Jagger
It was happening again. Smoke curled like a mushroom cloud upward into the sky. The sirens howled in Jagger’s ear as he pressed his foot down harder on the accelerator, weaving in and out of traffic with ease. “Fuckers,” he muttered under his breath, soft enough that his partner next to him didn’t hear it. He knew he needed to keep a clear head and focus on the matter at hand. For all he knew, it was just another house fire: a random, unfortunate event. After all, he didn’t even recognize the address this time, which meant that the victim wasn’t a member of his MC like the last ten fires had been. Maybe it’s not the arsonist, he thought to himself as he sharply took the last corner and came to a stop in front of the burning building.
“All right, boys, you know what to do,” he announced to his fellow firefighters as he hastily reached behind his seat for his protective equipment. He slipped on the rest of his gear before running out of the truck and heading toward the home being engulfed by flame.
He was halfway to the front door when a figure stumbled out clutching her stomach as she coughed and wheezed. The woman straightened up a second later, running toward Jagger to grab him by the shoulders. “He’s stuck in there! I can’t get him out!” she shouted. Her face was wet with tears and streaked with soot. Jagger immediately grabbed her arms, trying to steady her and soothe her hysterics.
“Calm down, ma’am. It’s going to be okay. Who’s stuck? Where is he?” he asked, slowly and clearly so the frantic woman would understand.
“My— My patient. Robert. His name is Robert,” the woman said in between long panting breaths. “He— He uses a wheelchair, he can’t get out, I can’t lift him, I tried, I tried, but I couldn’t do it, please, please—”
Jagger just nodded at her before breaking into a run and heading toward the entrance of the building. “Robert?” he called out as he quickly inspected room after room. There was nothing in the living room. The kitchen and the bathroom were also empty. Where was the patient?
A second later he heard the faint sound of distant sobbing, choked off and weak, from somewhere within the house. The old guy had to be upstairs. Jagger quickly scaled the steps, but one had already collapsed and fallen through to the building’s foundation from the pressure of the smoke and flames. He leapt upstairs, carefully walking to the first room he saw. It was a bedroom, and in the far corner was an old man in a wheelchair, holding his head in his hands and breathing raggedly. “Robert!” Jagger called out. When the man looked up, Jagger realized that he knew him from somewhere. Jagger couldn’t quite place it, but he didn’t have time then to figure it out. There was a wall of fire raging between him and the old man, getting larger and larger with each passing second.
“Robert,” Jagger shouted, hoping his voice would carry over the sounds of the crackling fire. “Robert, stay calm. I’m going to get you, okay? You’re going to be fine.”
The old man just stared at him, his jaw set. He looked resigned, as if he had accepted his fate. Jagger didn’t waste any more time, but launched himself forward through the flames, reaching the other side virtually untouched. From the window next to the old man, he heard the boys hurrying on the outside, trying to get the hoses set up and put out the fire. By the time that happened, the old man might’ve spent too much time exposed to the smoke.
Jagger pulled the man from his chair and swooped him up into his arms, encouraging him to put his arms around his neck. He quickly leapt back over the flames and rushing back down the stairs. “You’re going to be fine. It’s going to be okay. I promise,” Jagger said, like he always did when he rescued people from fires.
He rushed out of the house, still running fast in case it collapsed on top of them until he reached the ambulance on the front of the lawn. It must have arrived sometime in the last few seconds, and not a moment too soon. Jagger gently placed Robert on a stretcher in the back of the ambulance, putting his hand on the man’s chest to make sure he was still breathing. A moment later, he took off his mask and threw it to the ground to get a better look at the old man. That’s when it hit him. Bobby. Bobby, from years ago.
“Bobby, Bobby, do you remember me? It’s Jagger,” he said, staring into the old man’s deep blue eyes. He looked terrible, but back in the day, this guy was a legend in Satan’s Blazes. He never got to know him though, as the old man retired from the motorcycle club just when Jagger was coming up as a teenager. But he still remembered him. He used to look so tough, but now even the tattoos that still lined his arms and legs looked worn, wrinkled and ugly.
“Jagger…” The old man squinted his eyes as he stared at him, but not an ounce of recognition crossed his face. Jagger didn’t have time to feel offended or hurt by the lack of acknowledgment, as the next second he was pushed out of the way, swaying into the bumper of the ambulance as the woman from before leaned over the old man.
