CHAPTER FOURTEEN
She jumped in the shower as soon as she got home and was still bathing every piece of that jail stench off of her when she thought she heard the floor in her hallway creak.
It was a very old house and it did make settling noises all the time, so it didn’t disturb her too much. She continued bathing.
But when she heard that creaking sound again, she knew something wasn’t right. Settling didn’t sound like somebody walking in her hallway. And that was what she was hearing that second time.
Concerned, she turned off her water tap and then opened the shower curtain to see if she could hear it better. But as soon as she opened that curtain, she saw her two neighbors enter her bathroom and bum-rush her.
She started screaming for her life, but fighting them too.
As they hurried up to her and began grabbing her, each pulling one of her arms, she began kicking and screaming even louder.
She bit one of them. She kicked another one in the groin.
She was screaming and wiggling and tossing and turning and fighting with all she had.
She could see her life flash before her.
Her friendly neighbors now looked as evil as evil could look. But she kept fighting them.
But it was a losing battle. She was being easily overpowered by those two strong, young men.
Outside, Stuart had driven up as she was screaming her first screams. He grabbed the loaded pistol he kept in his glove compartment and hopped out of his car. The neighbor on the opposite side of Tabby’s house had just come out of his house: he apparently heard the screams too.
“Call 911!” Stuart yelled at the older black man and the man quickly pulled out his cell phone to do just that. Stuart’s presence confirmed to him that he wasn’t hearing things and those screams were for real.
While the neighbor was calling the cops, Stuart ran straight up on Tabby’s porch, tried to open the door but it was locked. But as he continued to hear her screams, he found that herculean strength and leaned back and kicked that door off its hinges. And then he ran inside.
Screaming and tussling could be heard in the bathroom down the hall, so he ran in that direction.
And that was when he saw the two young men grabbing a wet, naked, screaming Tabby and was dragging her across the bathroom floor.
One of the young men had a butcher’s knife in his hand and was attempting to turn her on her back so that he could put that knife to her neck to shut her up.
Stuart’s heart was hammering and his hands were shaking as he aimed his gun at both of them and yelled out through Tabby’s screams: “Drop that knife or I’ll blow your brains out!” he yelled from the top of his lungs. “Drop that knife now!”
When Tabby heard Stuart’s commanding voice, her heart was still in full terror mode, but there was a sense of relief too.
But the two young men looked at each other as if they were questioning if whomever was behind them actually had a gun.
And if it was that same older white guy that had dropped her off, their calculation was that they could jump him easily and take his gun away.
That was when Stuart fired his gun on the opposite side from where they held Tabby to show he meant business. When he fired that gun, the young man immediately dropped that knife, and then both of them removed their hands from Tabby and held up their hands in surrender.
“Now get on your knees with your hands behind your heads,” he ordered them.
As they were kneeling down, that was when all of them heard the sirens of police cars pulling up outside. Apparently somebody in that neighborhood saw those young men when they were breaking into Tabby’s house long before Stuart drove up and her older neighbor heard those screams.
But those sirens only helped Stuart’s commands because the young men knew their goose was cooked. They did as they were told. They got on their knees. They put their hands behind their heads.
And Tabitha, terrified, scrambled on her stomach away from them as Stuart held out a hand to help her to her feet.
When she stood up and he pulled her into his arms while still aiming his weapon at the two intruders, he could feel every inch of her body trembling with an uncontrollable tremble.
She was beyond-terrified. And he was angry that she had to go through this just because his flashy-ass showed up at her house in his flashy-ass car.
He was pissed with those two punks. He was pissed with himself.
But as he could hear the police yelling that they were coming in, he quickly grabbed a towel and wrapped it around Tabby’s naked body. She was in no position to do even that. He told her to get behind him, which put both of them in the hallway.
But Stuart remained where he was, with his gun still aimed at the suspects, as the police ran into the house.
“Back here!” Stuart yelled.
As they ran toward the bathroom with their guns drawn, they ordered Stuart to drop his weapon. Which he immediately did. And he and Tabby backed away from the bathroom’s entrance on their commands.
Two of the cops grabbed Stuart’s gun and questioned if Tabby was the homeowner, which she was able to nod that she was.
Two other officers took control of the suspects as Stuart turned to a still-trembling Tabby, pulled her into his arms, and then moved her completely out of the way of the officers and the criminals.
As they stood in her hallway, Stuart placed both his hands on the side of her face and lifted her face up. “Are you alright, Tabby? Did they harm you?”
She was shaking her head no. He didn’t know to which question she was responding. “They didn’t harm you?” he asked her again.
“No, they didn’t harm me,” she managed to say.
“But are you alright?”
Tears were in her big, beautiful, expressive eyes as if that facade she always put on that everything was fine and dandy no matter how terrible everything was came crumbling down.
She couldn’t verbalize it. Her lips trembled when she tried to say no.
But her face spoke it loud and clear: She was not alright.
Stuart felt her pain to the depths of his soul, and it was almost as wrenching as the pain he felt when his son betrayed him.
It was just that deep. He pulled her into his arms again.
She wore a shower cap, and he placed his hand on the back of that cap and held her closer still.
What would have happened, he thought, had he not bothered to come back?
What would they have done to this precious, sweet human being?
Just the thought of it terrified him to a point where he held her so closely against his body, and squeezed her so tightly, that he wasn’t at all certain that he could ever let her go.
It was the oddest, yet most sincere feeling he’d ever felt in his life.