Chapter 121: Who helped

JAXON’S POV

When Nathan had gone looking for Nancy, I didn’t expect the news he returned with.

He’d come into the study room of my villa breathing heavily and looking flustered as hell.

“I can’t find her.”

I dropped the iPad Orion had handed to me earlier to review files on and turned around to face him.

“You can’t find who?”

“Nancy.”

At that moment, I was sure as hell that if I was still holding onto the iPad, I would have let go of it in shock, and it would have dropped onto the ground.

The screen would probably have shattered the way my heart did when I heard that.

“You can’t find who?” I repeated, driven purely by surprise, into asking a question he already responded to.

“I can’t find Nancy,” Nathan replied in a voice that was strained with worry and fear, and for a second, I just stared at him, unable to make sense of what he was saying still.

“I’ve checked everywhere,” Nathan continued, frantically running a hand through his hair over and over again. “I went to the hotel, but she wasn’t there.”

I nodded, following his words carefully. “That can happen, you said she wasn’t at the hotel earlier, too. Maybe she went to school or just stepped out…”

“That’s the thing. She wasn’t at the school or anywhere else either. I’ve called her phone a million times; it’s dead. The man I put on her tail is gone too.”

“He’s gone?” I blinked hard, refusing to believe what I was hearing.

That couldn’t be.

My men were well-trained in every aspect of their ko scope, and few could overpower and outsmart them, unless there was someone stronger.

“I think she’s really missing,” Nathan went on, his words tumbling out without an iota of calmness.

“Even though Nancy is stubborn, she’s not irresponsible. She would have at least given me a heads up if she was going anywhere.

I thought about it, long and hard, fighting not to let myself fall into the same state Nathan was in.

A bulb lit up in my head soon enough.

“Have you tried calling Diana? They could be together.”

Nathan froze for a second, then snapped his finger loudly.

“Diana, right. How didn’t I think of her? I’ll call her now…” he was already moving away from me, making a few unsuccessful attempts to pull his phone out of his pocket before finally getting it.

I fell back against my desk, watching him with deeply knotted brows as he dialed Diana’s number, hoping that Nancy was with her and that my expectation for the worst didn’t come to pass.

This was what I had been trying to avoid all along, and I knew that I would never forgive myself if anything happened to her.

However, I couldn’t bring myself to lose my top either, like Nathan had. If Nancy was really missing, and we intended to find her, I couldn’t lose my cool.

“Fucking hell!” Nathan swore, hissing under his breath before turning to me with misty eyes. “She’s not picking up. Diana’s not picking up.”

He began to pace around. “What if she’s stranded somewhere, or…or…maybe someone took her…”

I wasn’t sure what Nathan was saying, because I was no longer listening. My mind was far away, weighing different possibilities of what could have happened.

“You’re not saying anything. What should we do? How do we find her? We should get our men on the streets.” Nathan rushed out.

A glance at him told me nothing I said could get through to him until Nancy was found.

“Come on,” I said to Nathan, walking out briskly without a look back to see if he was following,

The search was a really long one. We scoured the entire city first, looking into every place she could be, but it all proved fruitless.

“What now? She’s not anywhere,” Nathan said in a quaky voice, running a palm over his face. “This is all my fault.”

“I should have stayed with her, I should have…”

“Nathan…” I called out with a warning laced in my voice, giving him a hard stare.

“Now isn’t the time to blame yourself or anyone. There is only one possible reason why she could have gone missing right now.”

“If we are going to find her, I can’t have you panicking like this.”

That seemed to set him right because he didn’t say anything when I picked up my phone and called Orion, giving orders. He didn’t say anything either when I instructed someone to track her phone, but I knew none of that would erase his worry until she was found.

“Well, find her,” I said to pacify him a little while later, unsure if I believed that myself.

By nightfall, we still hadn’t gotten anything useful, and when midnight came, I was no different from Nathan

“Boss, do you think…” Nathan was saying hoarsely when a sharp ring cut through the air.

It was my phone.

Nathan stood up immediately.

“Is that Nancy?”

I fished it out to take a look as well. It wasn’t.

There was no caller ID either. Despite that, I picked up immediately, bringing the phone to my ear.

“Hello.”

“Jaxon. I wasn’t expecting you to pick up so fast.”

A frown crossed my face. I had no clue who was on the other end.

“I’m guessing things aren’t looking up for you right now, right?”

My hold on my phone tightened. That statement was too suggestive.

“What do you mean by that?”

“It means the girl you’re searching for is with me. How about we play a game where you guess who I am?”

“If you win…I’ll try not to lay my hands on the girl and feel her young, supple body. God, just thinking of it is making me hard…”

“Don’t you dare touch her, Hudson,”  I growled, grip crunching harder.

He laughed. “You figured that out faster than I thought. How about you also try to figure something out? It’s a guess, and what you have to do is help me guess who helped me find Nancy.”