“Robert? Robert, can you hear me? It’s me; it’s Abby.” Jagger saw the woman reach down and wrap her hand around Robert’s. “I’m with you. I’m not leaving you. It’s going to be okay.”
“You his family?” Jagger asked as he pulled off his gloves and zipped his suit down to let the fresh cool air from outside hit his chest.
The woman shook her head as she pulled her hair back into a tight bun. Jagger finally noticed that she was wearing dark blue scrubs. He should’ve put two and two together before now. “You’re his doctor,” he said.
She smirked and shook her head again. “Nurse. I don’t have the ego to be a doctor,” she said, but a second later her smile faded as she leaned over her patient, taking his other hand and rubbing her thumbs over his palms.
“What’s wrong with him?” Jagger asked, stepping fully inside the ambulance before the driver could shut the door. He was a part-time paramedic, too, so he could help the old man remain stable until they reached the hospital.
“Lung cancer,” the nurse murmured, leaning over to listen to Robert’s breathing.
“Shit,” Jagger said, immediately turning to the other paramedic in the back of the ambulance and spouting off directions to hook the man up to a temporary ventilator. “He needs oxygen.”
“Yeah, no duh,” the woman sarcastically said as she helped the other paramedic apply the oxygen mask to the old man’s nose and mouth. Jagger tried not to take it personally. People often got snippy and rude with him after they went through traumatic events, or they would hug him desperately and thank him repeatedly for saving their lives. The latter was more rewarding than the former, but after a decade on the job, he’d grown accustomed to both reactions.
“Did you hear anything?” Jagger asked, watching as the woman smiled down at Robert and whispered something into his ear.
“I’m sorry, did you say something?” the nurse asked, turning to look at him directly for the first time since she ran out of the burning building. She was gorgeous, even with ash and soot smeared all over her face and hands. Jagger inwardly berated himself for thinking about that. The woman has been through enough without your horny ass wanting to hit on her, he thought. Sometimes Jagger was divided in two: the ethical, honorable firefighter and the rough, rude biker that came out at night. The biker inside of him wanted to get her number, take her back to the clubhouse, make her let her guard down. But the firefighter was still in control of his brain, for now, so he held back, watching her take care of the old man as the sirens screamed and the ambulance wailed its way toward the nearest hospital.
Jagger turned away from her, staring out of the back window at the burning house that receded into the distance as the ambulance drove further and further away. One thing was sure: This wasn’t an accident.
Someone was out there was targeting members of Satan’s Blazes. And Jagger was going to find out who.
# # #
Abby
The firefighter was fucking hot. Abby knew it was stupid to be thinking about smoking hot firefighters when Robert was so sick, but she couldn’t help noticing how defined his arms had been, and how his pecs stood out firmly from his chest.
A few minutes into the ambulance ride, Robert had fallen unconscious, but he was breathing steadily, if raggedly. Abby relaxed a little, as much as possible under the circumstances.
“Did you hear anything, or see anything before the fire started?” the firefighter asked again.
Abby shook her head, unsure of what to say. “No, I mean— I was just giving him his medicine, you know, doing the usual routine. I didn’t hear anything.” She didn’t know why he was asking her all these questions. It wasn’t like she knew how the fire started. Anyway, she was sleep-deprived. She was just coming off a twelve-hour shift at the hospital the night before and had three other patients to visit at their homes earlier today. She was wiped out. Her brain hadn’t been working right, even before the fire.
The ambulance was silent for a long while, except for the sirens, the wailing sound filling her ears. It resembled a baby crying, loud and whining and insistent. Abby tried to tune it out, staring down at Robert’s sleeping face. “He’s… Not okay,” she murmured, more to herself than to anybody else. She bit down on her lip, pressing down so hard she could taste the coppery flavor of her own blood.
“You saved his life, you know,” the firefighter said.
It took a long second for the words to sink in, but when they did, Abby just scoffed and shook her head. “It’s not saved yet. No matter what, he’ll suffer consequences for this. He’s going to be sick for a long time, and there’s nobody—there’s nobody to look after him but me.”
“He’s got no family?” the firefighter asked.
Abby nodded. “No, none.”
There was silence again, but this time it was tense, full of something that Abby couldn’t quite understand.
“I used to know him, a little bit,” the guy said, his voice small and quiet like he was afraid the driver of the ambulance would hear him.
“Yeah?” Abby asked, more out of habit than curiosity.
