Chapter 344: Suspecting Lauren!
Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
After Jordan and Lauren left, they drove back to the courtyard where Jordan and Victoria temporarily lived and continued searching for Victoria, but to no avail.
The meticulous Lauren asked, “Who owns this house? Can you contact the owner of this house? Maybe there’s some secret passage or private room here. Victoria might have gone there.”
After pondering about it for a while, he realized Lauren was indeed very thoughtful because it hadn’t crossed his mind to call Mandy, the owner of the house.
Jordan immediately dialed Mandy’s phone number.
“Hello, Mr. Steele,” said Mandy, who picked up quickly.
Jordan asked, “Mandy, are there any secret passages or private rooms or anything like that in your home?”
Mandy answered in bewilderment. “No, there are only those few rooms that you can see. What’s the matter?”
Jordan said, “Victoria was at home just now, but I can’t find her now. Remember to contact me immediately if she calls you.”
“Okay, Mr. Steele.”
Jordan shook his head after hanging up.
Lauren patted Jordan’s shoulder and said, “Don’t be discouraged. I’ll help you get the footage from the surveillance cameras on the streets around this place. If she had left the house, she should have been captured by the cameras.”
“Okay.”
Being a Howard, Lauren managed to get the footage of the surveillance cameras within just a short hour or two using her connections. However, she only got the footage from one of the surveillance cameras at one of the road junctions.
Jordan watching the footage twice but he didn’t see Victoria in it.
“It seems that your girlfriend left from another intersection where the surveillance camera was faulty,” Lauren analyzed.
Jordan felt rather curious as to why she would leave through another intersection, and he began to wonder if it was a coincidence or if she was deliberately avoiding the surveillance cameras.
There was no reason for Victoria to deliberately avoid the surveillance cameras, unless the person who had abducted her was the one who chose to do it.
Lauren said, “It’s likely that your girlfriend might leave DC. Let’s go to the airport to look.”
After that, Lauren took Jordan to the airport again, where she called someone and asked them to check the details of the last few flights that took off for Victoria’s name.
However, there was no information about her.
They continued searching till 11 pm, and DC was already pitch dark.
Jordan and Lauren were seated in the courtyard of Mandy’s home, looking extremely exhausted.
Jordan was no longer in the mood to bother about anything else because he was entirely focused on finding Victoria. Meanwhile, Lauren was totally behaving like the mistress of the home. She took off her jacket, found some tea leaves, and proceeded to wash the teapot and teacups before making Jordan a cup of hot tea.
“Jordan, we’ve been running around all day and you haven’t eaten anything. Have some warm tea to warm yourself up.”
Lauren handed the teacup to Jordan.
Actually, Jordan wasn’t the only one with an empty stomach.
Lauren had also not eaten anything all day because she had been helping Jordan look for Victoria.
The temperatures were exceptionally low today, and Lauren’s hands had become very clammy. Holding a cup of warm tea to warm her fair and tender hands, she let out a soothing groan of satisfaction.
A lecher would have probably developed malicious intentions if they were to see Lauren’s hands and hear her alluring voice.
However, Jordan wasn’t in the mood to notice that.
“How is Victoria doing now?”
Jordan was worried that something untoward might happen to Victoria. He was worried that she might be killed or raped.
Lauren took a sip of tea with a pleasant smile and said, “Jordan, my gut feeling tells me that Victoria should be fine.”
“Look, she has been at home, right? If a crook came to abduct her by force, there must have been traces of a fight here.”
“I heard you mentioning before that Victoria is good at Taekwondo and most guys can’t beat her at all. In that case, there should be obvious signs of a brawl, if it had happened.”
“But the entire house and courtyard are clean and tidy. There isn’t a single trace of a fight.”
“This means that Miss Victoria left voluntarily.”
As someone who had been on the battlefield, how could Jordan have not realized that too?
He had known it back when they first returned.
However, Jordan was still worried, and he said, “There’s another possibility and that is, someone was holding her at gunpoint so she couldn’t resist at all.”
Jordan looked at Lauren with an aggressive gaze in his eyes. It was obvious what he meant.
Jordan was still having great suspicions about the Howards.
At this moment, Jordan suddenly received a text, and he opened it to see that it was from Victoria!
Jordan was immediately agitated!
“It’s Victoria!”
Lauren also hurriedly put down her teacup, ran to Jordan, and squatted in front of him.She asked, “What did she say?”
The message read: “I’m alright, don’t miss.”
Jordan and Lauren were both a little confused after reading her text. “Miss? Miss what?”
Jordan didn’t have time to decipher the content of the message at all. He called her immediately, only to find that she had already switched off her cell phone!
“Damn it!”
Jordan was furious.
On the other hand, Lauren was still trying to decipher what he meant. “Is Miss Victoria trying to tell you not to miss her?”
Jordan also felt that it made sense.
Lauren thought about it and her eyes lit up. She asked, “Does Victoria use text predictions when she types?”
However, Jordan didn’t know much about it, so he asked, “What do you mean?”
Lauren explained, “The text prediction function will display predictions for your next word and other suggestions based on your recent activity, and so on.”
Jordan gave it some thought. He knew that Victoria had always pursued efficiency, and because of her work, she often had to use the computer to do lots of typing and reply to emails.
The same is true for text messages. She hated replying with voice messages and would do so only when it was inconvenient to type.
Moreover, Jordan had once wanted to use Victoria’s phone to reply to a message, only to find that the predicted words weren’t the ones he wanted.
At one point, Jordan even decided to use the voice input function instead.
“I think she uses predictive text function,” Jordan answered.
Lauren ruffled her long hair, that was blocking her vision, then took out her own cell phone to search for common predictions.
“Look, the next predicted word after miss is ‘me’ so she’s probably trying to tell you that she’s fine and not to miss her. She might have sent the text before typing it out.”
Lauren’s explanation was almost perfect and Jordan couldn’t find any flaws with it at all.
However, the perfectness of the explanation was precisely the reason for Jordan’s suspicions.
Why would she know the text message settings of Victoria’s phone?
Why would she be so enthusiastic about helping Jordan find Victoria by taking him to check the surveillance camera footage? Why was she so certain that Victoria was safe and that she might have already left DC?
Jordan snapped at Lauren petulantly, “Lauren Howard, you’ve really put on a good act today!”