Chapter 39
Emily Windsor's POV
Jade scrolled through her phone's gallery, speaking rapidly. "First—this factory has major problems. Serious problems. All the machinery is running, but nothing's actually being produced. Most of the equipment has a thin layer of dust on it. I walked through several workshops and didn't see a single production line worker. The whole place is a shell!"
My heart plummeted.
A chemical plant burning money without producing anything could only mean one thing: money laundering and a cover for illegal operations.
"Second," Jade's voice dropped lower, laced with fear, "I avoided the patrols and went to their most remote waste processing area. There were a few workers there, but... something was really wrong with them. They didn't look local. Their eyes were glazed, movements mechanical. I tried talking to one of them—it was like he couldn't hear me. He just kept repeating words I couldn't understand. Emily, they looked like they'd been drugged. Controlled. Like they had no will of their own."
A chill shot up my spine.
"And third—the most important thing!" Jade finally found the video she'd been searching for and hit play.
The footage shook badly, clearly recorded in secret.
In the frame, a man crouched in front of an incinerator, rapidly shoving a stack of documents into the flames.
The firelight illuminated his tense profile—the same shrewd subordinate I'd glimpsed earlier following Sawyer around.
"I saw him sneaking into the boiler room with a file box, so I followed," Jade whispered, words tumbling out. "But I was too far away, and the lighting was terrible. I didn't dare get closer. I couldn't capture what documents he was burning. By the time I found a better angle, that stack was nearly ash."
At the video's end, flames roared high, paper curling rapidly in the inferno before crumbling to black cinders.
I gripped the phone so tightly my knuckles went white.
"Such a waste," Jade said dejectedly, pocketing her phone. Her voice carried unmistakable disappointment. "I tried my best, but the lighting was awful. I couldn't capture anything clear. This footage can't prove evidence destruction in court. It won't hold up."
I said nothing, replaying the blurry video in my mind alongside Jade's still-shaken account.
Shell factory. Drugged workers. Destroyed documents.
Jade saw only surface failure. I caught the scent of something far darker—a fleeting whiff of blood beneath the fog.
"No, Jade." I looked up, meeting her eyes with blazing intensity. "What you got is a weapon far deadlier than a box of files."
"What?" Jade stared at me, confused.
I grabbed her hand, forcing my racing thoughts into clarity. A new, far more dangerous path formed in my mind. "Mr. Lee thought he could hide his crimes by finding a group of mentally incapacitated foreign workers who couldn't communicate properly to do his dirtiest work. He thought they'd be perfect tools—unable to speak out, unable to resist. Even if something went wrong, dead men tell no tales."
My voice trembled with suppressed excitement. "But he forgot—the more vulnerable the person, the tighter the legal safety net. Federal law has explicit Special Populations Labor Protection Acts. It's strictly prohibited for any business to employ, exploit, or abuse workers with compromised mental faculties who cannot exercise their own rights. What he's doing isn't just regulatory violation—it's criminal. Severe human trafficking and forced labor charges!"
Sawyer's supposed cleverness had become his most catastrophic weakness.
He thought he'd found a group of silent tools. He never considered that these tools themselves were bombs capable of blowing him to smithereens.
Jade gaped at me in shock. After a long pause, her dejection vanished completely. "So we don't need to prove pollution at all? If we prove illegal employment, we can take down the whole operation?"
"Exactly." I nodded emphatically, pulse thundering. "And we need to move fast."
I glanced toward the factory, eyes hardening. "Mr. Lee has already started destroying evidence. Every minute we delay puts those imprisoned workers in greater danger and gives them more time to eliminate proof. We can't follow standard litigation procedures anymore. That's too slow."
"Then what do we do?" Jade asked tensely. "Report to the police? But the cops here..."
She didn't finish, but we both understood.
Reporting to local police would be like sheep walking into the wolf's den.
"Not them." I pulled out my phone, fingers flying across the screen to find a number I'd seen once in training materials. "We're going straight to the top."
I dialed the hotline for the federal Department of Labor's investigative unit—the division specifically handling interstate human trafficking and forced labor cases.
The call connected. In the fastest, calmest voice I could muster, I laid out the situation concisely.
"This is Preston District, New York State. Kingsley Chemical Plant. We have reason to believe this facility is illegally detaining and forcing at least ten foreign workers to perform high-risk labor. These workers appear to be drugged, mentally impaired, unable to communicate normally. Additionally, factory management is currently destroying unidentified documents. We're concerned—"
I reported everything Jade had witnessed—the workers' condition, the factory's security setup, the timing and location of document burning.
The person on the other end was clearly a professional. No skepticism, just rapid note-taking and several pointed follow-up questions about key details.
When I hung up, I realized my back was soaked through.
This was undoubtedly a massive gamble.
I'd bypassed all normal legal procedures and gone straight to the state's enforcement apparatus.
Once I took this step, there was no turning back.
Either I'd misjudged the situation and filed a false report, ending my career, or I'd drag Kingsley—and the Lowe Family behind it—into a far more treacherous quagmire.
"Emily... will they come?" Jade's voice carried a thread of uncertainty.
I stared at the lingering plumes rising from the factory in the distance. "They will."
Because I'd told them that several workers had accents suggesting they might be from an Eastern European country with sensitive relations to the United States.
Jade and I found high ground with a view of the factory entrance, hiding behind an abandoned building and watching that single access road with unblinking intensity.
Waiting was prolonged torture. Every minute, every second felt like a century.
Night deepened. The air grew colder. Jade shivered but bit back any complaint.
Just as my patience neared its limit, several flashing red and blue lights appeared in the distance.