“Yeah, um, we were a part of the same motorcycle club. He was a legend, this guy, once upon a time,” the firefighter replied.
“Well, he’s just an old man now,” Abby said. “Sick, with nobody to care about him.” Her stomach broiled with something, some mixture of anger and sadness and discomfort. In all honesty, she wasn’t breathing very well herself, but she had learned to ignore the pain in her own body after years on the job. It didn’t matter if her feet hurt, her legs ached, or if her back was about to break in half. People needed help. That was all that mattered. Well, that and the amount of credit card debt she still had to deal with after her last boyfriend left her in the lurch.
“You care about him,” the firefighter said softly, barely audible.
Abby shrugged a little, but she felt her shoulders and back go stiff, hard as iron. “I guess,” she said, trying to ignore her heart as it started pounding in her chest.
“Are you like this with all your patients?” the firefighter asked, staring at her intensely, his deep dark eyes burning with something that Abby couldn’t quite name.
Abby felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, a symptom of her anxiety. “I don’t—I don’t know.” But that was a lie. She did know. She cared about all her patients, to a degree that was probably unhealthy. She was obsessed with their wellbeing, spending extra time with each one of them to make sure they were as healthy as possible. Most of the time it didn’t make much difference. People lived, people died, and no matter how much energy Abby invested, they would pass away from her like sand falling through her fingers. “He’s special, though,” she finally said after a long pause. “He’s… um, he’s very animated most days. He likes to flirt with me.”
“That makes sense,” the firefighter said, a smile slowly stretching over his face, his eyes glittering with humor. “He used to flirt with the girls at the club, you know, teasing them. He always liked pretty girls.”
Abby heard the unspoken compliment. So, this guy thinks I’m pretty, huh, she thought to herself. She took his body in with her eyes as subtly as she could. He was fit, that much was evident, probably because of his job. She could see the thick muscles undulating beneath his skin, the veins corded with strength. Abby wouldn’t mind rolling around in bed with him, as long as things stayed simple. Ever since Mark… She cut herself off, not allowing her mind to go to the dark places where the memories of her ex lay dormant. She had trust issues. So what? It didn’t mean she was wrong to protect herself.
Maybe she could fuck him, as long as there were no strings attached. Abby tore her eyes away from him, trying not to get distracted from the sick man before her. Robert’s hand had gone limp inside of hers. “He’s sweet, you know,” she said softly. “I always like to look at his tattoos. I’d always assumed they were gang signs or something.”
The firefighter was silent for a long time, sitting in the other corner of the ambulance, letting her take care of the old man. “It’s not a gang. It’s more of a support group.”
Abby smiled at that, but her heart sunk in her chest. “He could’ve used that,” she said in a small voice. Robert used to tell her about his past, about the crimes he used to commit, the guilt he felt, the pain he still carried around. He didn’t have anyone else to talk to about it. Most of Abby’s patients were that way. She only signed up for the home visit job because of her debt, but it was still rewarding. She loved feeling trusted, taking the secrets of these old, experienced people into her heart.
“Is he going to be all right?” the firefighter asked out of nowhere.
Abby was a little taken aback by the question. “I—I don’t know. I need… He needs to see a doctor. You’ve taken a lot of people out of burning buildings? You’d think you would be able to tell these things.”
The firefighter was silent a moment, chewing on his bottom lip. “Yeah. Yeah, I have. It’s hard, though. Sometimes they come through. Other times…”
Abby nodded slowly. “That’s the way it goes, huh?”
“My name’s Jagger,” he said out of nowhere, offering his hand to Abby. She just stared down at it for a second before she recognized what he wanted, slowly reaching forward to take his hand and shake it.
“I’m Abby,” she said. Tearing her eyes away from him again, she stared down at Robert, watching his chest rise and fall slowly. Please keep breathing. Please don’t die on me, she silently prayed.
A moment later they rolled to a stop in front of the hospital, and the paramedics and Jagger jumped into action, pushing the stretcher out of the car into the nearest entrance. Abby followed him into the hospital, staying as close to Robert as possible before the paramedics could take him away. “Hey, hey, where is he going? Where are you taking him?” she shouted after them. But nobody answered her.
