?Chapter 1174:


    “No arguments!” Denver cut in, arching a brow to nudge her. “Don’t you trust me?”


    “I do!” Hadley answered swiftly.


    Denver had vowed to help her the night before, and now this lead had surfaced. How could she doubt him?


    “Then it’s settled.” Denver shed a reassuring smile. “You stay here and look after Joy. I’ll head to Dresse Town and bring Brady home. Deal?”


    “Alright.” After a brief pause, Hadley nodded, gratitude softening her voice. “Thank you.”


    “Right, I’m heading out now.” Denver nced at his watch, scooping up his phone and car keys.


    Hadley handed him his coat and walked him to the door, her voice steady but urgent. “Call me the moment you find Brady.” With the surgery looming, she needed to know Brady was safe.


    “Count on it,” Denver said, his nod firm with promise. “I’ll have Brady himself tell you he is fine.”


    “Alright.”


    “I’m off now.”


    “Drive safe,” Hadley urged.


    “Always,” Denver replied.


    As Denver left, Hadley sped her hands, her whisper rising like a quiet vow. “Dear God, please watch over Brady and keep him safe.”


    “This is the ce?” Eric stood at the spot the coordinates had led them to, where Brady was supposedly hidden. It was a weathered wooden cabin, long abandoned, once a fleeting shelter for farmers.


    “Correct!” The informant, who had taken Noreen’s payment only to flip for the Scott family’s deeper pockets, nodded eagerly. “This is it!”


    But Cordell and his team scoured every corner of the cabin—inside and out—and found nothing.


    “Mr. Scott, it’s empty,” Cordell reported, his tone heavy with frustration.


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    Eric’s steely gaze pinned the informant. “Are you jerking me around?”


    “No, I swear!” The man recoiled, panic-stricken, hands iling. “I hid him right here, I’m telling you!”


    In his terror, the informant spilled everything. “Noreen paid me and slipped me some pills to mix into his food. After eating, he would get groggy and was kept bound. How could he have vanished?”


    “Sir,” one of the bodyguards interjected, “we found shards of a broken te inside.”


    It wasn’t hard to piece together what happened. Brady had been dosed with sedatives, leaving him frail but not fully out. Desperate over Joy’s impending surgery, he must have shattered the te, used its jagged edges to cut through the ropes, and, despite the haze of drugs, forced himself to flee.


    Eric mped down on his rising fury. “He can’t be far. Fan out and search—now!”


    “Understood, Sir!”


    Exhausted to his core, Eric stumbled from the narrow confines of the wooden cabin, tripping over the threshold and nearly toppling over.


    “Sir!” A bodyguard caught him swiftly, eyeing his tired and somber expression. “Are you okay?”


    “I’m alright.” Regaining his bnce, he turned to address the guards by his side and behind him. “Go find him, now! Stop trailing me.”


    “Mr. Scott, your safety is our priority.”


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