lody Sumrs took off her hat the mont she stepped inside, rubbing her cheeks, which were numb and stinging from the cold.
But the next second, she was shocked to discover the temperature inside was almost the sa as it was outside!
’This can’t be right!’
A chill shot straight to her head, seeming to travel up each strand of hair to her brain. lody Sumrs quickly put her hat back on.
With a puzzled look, she asked Noelle Quillan, "Why is it so cold in here?!"
Even though the heating hadn’t been very strong lately, the indoor temperature should have at least hovered around freezing.
But now, lody Sumrs felt the living room was as cold as the hallway, at least forty or fifty degrees below zero.
Noelle Quillan, wrapped in a thick quilt, exhaled a dense white fog with every breath. Her voice trembled as she answered, "...The... the heating went out... the day before yesterday..."
The heating had been intermittent for a while, shutting off from ti to ti, but it usually only stopped for a few hours at a ti. This was the first ti it had been off for more than 48 hours straight.
lody Sumrs was stunned. "The heating is out?!"
The Sumrs Family had always used natural gas for their own heating. With the power out now too, no one was talking in the hoowners’ group chat, so lody Sumrs hadn’t known the heating had failed.
After a mont of shock, lody Sumrs realized what was happening. She rembered from her past life that during the extre cold, the governnt’s heating had also been sporadic. By the end of 2026, it had shut down completely.
There wasn’t enough energy, with shortages of coal and fuel, so the governnt had no other options. In her past life, many people had died during the cold disaster. Many who had survived the extre heat and the long night couldn’t escape this deep freeze and ended up freezing to death in their own hos.
Thinking of this, lody Sumrs felt a sense of helplessness. It was currently December 2026, and the weather wouldn’t warm up until March of next year at the earliest. That ant they still had nearly three more months to endure...
Noelle Quillan looked at lody Sumrs’s crimson cheeks and said with a trembling voice, "...It’s too cold out here. Let’s go to the bedroom! I have a charcoal fire burning in there, so it’s a bit warr than the living room!"
Just from being out in the living room for this short ti, Noelle Quillan felt like her eyes were about to freeze shut.
lody Sumrs nodded and followed Noelle Quillan into the bedroom.
The mont they stepped into the bedroom, lody Sumrs was hit by a thick, foul stench!
The sll was so overpowering that lody Sumrs staggered back two steps, bumping right into the wall behind her.
She pinched her nose in surprise and asked Noelle Quillan, "Wh-what is that sll?!..."
’Could it be that Gene Young and his wife are dead?! Is this the sll of rotting corpses?’
Hearing this, Noelle Quillan rubbed her hands together awkwardly and answered in a small voice, "...I dried our feces and burned it as fuel, so it slls a bit... I thought it would be a way to save so coal."
Gene Young and his wife had hoarded a decent amount of supplies, and there was enough coal for the ti being, but Noelle Quillan was a thrifty person. To save coal, she had dried her own feces and that of the couple to use as fuel.
So, while the room was warm, it was filled with a lingering, foul odor.
After hearing Noelle Quillan’s explanation, lody Sumrs didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She could only hold her breath for the mont and scan the room.
She noticed the bedroom layout had changed. The bed, which had been in the middle of the room, was now moved next to the bay window. Gene Young and Yvonne York were lying on it, covered by two quilts, fast asleep. They hadn’t been woken by lody Sumrs’s arrival.
Before lody Sumrs could ask, Noelle Quillan began to explain the situation. "I was originally sleeping in the guest room. The day before yesterday, I woke up and found the heating was off. The room got incredibly cold all of a sudden, so to save coal, I just moved into the master bedroom..."
At this point, Noelle Quillan reached out from under her quilt and pointed to Gene Young and Yvonne York on the bed. "Since I had to sleep in the sa room with them, I was afraid they’d try sothing while I was asleep, so I drugged them to make them sleep more each day."
lody Sumrs was puzzled. "Where did you get the drugs?"
During the apocalypse, dicine was a scarce resource.
Noelle Quillan replied, "They were what the couple bought to use on the won they kidnapped. I found them. If you mix the drugs into food, they make a person weak all over and able to sleep for over ten hours."
Hearing her say that, lody Sumrs felt sowhat relieved.
Then, lody Sumrs rembered the reason for her visit. She took out her phone, opened the photo album, tapped on the most recent picture, and asked Noelle Quillan, "Take a look. Do you know this person?"
Yesterday, Roman Rhodes had sent lody Sumrs a photo of Kevin Kent. Based on Kevin’s confession and the information lody had provided earlier, Roman had deduced that the pregnant woman who made the deal with Kevin at the ti might have been Noelle Quillan.
So Roman had asked lody to confirm it with Noelle.
Noelle Quillan leaned closer to the phone screen. When she got a clear look at the face, she gasped sharply!
Then she nodded repeatedly and said, "It’s him! It’s him! ... He’s the one who bought Divine Fortune from the first ti!"
Noelle Quillan would never forget that face as long as she lived! After sleeping with him, she had been dragged away for an abortion. It wasn’t a proper dical procedure. Noelle had been tortured to the point where she was trapped in a living hell.
lody Sumrs nodded. It seed Roman Rhodes’s deduction was correct.
Noelle Quillan’s voice was urgent as she asked, "How do you have his picture? Has he been arrested? Is he in jail? Did he get what he deserved?!"
lody Sumrs didn’t answer her. She didn’t know what would happen to Kevin Kent either. Whether he would be severely punished or allowed to atone for his cris through good deeds would depend on his own actions. She composed Noelle’s response into a text ssage and sent a confirmation back to Roman Rhodes.
After sending the ssage, lody Sumrs glanced at Gene Young and Yvonne York on the bed. Once she confird they were still fast asleep, she lowered her voice and asked Noelle Quillan, "Have these two been behaving lately?"
Noelle Quillan nodded. "They were rowdy for the first couple of days, screaming for to let them go, so I gagged them. But they’ve been much quieter recently and haven’t caused any more trouble."
Gene Young and Yvonne York had been eating only one sand vine cake a day. They didn’t have the energy to cause trouble even if they wanted to. Every day, aside from eating and drinking, they just lay in bed to conserve energy and body heat.
lody Sumrs nodded and said to Noelle Quillan, "I asked the police. Your daughter, Joelle Lawson, is still in prison. The police told that as long as you keep a close watch on Gene Young and his wife and hand them over to the authorities after the snow disaster ends, they can try to arrange for your daughter’s bail."
"So, for the authorities and for yourself, you have to watch these two closely. Don’t let them escape, and don’t let them die! Got it?"
Noelle Quillan imdiately promised, "I know! Don’t worry, I’ll definitely keep a close eye on them!"
lody Sumrs thought for a mont, then added a warning, "Now that the heating is out, there might be trouble in the apartnt building. You have to be extra careful. After I leave, barricade the door with furniture. No matter what you hear outside, don’t co out and don’t make a sound."
"You have plenty of supplies here, so lasting a few more months won’t be a problem. Just stay put at ho and don’t go anywhere, understand?"
Noelle Quillan nodded. "I understand, I understand! Don’t worry, I’ve got it all down!"
******
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