She wished they’d taken him to her hospital, but it was farther away. She didn’t know any of the nurses or doctors here. Abby groaned and leaned back against the nearest wall in the waiting room. Closing her eyes, she stared at the backs of her eyelids, trying to focus on anything other than the pounding in her chest. Goddammit, it was happening again. The panic. It was climbing her body, like a fire monkey scaling a tree, pulling at the leaves. That was what it felt like. Her fear was yanking at her, pulling her apart, tearing away at her internal organs. She felt like she was crumbling. This was beginning to happen more and more often, the sudden anxiety attacks hitting her straight in the chest. Fuck, calm down, she tried to tell herself. Just breathe. Just fucking breathe.
“Are you okay?” Jagger asked her, slowly approaching her but stopping short when she held her hand up in the air, wordlessly telling him to freeze.
“I’m all right,” she said, but the sound of her voice came out strained and weak.
“You probably need to see a doctor, too,” Jagger said, concern lacing his voice. “You were in there a long time, huh?”
“No, no, I’m fine, I ran out in time, I’m okay,” Abby rushed to say.
“I think you should…” he started to reply, but Abby shook her head furiously and peeled herself off the wall, walking away from him in response. She knew she was being stupid and stubborn, refusing to see any other medical professional. But it just wasn’t going to fucking happen. Not today, she swore to herself, even though her lungs ached and burned. Not fucking today.
She plopped her body down in the nearest chair in the waiting room, burying her head in her hands. A second later she felt movement next to her. Jagger had sat down beside her. Abby rolled her eyes and bit down on her lip to suppress a groan. “Don’t you have work to do?” she asked him, her voice coming out snide and sharp. In all honesty, she didn’t know why she was being such a bitch to him. He’d saved Robert’s life, after all. He probably deserved a little respect at the very least, for putting his life on the line. She was annoyed with him nonetheless. Maybe she would have been annoyed with anybody that tried to talk to her right then.
“This is my work,” Jagger said, his tone casual and unbothered by her mood.
“You get paid to babysit people?” Abby asked sarcastically, finally lifting her head from her hands and turning to glare at him.
“Not about getting paid,” he replied, staring back at her, his dark eyes clear and focused as they bore into hers. His eyes were wide and full, Abby noticed, like a child’s, like he was soaking up all the details of her face and committing them to memory. Abby tore her eyes away from him and shifted uncomfortably in her seat, feeling exposed.
Who cares? Abby asked herself. Who cares if he stares at you with those big puppy dog eyes? You shouldn’t feel uncomfortable. Don’t let him control you like that. She silently berated herself for feeling at all affected by this random man that she’d never even met before. She told herself that she should have been stronger, impervious to all mental and emotional attacks from men. They don’t have power over me anymore, she reminded herself, but inside she knew it wasn’t true.
“You need to go home, just relax,” Jagger suggested a moment later, tearing her from her internal lecture. “There won’t be any news for a while.”
“I want to make sure he gets a room of his own,” Abby said without thinking. She didn’t want to get dragged into a conversation with this guy, but it was happening anyway. “He… He has nightmares sometimes. Doesn’t do well if there’s somebody else in the room. The rest of the nurses don’t know stuff like that. This isn’t his regular hospital.”
Jagger was momentarily silent, and for a second Abby thought that she’d “won” whatever game they were playing, trying to push the other one away from the hospital waiting room. Maybe he’d get up a second later and leave her the fuck alone, abandoning her to her thoughts. But instead, he cleared his throat and spoke again. “He…. He’s, uh, in the hospital a lot, would you say?” His voice was lower, softer than before like he was choosing his words carefully, holding them in his mouth like sharp little pieces of glass that could cut his tongue if he moved them around too much.
Abby gave a little half-shrug, but a second later she felt the burn of guilt hit her as she caught Jagger’s expression out of the corner of her eye. He looked pained, almost crestfallen. “I don’t— I don’t know,” Abby said hastily, trying to sound less bitchy even though she still felt on-edge. “Old people are always in and out of the hospital, you know? But he was doing all right.”
Jagger nodded slightly and stared down at his knees, clasping his hands together in his lap so tight that Abby could see the bones of his knuckles shine through his skin. “He, uh, he was a role model, you know? Everybody wanted to be like him when I was coming up in the club.”
“Satan’s Blazes?” Abby asked, and Jagger turned to her and nodded slowly again. “He used to tell me stories about you guys sometimes.”
Jagger smiled a little, his eyes lighting up. “What’d he say?”
“Oh, just how back in the day the ladies used to love him. That sort of thing,” Abby said with a laugh, leaning back in her chair as her body relaxed a little. “He’s quite the charmer, you know.”
