The Man Who Never Looked Away novel Chapter 197

While they were eating breakfast in the cafeteria, Jocelyn sent Lavinia a link.

It was a new exclusive interview with Sigrid.

The magazine praised her as "the rising star of capital" and "a paradigm of feminism."

Lavinia rolled her eyes, muttering to herself, "Please don't insult women, and definitely don't insult feminism."

Jocelyn sent a text: "The second evaluation meeting is coming up soon. How is your investigation going?"

Lavinia typed back: "Almost done."

She then cleared her chat history with Jocelyn, put her phone down, and went back to eating her breakfast.

After breakfast, Lavinia headed to her project team to start her shift.

The work here was similar to the tasks she used to do to earn credits at various labs back at Zale University.

Reviewing experimental data, optimizing procedures, writing up lab summaries.

The only difference was that this company had deep pockets. Test tubes were disposable; they didn't need to be washed, just tossed into the recycling bin after one use.

Lavinia stifled a yawn, rubbing her eyes.

A colleague smiled at her. "Your eyes are totally red. Were you up all night gaming again?"

Lavinia nodded. "Yeah, I was up late playing ranked matches."

In reality, she didn't play video games at all.

The company's security was incredibly tight, and everything brought into the lab was heavily scanned. She hadn't found a single opportunity to sneak the pinhole camera inside.

And all the documents were classified; nothing could leave the premises.

For the week and a half she'd been embedded with the team, she'd relied purely on mental scans of Renova's data materials.

When she got back to her dorm each night, she would frantically type it all out from memory.

By piecing it together bit by bit, she had managed to reproduce the critical data almost word for word.

She was only missing the final puzzle piece.

"Scott, let me handle the replication for this trial," Lavinia volunteered, taking over the assignment.

She was pretty, sweet-talking, and incredibly hardworking, so the senior researchers in the group had grown very fond of her.

"Drive, they're coming," he ordered sharply.

"On it," the driver replied. It was a woman's voice.

Lavinia blinked, looking up. In the driver's seat sat a young woman wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses.

She had short hair, a crisp white suit, and bold red lipstick. Her profile was striking and sharp.

She looked familiar.

As the car sped out of the campus, it clicked. "Zoey? What are you doing here?"

"Oh, I just got back from abroad and was running some driving gigs around here. Mr. Sheffield rented my car." Zoey flashed a grin at Lavinia in the rearview mirror.

"That's such a coincidence." Lavinia leaned back in her seat, then shot upright, turning to Charley. "Where's my laptop?"

"I brought it out for you. Right here." Charley handed her the laptop.

"The data I just looked at is still fresh in my head. I have to write it down now."

Lavinia opened the laptop, hyper-focused as she frantically typed the memorized numbers into her document.