CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Although most of the other homes on Beaver had some serious dilapidation going on, Tabby’s yard was well-maintained and her small house was well-kept too.
It was easy to see that she took great pride in her accomplishment.
Which she should have. Becoming a homeowner at twenty-three was a feat for sure.
And especially in cash-strapped Larkin, Ohio.
Stuart meant what he said: He was proud of her.
But the two young shirtless white guys that were drinking beers and hanging out next door made him uneasy.
They see this pretty young girl living alone.
They see her going and coming every day.
It felt like a vulnerable situation for Tabby in his view.
It seemed like a receipt for disaster in his view.
“I see your neighbors over there,” he said as he pulled into her driveway.
Tabby looked where he was looking and dismissed it. “That’s Keith and his brother. They’re okay. They don’t bother me and I don’t bother them.”
“But they’re young.”
She smiled. “So?”
“They’re young with seemingly nothing to do.” He began looking around. “Is it safe around here?”
“Is anywhere safe?” Tabby took off her seatbelt. “I ask the Lord to keep his hedge of protection around me, and I go on about my business. What else can you do?”
“But they can certainly rob you, Tabitha.”
“Rob me of what? They ain’t got nothing and they know I ain’t got nothing either. What they gonna rob?”
Stuart knew he was sounding like some old man worried about his daughter, but he felt she didn’t see just how vulnerable she truly was.
When he was a teenage thug hanging around the trailer park, he and his buddies were always breaking into somebody’s house every chance they got.
Those people they burglarized didn’t have anything either.
But they took the little they had. “Just be careful,” he said to her.
“Make sure you keep all your doors and windows locked.”
Tabby looked at him. He sounded like he actually cared. Which made her feel good that somebody cared, even if it was only for the moment. “I will. Thanks. And thanks again for everything, Stuart. Especially getting me out of that jail. I thought I was gonna lose my mind being locked up like that.”
But she couldn’t help herself. For some reason, she liked being around him. “So when are you leaving? Tomorrow?”
“Oh no. I’m heading out as soon as I settle my mother’s estate.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes. That’s why I’m in town. She passed away.”
Her entire face changed into a mask of concern. “Oh, Stuart. I’m so sorry! And here I am wasting your time like this when you’ve got to deal with your mother’s death? I am so sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” he quickly said. “I haven’t seen her in thirty years. We weren’t close at all. It’s no big deal whatsoever.”
He could tell that Tabby found that an odd thing to say.
She was still his mother, after all. But there was no love lost between those two.
The only reason he didn’t send an assistant to handle her affairs was because he needed time away from the scandal of that hostile takeover.
He had private detectives sorting through it all, but they weren’t turning up anything tangible.
They still wanted to claim that all evidence pointed to his son as the mastermind of that coup.
But Stuart knew better than that. Somebody was pulling the strings alright, and it wasn’t Alan.
“Anyway, thanks,” she said and got out of his car.
But when that door closed and she began walking toward her porch, he felt a gut punch he didn’t expect to feel.
Damn, what was it about that girl?! Talk about pulling strings.
It felt as if there was a drawstring between them that kept pulling him back to her. Which was just weird.
But what wasn’t weird was when he backed out of her driveway and was passing the house next door, he saw those young men purposely staring at him. As if they were sizing him up. Rich-looking guy in a Porsche dropping her off? Why? Was she coming up in the world? Did they have something going on?
He remembered when he was a young punk just like them and how he and his buddies would leap to conclusions with no real information.
But then they would make their suspicions reality and act on that false narrative.
They would decide that somebody was hiding money in a house, so they broke in.
They decided that somebody had a safe full of expensive jewelry in another house, so they broke in.
Their decisions were always proven false, but they kept breaking in anyway.
Which made it clear to Stuart that by showing up at her house in the car he was driving, didn’t help Tabby one bit. It just might have put a bigger target on her back. Which caused his heart to sank.
He drove several miles with that sinking feeling.
How could he live with himself if that one act of dropping her off caused those young men to get the wrong idea about her and put her safety at risk?
And sweet Tabitha would have no clue she was a brand-new target.
Which made her an even bigger target because she wouldn’t see it coming.
It became so problematic to Stuart that he couldn’t let it go.
Just like he couldn’t allow those cops to blame her for an accident and fight she didn’t start, he couldn’t sit back and let her remain in that precarious situation.
He was miles away from her house by now.
He was just a few minutes away from his mother’s home where he knew that realtor was anxiously waiting on him.
But he couldn’t help it. Like those drawstrings pulling him again, he drove through the green light, flipped a U-turn, and headed right back to Beaver Avenue.
But he was already too late. Those two young men were no longer on their front porch. But their cans of beer still were sitting there, as if they left in a big hurry. As if they wasted no time.
Because as soon as Stuart was pulling into Tabby’s driveway again, he could hear loud, undeniable, bloodcurdling screams.