Chapter 178: Hide and Seek
"Young boy, approximately four feet tall, wearing a light green shirt, last seen around eleven o'clock..."
Chaos erupted in the hallway.
The shouts of hotel staff blended into a cacophony.
Even through the thick wooden door, the commotion was audible.
When Joseph opened the door to investigate, Samantha was also peering out from her room.
"What's going on?" Joseph asked with a furrowed brow.
Samantha glanced down the corridor. "Looks like a child's gone missing. They're searching now."
It sounded quite urgent.
Joseph turned back to relay the information to those in his room.
Soon, staff members working their way through the search reached their floor.
After hearing the description of the missing child, Isabella immediately made the connection.
Wasn't that Nathan?
There were only a handful of children staying at the hotel, and Isabella couldn't recall any other kids on their floor.
"Did the guest in room 4003 report the disappearance?" Isabella stopped a staff member to ask.
He nodded. "Have you seen the child?"
Isabella's expression froze momentarily before she shook her head, watching the staff member continue down the hall.
Joseph let out a derisive snort.
"Who knows what kind of stunt they're pulling now? Right after being warned, the kid suddenly vanishes—what are the odds?"
Samantha pursed her lips in agreement. "Exactly. Using a child to play games—those two are so irresponsible."
Isabella's gaze remained fixed on the retreating staff member, lost in thought.
"Something's wrong," she said, frowning.
"Nathan might actually be missing." Isabella's mood grew heavy.
Nathan was, after all, Isabella's child. She wasn't cold-blooded enough to disregard his safety entirely.
"The temperature outside is at least thirty degrees below zero Fahrenheit. If he accidentally wandered out there—"
Forget a whole night—even an hour in that snow could have severe consequences.
And Nathan was only a five-year-old boy.
"I should help search," Isabella said, entering the room to grab her coat and join the hotel-wide search effort.
Joseph also pulled his jacket from the rack. "I'm coming too."
Richard stood up. "I'll check the lobby area."
Samantha and Zack, unable to move around easily, stayed in the room to maintain contact and coordinate.
The child had been discovered missing at eleven o'clock. It was now eleven-thirty.
In this brutally cold town, finding Nathan sooner meant one less minute of danger.
The hotel's five floors were being systematically checked by staff members.
However, from the first floor to the third, they searched every conceivable location without finding any trace of Nathan.
The hotel lobby manager had already dispatched people to search outside.
The hotel's surveillance system was undergoing upgrades, rendering it useless for providing any substantial help.
No one could have anticipated that a young boy would vanish precisely when the hotel's monitoring system was down.
Upon learning it was Nathan who had disappeared, Olivia began helping with the search, moving from floor to floor.
Their efforts, however, were far less conspicuous than William's frantic party.
Isabella hadn't intended to put on a performance for anyone's benefit.
"Still nothing. Could Nathan have run outside? What if he went to another hotel?" Joseph asked anxiously, having climbed the stairs from the first to the fifth floor specifically to check the stairwells.
Isabella shook her head gently. "He's a child, not an idiot. It's freezing out there—he wouldn't deliberately go outside."
"Then where could he be? We've practically turned this entire hotel inside out." Joseph's face was etched with worry.
Isabella shared his concern.
By any reasonable logic or physical capability, Nathan was just a five-year-old child. No matter how mobile he was, he couldn't have left the hotel premises.
Floors one through three had been thoroughly searched, and William and Laura were covering floors four and five.
Suddenly, Isabella's eyes lit up as she recalled a location they'd consistently overlooked.
"We haven't searched all the rooms—the hotel's linen closets! We haven't checked those!"
Those spaces stored cleaning supplies and were accessed almost exclusively by housekeeping staff. Located in inconspicuous corners, they'd been overlooked multiple times.
Isabella immediately led the group to begin checking linen closets, starting from the first floor.
They worked their way up until reaching the third-floor closet. The moment they opened the door, something felt off.
The first and second-floor closets had been neat and organized. Only the third-floor closet had sheets tangled haphazardly together, with a small lump protruding from the middle.
It appeared they'd found Nathan's hiding place.
"Nathan."
Isabella's expression turned stern as she called out his name directly.
At the sound of her voice, the small bundle trembled slightly.
"Why are you hiding here? Everyone's looking for you."
Olivia tugged at Isabella's hand, equally curious. "Nathan, are you playing hide-and-seek? Are you playing with Daddy?"
Hearing that innocent question, Nathan emerged from beneath the linen closet sheets.
Dirty linens collected from guest rooms clung to him, and his eyes were red and swollen—clearly, he'd been crying.
"Mom."
Isabella's heart sank heavily.
Despite having repeatedly insisted she wouldn't concern herself with Nathan's affairs, hearing that tearful cry stirred something in her chest she couldn't quite suppress.
As a mother, she found it difficult to completely sever ties with her own child.
Isabella personally pulled Nathan from the dirty hotel linens.
"What on earth are you doing?"
The reason certainly wasn't Olivia's random guess about hide-and-seek.
The only explanation Isabella could fathom was that Nathan had been hurt somehow.
His lips trembled wordlessly, unable to articulate a response.
Isabella hadn't held Nathan in a long time, and the moment felt awkward.
Just as Isabella was about to speak, two sets of frantic footsteps echoed from down the hallway.
Laura and William came running from the corridor, rushing straight to Nathan.
"You nearly scared us to death! How could you run off to a place like this?" Laura panted heavily, her first words to Nathan nothing but complaints.
Isabella clearly saw Nathan's lips tremble again, tears threatening to spill from his eyes.
But upon seeing Laura, he brightened with excitement.
"Laura!"
That single cry instantly extinguished whatever maternal warmth had nearly rekindled in Isabella's heart.
Nathan already had a new mother. He didn't need her concern at all.