Since She Went Away(60)

Or maybe . . .

He stared at the house, its locked doors and drawn blinds. It looked like a place that held its secrets close and tight, as impenetrable as a bank vault.

But maybe it all made sense—the curfew, the isolation, the restricted texting and calling. Tabitha and her dad were on the run, living under different names. Her father was a murderer, someone who had killed her mother and then taken Tabitha away from her home to live there in Hawks Mill. And they were on the run again.

Maybe. If Tabitha or Natalie or whoever she was really had gone with him.

He checked the back door, hoping for something with a large window he could break. He wanted to smash the glass and just reach in and undo the lock, assuming it wasn’t a dead bolt. Or he could crawl through the window.

And look for what? Tabitha’s dead body?

Jared shook the thought out of his mind. No time for that. He just wanted to concentrate on getting inside.

The back door was locked and made out of wood. No window, no opening. He pushed against it and it didn’t budge.

He went back down the steps to the side of the house and stood under the window he had previously broken. The cardboard still covered the opening, but the window was too high to reach or boost his body through. Above the roof, low clouds started to build, blotting out the stars and the rising moon. It was getting tougher to see.

Jared scrambled around on the ground again, searching with his hands. He found a large stone, one that someone had once used to create a border around the landscaping. The stones were scattered now, the flower bed overgrown with dead weeds and grasses. He clutched the rock in his hand. It was bigger than a softball, filling his palm and then some.

He spotted a basement window, small but still big enough for him to squeeze through if he knocked all the glass out. He didn’t try to disguise the noise. He pulled his hand back, making sure to keep his fingers out of the way as best he could, and brought the rock forward. The window crunched, the shards of glass falling inside and making a sound like discordant music.

He checked his hand. He didn’t see any blood in the dark, didn’t feel the stinging of any cuts. He used the rock to clear the rest of the glass out of the pane, swiping it away so there were no jagged edges sticking up, and then he tossed it away. He took off his sweatshirt, since he hadn’t bothered to grab a coat on his way out, and used it to line the pane, hoping for a little more protection against any pieces he’d missed.

He looked around one more time, checking to see if anyone was watching him or had heard the glass breaking. But there was no one in sight. The night was quiet except for the soft creaking of tree limbs rubbing against one another when the faint breeze moved.

Jared bent down and slithered through the opening, not sure where he would land.





CHAPTER FORTY


Nothing broke his fall but the cement.

Jared managed to twist his body a bit before impact, allowing his shoulder to take most of the force instead of his head. It still hurt, and he lay on the floor for a moment, letting out a low groan that he quickly repressed. He doubted anyone was in the house, at least no one who was alive, but did he really want to telegraph his arrival by moaning and groaning?

He yanked his sweatshirt in and shook it out, making sure no more glass was embedded in its material. A cool draft followed him through the broken window, and he pulled the sweatshirt back on as his eyes adjusted to the even darker space. When they began to acclimate, he looked around. He saw an old washer and dryer, some boxes, and a set of golf clubs that looked as though they hadn’t been touched since Jack Nicklaus was an infant. But the large open space was mostly empty.

Across the room, a staircase, wooden and rickety, led to the next level of the house, so Jared headed that way, stepping lightly, hoping that when he reached the top the door wouldn’t be locked. He eased up the stairs, every creak amplified in the dark, quiet space. As he climbed, he wished he’d kept the rock he’d used to break the window. He possessed no weapon, no way to defend himself on the off chance someone was in there. But he also figured if someone was in there, someone who meant to do him harm, a rock wasn’t going to be much help.

The door at the top of the stairs gave way when he turned the knob. He pushed it open slowly, and in the meager light saw he was in the kitchen.

The smell hit him, a sickly stench that burned his nostrils. Like poop. Maybe a pipe had burst or a toilet had backed up. Or could it be something worse, some kind of decay from someone who had died.

Jared’s will and determination took a hit. If someone was dead in the house. If Tabitha was dead in the house, did he really want to be the person to find her? Did he want to see her body and remember her that way for the rest of his life?

But if she was there, if she’d been killed and abandoned by her father, Jared didn’t want to leave her there unattended. Her life had already been violent and shitty. No one, least of all the girl he really and truly loved, deserved to be left to die and rot alone.

Or what if she was just hurt? Bleeding or injured?

He moved through the kitchen, past the table where he had spied her dad planting that creepy kiss on Tabitha’s lips. He shivered at the memory, which had been enhanced and made even worse by the information he’d learned online. Again, he reminded himself not to dwell. There’d be time later to deal with those things. Hopefully there would be, he thought. Hopefully there would be.

He reached a hallway that ran to the front of the house. The smell seemed to be coming from somewhere in that direction. He hadn’t adjusted to it, not at all. He took off his sweatshirt again, feeling the cold chill of the house against his bare arms, and pressed it against his nose, hoping to block out the odor.