The Captain I Married by Chance novel Chapter 342

"I really regretted getting involved at that point. I thought I had just provoked a lunatic," Laura confessed.

Fortunately, Laura had just taken on an after-school tutoring job. Between preparing lessons, teaching, and helping kids with their homework, she was completely swamped. Her schedule was packed, and for a while, she didn't even log into her social media account.

It was only after the tutoring gig wrapped up that she remembered the drama and finally logged back in.

"Why do you have separate accounts?" the officer asked smoothly.

"I'm a teacher. A lot of parents add me, and I like to keep my work and personal life separate, so I have two profiles," Laura explained. "My old phone had a feature that let me run both at the same time. But when I upgraded, I could only stay logged into one app. Out of pure laziness, I mostly kept the work account active. My parents are on that one too, and anyone with a real emergency can just call my number, so I rarely felt the need to switch back to my personal profile."

The explanation was perfectly reasonable, and the officer nodded for her to continue.

"I had no idea that while I was offline, Evelyn was going out of her mind trying to reach me."

After her explosive rant, Evelyn had gone quiet for a day. By the third day, it was as if she had snapped out of a trance, flooding Laura's inbox with frantic apologies.

Caught up in her work, Laura hadn't replied. Evelyn didn't seem to mind, using the chat as a sounding board instead. One minute she insisted her boyfriend still loved her, and the next, she'd ramble about how terrifyingly bizarre his behavior was.

Then came the photo. It was a picture of Evelyn covered in bruises, clearly the victim of a brutal beating.

"I never expected to run into her in that group. The guilt of abandoning her before was eating me alive. That's why I made up my mind to help her, no matter what."

The officer's voice softened. "What was the plan?"

"Evelyn said no one in her life believed her. She wanted to create a massive spectacle, something huge that would force the public to pay attention. Once she was in the spotlight, she'd finally have the platform to expose what was happening to her and get the authorities involved.

"So... we orchestrated the kidnapping," Laura whispered, a sob breaking free. "But I never—I swear, I never thought she would actually end up dead!"