“Yeah, yeah, he always used to get the girls rallying around him,” Jagger murmured, biting down on his bottom lip, lost in thought. “But he was alone in that old house…”
Abby started picking at her fingernails, digging deep into her cuticles until little spots of blood popped up on the sides of her fingers. “I came by a lot, you know? Sometimes even when it wasn’t my shift, I’d come just to check on him,” she explained, hoping that would make Jagger feel a little bit better. She did that with a lot of her patients, especially the older ones without any family. But Robert was her favorite. He was so full of energy, so full of life still despite everything. It lifted her spirits and made her feel less shitty about having to work two jobs to pay off her stupid ex’s debt.
“I never visited him,” Jagger muttered, and she could tell her was beating himself up for it.
“Well, I don’t think he would have wanted you to,” Abby said without thinking, realizing a second later that it probably wasn’t very reassuring to say that to him. She rushed to amend her statement, adding, “I mean, he didn’t want anybody to see him. Anybody at all. He hated being sick. I think it would have embarrassed him.”
Jagger nodded again, but he didn’t look convinced. “Maybe he wouldn’t even recognize me. He never really got to know me, not really,” he said.
Abby felt pinpricks of discomfort climb the back of her neck, shifting up into her scalp until her brain practically tingled with it. It took her a long moment to figure out what she was feeling, but then it hit her: Sympathy. She felt pity for this hunky firefighter-slash-biker with obvious guilt issues. That must have been why he was hanging around so long. “Do you, like, blame yourself for not getting there faster or something?” Abby asked, genuinely curious.
“What?” Jagger responded, turning to look at her again.
She felt a little uncomfortable repeating the question, but she did it anyway. “Like, are you beating yourself up over not taking care of Robert?” The firefighter didn’t say anything. Instead, he wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead and stared at her, wordlessly prompting her to continue speaking. “It’s not your fault, you know,” she mumbled, bewildered as to how she managed to stumble into comforting this guy that was annoying the shit out of her mere minutes before.
“It’s my job,” Jagger said, like that explained everything away as though he were responsible for all of the fires in the world.
“And it’s my job to make sure my patients are safe,” Abby argued back. “I should have called 911 faster, but I didn’t. I didn’t notice that anything was wrong. I still have no idea how it happened.”
“I do,” Jagger said. “It…. I could have stopped it before it happened, before you had the chance to make any phone calls.”
Abby had to resist the urge to scoff in disbelief. “How’s that?”
Jagger looked over his shoulder, then over the other one, checking to make sure that others in the waiting room weren’t listening in on their conversation. He leaned in closer to Abby, inches away from her ear. Abby could feel his breath hit her face, warm and soft. “Somebody’s targeting members of Satan’s Blazes,” he said, barely above a whisper.
“What do you mean?” Abby asked, dropping her voice to match Jagger’s tone.
Jagger’s forehead scrunched up as he concentrated to find the right words. “Over the last six months, there have been ten fires. Eleven now, all at the houses or workplaces of Blazes members. Or former members, in Robert’s case.” He cleared his throat and checked over his shoulder again. “About half of the fires were arson. Some are a little bit harder to prove.”
“And what are your bosses doing about it?” Abby asked, feeling her shoulders bunch up uncomfortably around her neck. She felt tense again, wound-up like a children’s toy.
Jagger clicked his teeth and smiled, but it was without humor or lightness. “Fuck all. That’s what they’re doing about it. It’s hard without proof. The cops won’t get involved. They don’t want to fuck up their clearance rates by possibly adding an assignment they might not be able to solve.”
Abby leaned back further in her seat, trying to prop up her strained neck against the back of the chair, but it was no good. The pain in her muscles didn’t fade. If anything, it just seemed to get worse, her pulse pounding in the veins of her neck harder and harder as she contemplated the string of arsons. Maybe he’s crazy, she thought to herself. I don’t know this guy. Why am I even listening to him? Why would he talk to me about this instead of his superiors or colleagues? He’s nuts. She tried to inwardly dismiss the subject from her thoughts, tearing her eyes away from Jagger, but she couldn’t get it out of her mind. Several minutes passed in silence, Abby wondered if Jagger had decided to let the conversation drop before he spoke again. “If you could…if you could say you heard something, saw something…” Jagger trailed off, but he was leaned forward in his chair, as close to Abby as possible without leaping into her seat.
