Chapter 4 - The Apartment With No Heat
I was in the car before Martin finished saying my name.
By the time I reached Lakeview Terrace, a maintenance truck blocked half the curb. Hannah stood in the third-floor hallway between her apartment and two men wearing Westbridge jackets.
One held a drill.
The other held a new lock.
“You cannot do this,” Hannah said.
“We have an order.”
“Show me the court order.”
The man with the drill rolled his eyes. “Move, lady.”
“Put the drill down,” I said.
They turned.
Neither recognized me.
“This doesn’t concern you,” the taller one said.
“It concerns the owner.”
“Then call him.”
“I am him.”
That got their attention.
I called Sam and put him on speaker. Within two minutes, Denise confirmed there was no eviction order, no sheriff’s notice, nothing that gave Westbridge the right to remove the lock.
The men left without another word.
Hannah didn’t thank me.
Good.
She was too angry to be grateful.
Inside, Eli sat at the kitchen table with his coat on. Noah was wrapped in two blankets on the couch.
The apartment was so cold I could see a faint cloud when I exhaled near the window.
“You live like this?” I asked.
Hannah looked at me. “We survive like this.”
The words cut clean.
A portable heater glowed near the boys. The cord ran through a cheap power strip with three other plugs jammed into it.
“Turn that off,” I said.
“And do what? Burn the furniture?”
I had no answer.
Eli did.
“Mom used to put towels under the doors.”
Hannah closed her eyes.
Noah pointed toward the wall. “It leaks when it rains.”
There were dark stains near the ceiling.
I called an emergency HVAC company and told them to inspect the entire property, not just Hannah’s unit.
An hour later, their supervisor found the boiler locked out.
“Mechanical failure?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Manual shutdown.”
“By who?”
“Someone with access.”
A door slammed below us.
Then a man shouted from the basement.
“Hey! Who touched the boiler room?”
Hannah went pale.
“That’s Manny. The superintendent.”
We hurried downstairs.
But halfway there, Noah suddenly cried out from behind us.
“My science box!”
May you like
He ran toward the basement stairwell.
At the exact same moment, every light in the building went out.
