red pin marking the prison's location.

"He wanted to exploit the information gap to make you think he'd gotten out." Michael said. "Create panic, force you to halt trading, then negotiate from a position of strength."

Grace stared at the red dot on the map. "He's trying to extort me."

"I had a hacker friend access Pierre's offshore account. Ten thousand euros were just wired in. I've sent the transaction records and call logs to the warden at Marseille Prison."

Grace turned to look at him. "When did you arrange all this?"

"While you were checking the code."

Grace hadn't expected him to move so quickly. She turned back to the screen, her fingers pausing briefly before resuming their work on the keyboard.

"What kind of punishment will Charles face?" she asked.

"Bribing a prison guard. He'll be transferred to the underground maximum-security wing. Sixteen hours of forced labor per day. Visitation rights and yard time revoked."

Grace nodded. She had no objections to that outcome.

"The code needs to be completely reworked," she told Liam. "Bypass this group and rebuild the molecular model."

"On it." Liam sat down at his computer and started typing.

Grace stood and walked to the window. Outside, the sky was darkening, city lights beginning to flicker on one by one, like someone slowly dotting stars across a sheet of deep blue paper.

Michael stood beside her without speaking.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked.

"Just something." She turned her head to look at him. "You always show up exactly when I need you most, and you've already thought through every possible exit strategy for me."

Michael didn't deny it.

Grace looked at him, thinking back over all the support he'd given her along the way.

"Michael, thank you. For always catching me."

Michael seemed uncomfortable seeing her express gratitude so earnestly. "We don't need to be so formal with each other. I do these things because I want to."

Grace looked at him, her voice serious. "I know you want to. But I'm not used to being caught. Every time someone's good to me, my first instinct is to wonder what they're after."

"Do you wonder that about me now?"