A Caged Songbird's Escape: Into the Arms of a Predator novel Chapter 270

"Alright."

Elissa nodded and strode quickly toward the elevator.

Inside the R&D department, her project team was already waiting for her.

As soon as she entered, Zachary Jones handed her a stack of lab results. "Take a look—these are the data sets from noon."

Elissa didn’t even bother to sit down. She took the report, lowered her gaze, and began to comb through the numbers with sharp focus.

It took only a single read for her to spot the problem.

She tapped several lines in quick succession. "These figures make no sense. There’s no way they should be this far off, not under any circumstances."

She wasn’t arrogant about her research method, but she was confident—if not one hundred percent, then at least close to it.

Even in the worst-case scenario, if the experiment had failed, these results still wouldn’t make sense.

Cliff frowned, catching on immediately. "You mean someone might have tampered with the results?"

"It’s not a possibility," Elissa said flatly. "It’s a certainty."

Her tone was so firm that Cliff’s eyes grew sharp. He slowly scanned the faces of everyone on the team.

"That’s impossible," Zachary blurted out. "Only you, me, and Mr. Cliff have access to that lab."

Cliff and Elissa were close—anyone could see it—so it obviously wasn’t him.

And Elissa herself? Why would she sabotage her own project? Besides, she hadn’t even been to the office in the last couple of days.

That left Zachary, and the thought made him uneasy.

Elissa could see what he was thinking, and quickly reassured him. "Mr. Jones, I’m not pointing fingers. Why don’t we just check the security footage?"

Zachary, who’d had a bad feeling about the results from the start, was convinced by Elissa’s certainty. "Absolutely. I’ll call Security right now."

He stepped aside, made a quick call, and when he hung up, he tried to calm the group. "Look, this is for the good of the project. If we can get this sorted out, everyone benefits."

"If someone really did tamper with the data, who knows what else they might try? What if they steal our work and sell it to a competitor?"

"Would you really be alright with that?"

After that, the rest of the team grumbled a bit but didn’t object.

Elissa’s capabilities since joining the team had been obvious to everyone.

Still, someone from her group wasn’t ready to let it go.

James gave a short laugh. "Impressive, Ms. Drummond. The data goes sideways and rather than reconsider your own method or repeat the experiment, your first move is to accuse someone of sabotage."