Elissa gave a small, knowing smile, arching one brow as she turned to Zachary Jones. “Mr. Jones, do you have the number for the head of security?”

    Zachary considered for a moment. “You mean Abel?”

    She nodded. “Yes, that’s right.”

    He looked at her, puzzled. “What do you need his number for?”

    He couldn’t quite guess her intentions, but something told him she’d had things under control from the very start.

    James let out a mockingugh. “Yeah, what do you need his number for? Can’t admit your own mistakes, so now you’re going to hassle the security team?”

    At her age, it wasn’t surprising–young girls often didn’t know how to pick their battles, and causing a fuss seemed par for the course.

    Elissa’s gaze turned cold as she watched their smug expressions. With a delicate finger, she tapped on the ss, pointing toward the smoke detectors on theb’s ceiling. “You ever wonder why there are two smoke detectors in thisb?”

    Raymond shrugged, unbothered. “What’s so weird about that? This is the most importantb in R&D a lot of sensitive dataes out of here. Of course we have to be extra careful about fire hazards…”

    Though, to be fair, none of them had ever bothered to pay attention to the details.

    Elissa cut him off with a slight smile. “That’s not it.”

    She let the words hang for a moment, then rified, “It’s to guard against people, not just fires.”

    James shot her a suspicious look, following the line of her finger. His expression darkened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

    Elissa remained calm, her voice steady as she exined, “It means the one on the left is a regr smoke detector, but the one on the right? That’s a camera, disguised as a detector.”

    “It’s wired separately, so it keeps running no matter what happens to the main power.”

    She turned back to Zachary. “Mr. Jones, would you mind texting me Abel’s number? I need to ask him to pull up the camera footage.”

    As Zachary scrolled through thepany directory to find the number, Raymond’s face suddenly drained of color.

    James shot him a warning re, then said coldly, “Ms. Drummond, you’re quite the schemer. Even us veterans didn’t know about that. How did you? Maybe you should stop trying to act mysterious.”

    Elissa’s lips curled. “If I’m just acting mysterious, then pulling up the footage will clear things up,

    won’t it?b” /b

    She opened her phone and tapped on the number Zachary had just sent her.

    As Elissa stepped aside to make the call, Raymond panicked. He shoved James, blurting out, “It was all him! He swapped the experiment data this morning–I saw him sneaking out of theb when I

    arrived!”

    James hadn’t expected him to crack so easily. Furious, he yanked off his sses, which Raymond had knocked askew, and ground out, “You think I did this alone? Raymond, don’t you dare try to pin this all on me!”

    Useless idiot–falling for a few pointed questions from this girl and spilling everything.

    Some engineer. Maybe he should go back home and pickle vegetables for a living.

    As the two looked like they were about toe to blows, Zachary quickly signaled for the others to step in and separate them. He turned to Elissa. “Ms. Drummond, let me handle this. I promise you’ll get a full exnation.”

    He and Cliff, more than anyone, knew how many nights Elissa had lost working on this project. And now, thanks to her own team, even the experiment results werepromised.

    Elissa nodded, and Zachary rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I’m afraid you’ll have to redo the data.”

    “It’s fine,” she replied, ncing at the two troublemakers before picking up the ruined experiment results and heading into the adjacentb.

    Zachary was a fair manager; she doubted she’d see either of those two in R&D again.

    Of course, with the data corrupted, the whole experiment would have to start from scratch.

    Having barely slept the night before, Elissa felt exhaustion creeping in as dusk settled outside. No

    point in wasting energy when she could barely keep her eyes open; she wrapped up her work, packed her things, and left for the evening with Cliff.