“But I didn’t see anything,” Abby replied, staring back at Jagger’s wide eyes. Realization dawned on her slowly, a cold sensation slinking up her body as she came to understand what he was suggesting. “You want me to lie.”
“Exaggerate the truth,” Jagger said, quickly countering her words. “Listen, I know someone’s behind this. It’s not just random. It can’t be a coincidence, not with eleven different fires, Abby. I just need… I need something to get the fire chief to redirect resources to protect Satan’s Blazes. I’ve been trying for months, but it’s been no good. If you could just say you saw somebody suspicious…”
“I’m not getting involved,” Abby said, making her voice as firm as possible to show that it was non-negotiable. “I’m not lying to fucking law enforcement. Sorry. It’s just not happening.”
“You could help protect people, people like Robert—” Jagger tried to say, but she cut him off, shaking her head furiously.
“Listen, I’m just trying to live my life,” Abby said, standing to walk back over to the wall opposite the line of chairs in the waiting room. “I don’t have time to get involved in this shit.” She sighed as Jagger got up to follow her, plastering his body against the wall beside her. Abby couldn’t help but feel guilt pierce her heart, making her pulse go faster inside her veins. “I’m sorry. I wish I could help. But I can’t.”
Jagger opened his mouth to say something. She knew he was about to fire back with a counterargument, but an older nurse stepped out of one of the doors in the waiting room and gestured for Abby to follow her, interrupting him. “He’s been asking for you,” the nurse said, referring to Robert. Abby immediately complied, following the woman through the door and down the hall toward Robert’s room. It wasn’t until she was halfway down the hallway that she realized Jagger was following close behind her. Jesus. What a persistent little fuck.
Robert was sitting up in bed, hooked up to a machine that monitored his heart rate and breathing. Otherwise, he looked okay. In the ambulance on the ride over, Abby had been terrified when she saw how pale and ashen the old man had become. His regular complexion had returned, and he offered her a smile as she walked in the room. Abby did her best to return it, wanting to be as reassuring and comforting as possible. God knows the old man had been through enough without her worrying him with Jagger’s nonsense.
Abby took the chair nearest to the hospital bed, pulling it up closer so she could get a good look at Robert, examining him without calling attention to what she was doing. He seemed all right, as far as she could tell without invasively poking at him. He probably didn’t need any of that again. The doctors had probably done all of that already. “Are you feeling all right, sir?” she asked him, keeping her tone light and casual. She didn’t want him to know how scared she had been before, how worried she was that she might lose him.
“What did I say about you calling me ‘sir’?” Robert said, his face screwing up in pretend annoyance before melting a second later and smiling at her. “I’m not that old yet, woman.”
Ordinarily, Abby would have been offended at being referred to in that way, but Robert was just so charming, and so sweet. He had the kind of softness that men only achieve after decades of being too hard. It was clear from his hands, even from the state of his lungs that he’d lived a rough life. But now that was over, and he was just a sweet old man who liked to tease her and make her laugh. “You’re a fighter, you know,” she said softly, smiling as brightly as she could and took Robert’s papery hand into hers.
“Not anymore,” Robert said, and his tone was light and humorous, but there was a hint of sadness in his pale blue eyes that hit Abby right in the chest. At that moment, she would have given anything to give this man his vitality back. He didn’t need this, she thought to herself. He was so close to getting better, and now this happens. He deserved better. She felt anger start to build inside of her, but she swallowed it down as hard as she could. She didn’t want to upset Robert by showing how disturbed she was by this entire ordeal, but inside her mind, a little voice kept whispering, Somebody did this to him. Somebody hurt your patient. Somebody hurt him. She couldn’t shake it out of her mind, so she tried to ignore it instead.
A moment later, Jagger shoved in next to her, getting uncomfortably close as he leaned over to stare down at Robert. “Hey, Bobby. It’s Jagger, from Satan’s Blazes.”
Robert squinted up at him as he did in the ambulance, but this time his eyes widened with recognition. “Ah. Jagger, that’s right. How are you, boy?”
“Been better, Bobby. You see, somebody’s been going around...”
Abby cut him off, elbowing Jagger in his side hard enough that he emitted a little grumble of pain in response. “I don’t think now is the best time for that kind of talk,” she muttered as quickly and casually as she could to avoid alarming Robert.
She looked up at Jagger, seeing him roll his eyes. She felt a flash of irritation heat up her face, but she forced a smile anyway, refocusing her attention on Robert. “Did they say when you might be able to go home?” she asked.
