Mike immediately sensed something was wrong and rushed after her. “Why are you walking away? I haven’t finished asking you yet-stop!”
He shouted and pulled out his ID. “Cooperate with the investigation, or I’ll take you to the police station.”
The woman’s fear of the police made her stop immediately. She turned around to glance at Mike’s camouflage uniform and then looked uneasy. “I… I don’t know her.”
“If you don’t know her, why are you walking away?” Mike looked at the woman’s home interior. “You’ve got a nice place here. Why don’t you explain what’s going on?”
The woman looked a little weak in her legs.
“Speak up!”
“I… I really don’t know her.”
“It seems like you’re refusing to tell the truth. Alright, then, let’s go.” Mike grabbed her sleeve, ready to take her away.
“What’s Mike doing?” Evan, who had been talking to the village head, heard a woman’s shrill scream from the direction of Mike.
He hurried over. “What’s going on?”
“This woman definitely knows the woman in the photo. She wouldn’t even look at the photo and still claims not to know her. She’s acting all suspicious.”
Just then, the village head also arrived, and Mike asked directly, “Sir, what’s the situation with this household?”
Since they were speaking in dialect, Conrad and the others could only hear a bunch of rapid words but couldn’t understand anything.
The more Mike listened, the darker his face got. He suddenly yanked the woman’s collar, and not long after, she started crying and begging.
Conrad had a bad feeling and stepped inside, his voice low. “What is she saying?”
Mike yanked the woman up. “Her son didn’t have money to go to college a few years ago. A man from the city came by. She said he was handsome and well-dressed, wearing glasses. He asked her to take care of a woman who was unconscious. Later, that woman got pregnant. It’s the woman in the photo, and the money came from that man. After her son went to school, there was some money left. She used it to renovate the house, preparing it for when her son got married.”
Conrad couldn’t hold back his anger and moved to strike, but George and the others quickly stopped him.
“Who is that man? Does she recognize him?”
The woman spoke up. “I… I’ve heard the woman in the photo curse him. I think his name was something like Frank… I can’t remember clearly. He used to live in another village. I heard his hometown is from there.”
“Frank! It’s Frank!” Gordon exclaimed loudly.
Frank had disappeared in recent years. He hadn’t been seen in a long time.
They had considered him before, but back then, it was known that he had married and had no further connections with Lillian. After having someone follow him for a few days, they found that he was going to work, coming home, and spending time with his wife every day.
After that, he seemed to vanish completely.
Conrad was filled with regret and anger. “Where did you take care of her?”
The woman answered, “His hometown is from XL Village. He paid someone to renovate his family’s old house. The woman was locked up there. Later, once, she managed to escape, and the house was demolished by people he hired. He told me to bring her to our village, so we moved her here.”
XL Village.
Conrad froze, his fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles cracked.
George noticed his reaction. “Calm down.”
Conrad had gripped his fists so tightly that his teeth were now biting into his jaw, causing his face to ache.
“There was once a call from XL Village that I missed. I had someone go ask around, but all they found was an old man who claimed it was a wrong number and that no one in the village knew her.”
So, he had thought it was just an accident.
Hogan and Gordon exchanged a glance. They had considered the possibility of a misunderstanding, but they never expected things to be this complicated. If they were Conrad, they probably would have considered destroying the village by now.
“What happened next?”
The woman pointed toward the back mountain. “That way, climb up for about half an hour, and there’s a house. She was locked up there.”
The iron gate, still relatively new, was completely covered with vines, and the ground was littered with fallen leaves. The gate had been pried open with pliers.
“There were a few dead dogs, had been dead for years. They probably starved to death.”
No one had been feeding them, so they had no chance of survival.
The house itself was surprisingly well-decorated, resembling the Lewis family’s old residence by about seventy or eighty percent.
It seemed Frank had invested quite a bit of effort into this place.
The double doors were suddenly kicked open, and a musty, decayed odor hit them so strongly that they almost stumbled backward.
“Cough, cough… What the hell is this place?” Hogan frowned and waved his hand.
George took out gas masks and handed one to each of them. “What happened to the stuff inside?”
The room was completely empty. All the furniture, pots, pans, and utensils were gone.
The woman spoke with a trembling voice, “When I saw they left and I couldn’t reach them, I… I moved everything to my house.”
“Was there anything inside?”
“Not much, just some photos. They were all of that girl. I kept them.” Fearing they wouldn’t believe her, the woman hurried to walk inside. “At that time, she was locked up here.”
She stepped onto the middle of the living room floor, crouched down, and opened a panel, revealing a dark room.
Lionel turned on his flashlight, illuminating the scene inside clearly.
No wind, no light, no windows.
The bed couldn’t even be called a bed.
Conrad jumped down directly, and as he landed, the light from his flashlight disturbed the dust on the floor, sending it flying into the air.
As his eyes scanned the room, he saw bloodstains on the walls.
It was as if he could see through time and space, imagining what Lillian must have gone through-pregnant, alone, struggling in this hellish place.
She must have been terrified, utterly hopeless.
He pressed his palm against the bloody handprint, his fingertips digging into the wall’s surface. With each punch he threw at the wall, the pain inside him eased just a little.
“Stop it! Damn it!” George shouted and immediately jumped down to block him.
When he saw the destruction on the walls, he was stunned for a moment before throwing his own punch in fury.
“Damn it!”
This was something no human with a conscience could ever do.
Hadn’t Frank always insisted that Lillian was like a sister to him, someone he’d spent his entire childhood with? How could he do this to her?
Her father, Alvin, had also taken him in from an orphanage, raised him, and given him a future. Anyone capable of this was no better than a beast!
“There’s writing here.”
Conrad turned sharply, his eyes bloodshot, and strode over. When he saw the chaotic scratches on the wall, he realized she had been marking the days.
At the very bottom was a small line:
“Never give up, and hope will always remain.”
Without this daily self-encouragement, she might not have survived the isolation.
Some women may seem delicate, but their spirits are unbreakable.
And Jasmine’s existence was proof of her unwavering maternal love.
Among everyone present, except for those who were clueless, the rest wished they could go back and slap themselves. At one point, while watching Jasmine fight for her life, they had even doubted whether Lillian wanted the child.
But how could she not want the child after enduring so much to bring her into the world?
Without walking in her shoes, how could anyone trivialize her sacrifices with a few careless words?