Chapter 478
Asher studied him for a moment. The answer had the ring of truth.
Bobby exhaled slowly, relief flickering across his face.
Then Asher said, in a perfectly level voice, “Since you don’t know where she is, I’ll wait here until Colton returns.”
Bobby’s expression crumbled.
Just before Asher’s men had tied him up, a text from Colton had come through — brief and direct: he was on his way back and wanted Bobby to stay put. Bobby had deleted it immediately, before anyone could see it.
What he couldn’t work out was how Asher already seemed to know Colton was coming.
He sat there in miserable silence, torn between hoping Colton would walk through the door and save him, and dreading what Colton’s face would look like when he saw the state of his house. He exhaled quietly, wondering how a straightforward assignment had spiraled into something this precarious.
The minutes stretched into something far longer than they should have been.
The light shifted, the sun went down, and the house fell into darkness.
After sitting in tense silence for hours, Danica finally turned to Asher. “Mr. Edwards, are you certain Colton is actually coming back here?”
Doubt had begun to creep in. Perhaps Colton hadn’t taken Kristine at all. If that were the case, they were sitting here wasting time while she was somewhere else, possibly in real danger.
The thought of it made Danica’s expression tighten with worry.
Nathan glanced at Asher, and when it was clear no answer was forthcoming, he took Danica by the arm and drew her toward the exit.
“What are you doing?” she asked, pulling back.
Nathan exhaled. “How do you not see what’s right in front of you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Bobby,” Nathan said. “Did you watch how he reacted when Mr. Edwards questioned him?”
Danica stared at him blankly.
Nathan gave her a dry look before continuing. “If Kristine had never been here, Bobby would have said so without a second thought — if only to get us to leave. Instead, he was pale and shaking. When Asher asked where she was, Bobby’s entire face gave him away. He was hiding something.”
“So what does that prove?” Danica pressed.
“It proves Colton really did take Kristine,” Nathan said patiently. “If Bobby had never seen her with him, he would have had nothing to hide.”
Danica turned it over in her mind, retracing the exchange — and then it clicked. “So Colton definitely took her.”
Nathan nodded, regarding her with the quiet, resigned look of someone who had been waiting too long for the obvious to land.
Danica was, in every way, the kind of person who had never needed to think for herself. Exactly the type Nathan had no patience for.
And yet — something shifted in his chest. Something he couldn’t quite name.
He pushed it down and opened his mouth to speak, but the low, powerful rumble of a car engine cut through the silence.
Both of them turned at the same moment.
A black Rolls-Royce was moving swiftly toward the villa.
“That’s Colton’s car,” Danica whispered, and the excitement in her voice was unmistakable.