Chapter 4 - The Unlikely Ally
The cold metal of the gun barrel pressed harder against Naomi’s skin.
She squeezed her eyes shut, preparing for the worst moment of her life.
Instead of pulling the trigger, Marcus slowly lowered the weapon and removed his hand from her mouth.
Naomi gasped for air, spinning around in her seat to face the massive security chief.
"I am not going to kill you, Doctor," Marcus said, slipping the gun back into his shoulder holster.
"Then why are you hiding in my backseat like an assassin?" Naomi demanded, her heart hammering wildly.
Marcus reached into his tactical vest and pulled out a small, encrypted USB flash drive.
"Because Cassandra thinks I am loyal only to her money, but my loyalty has always been to Mr. Sherman," Marcus explained quietly.
He handed the flash drive over the seat, and Naomi took it with trembling fingers.
"I have suspected that woman of embezzling corporate funds for months, but she is too careful," Marcus continued.
"This drive contains hidden offshore bank records and deleted emails I recovered from her private server."
Naomi stared at the small piece of plastic, realizing it held the key to proving her own innocence.
"She is funding illegal, unregulated human trials for the new neurotoxin," Marcus revealed grimly.
Naomi felt a sick, twisting sensation deep in her stomach as the horrifying truth dawned on her.
She drove out of the parking garage and rented a cheap, anonymous motel room on the edge of the city.
Sitting on the edge of a lumpy mattress, she plugged the USB drive into her personal laptop.
The files confirmed every single one of Marcus’s suspicions.
Cassandra was selling the experimental drug to a black-market military contractor, but they demanded proof that the toxin was untraceable in the human body.
Suddenly, Naomi’s cell phone rang, shattering the quiet silence of the motel room.
It was the lead technician from the independent laboratory.
"Doctor Wheeler, I ran the mass spectrometry on the boy’s blood just like you asked," the technician said urgently.
"Toby’s blood did not just contain the deadly neurotoxin."
Naomi gripped the phone tightly, her knuckles turning white.
"We found high traces of a synthesized antidote marker actively fighting the poison in his system," the technician confirmed.
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Toby had not been accidentally poisoned by a careless mother.
Cassandra was intentionally using her stepson as a live human test subject to prove her illegal antidote worked.