Robert gave a little shrug. “A few days, probably. They got to watch me, you know,” he said before falling into a fit of coughs, pulling his hand away from Abby’s to clutch at his chest. Abby rubbed the back of his head, smoothing over his tangled grey hair to calm him back down. Before she could say anything else, Jagger shoved a little bit closer to the bed and captured Robert’s gaze.
“Bobby, do you know how the fire started? Did you see anything?” Jagger asked. Abby felt anxiety knock into her stomach, acid swimming around frantically, but she told herself to breathe deeply to avoid another embarrassing public panic attack. Besides, it was an innocent enough question. It wasn’t like Jagger was announcing that there was a conspiracy to kill his MC members. Well, not so far, anyway, Abby thought.
Robert’s eyebrows furrowed, meeting in the middle of his forehead. “What do you mean, son?”
“Before or after the fire started, was there anything… off? Anything different that you noticed?” Jagger asked. Abby decided to let the line of questioning continue, if Jagger didn’t push too hard.
Robert coughed a little more and cleared his throat, but when he spoke his voice was still gravelly and rough. “I think… I think somebody was coming to the front door, selling magazines. This man was dressed up, in a real nice suit, heading toward my place, but then he skipped my house for some reason. Didn’t even knock. Maybe he smelled the smoke or something before me and Abby did,” he said.
Jagger nodded slowly, staring off into the distance, focusing on something that Abby couldn’t see. “A suit…” he mumbled to himself, searching for something inside his mind.
A beeping noise loudly chirped in the quiet room, causing Abby to jump a little before she saw Jagger pull a pager out of his pocket. She groaned inwardly and pressed her hand against her sweaty forehead to get herself to calm down, but she was distracted by the layer of grime on her skin leftover from the fire. She needed to get home and shower. She felt disgusting, but she wanted Robert’s unspoken permission that he felt safe enough in the other nurses’ care before she left him.
“The station is calling me back,” Jagger murmured, staring down at his pager as he typed out a response.
“Don’t you have a cell phone?” Abby said, her tone a little nasty.
“Not for fire business,” Jagger said without missing a beat. “I got to go, Bobby. I’ll come back tomorrow, okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll see you then,” Robert said, his eyes sliding shut and mouth going slack. It was evident that he was incredibly tired, which made sense given the intensity of the day he had.
Jagger started to walk out of the room, but halfway to the door he froze and walked back over to Abby. “Listen, if you change your mind about what we discussed earlier, you know, about that thing you saw—” Abby wanted to interrupt him and remind him that she didn’t see anything, but Jagger put one hand in the air to silence her. “Just let me know, okay?”
All Abby could do was shrug halfheartedly. She knew she wouldn’t change her mind, even if she did feel guilty and somewhat sympathetic toward the firefighter. She didn’t consider herself to be a particularly good person, but lying to the cops just wasn’t something she was prepared to do. She still wanted to sleep well at night if she was going to keep up with her two jobs.
“Can I have your phone number? I just want to check in with you later, to see if maybe you might come around to my way of thinking about this,” he said softly. Abby debated it, weighing the pros and cons in her head. What if he was just trying to hit on her? Abby was in no way prepared for a relationship right now— or ever again, for that matter. Dating wasn't at the top of her list of priorities. There was no way she was going to let herself be vulnerable and allow yet another man to hurt her. Maybe if he was just interested in hooking up, that could work out and benefit both of them, without any commitment necessary. After a long pause, Abby finally nodded and rattled off her digits to Jagger, who typed them into his phone before giving her a small smile and retreating quietly from the room.
A moment later a nurse entered the room, holding a clipboard. “Excuse me. I need to see the patient alone.”
“He has a name, you know,” Abby said in an blatantly annoyed tone of voice. “It’s Robert.”
“Of course,” the nurse said without looking up from the papers in her hand. “I need you to leave the room, miss. You can come back tomorrow.” Abby bit her tongue to keep from shooting back a rude retort. She knew what it was like working in a hospital and dealing with over emotional family members and friends, so she held herself back from snapping at the nurse any more than she already had.
“Fine,” she muttered beneath her breath. “Robert, I’m going to see you soon, okay? I promise.” But Robert had already slipped off into sleep, his breathing going deep and regular. That was a good sign, right? He sounded better than he had even a week before when she had visited him at his house like usual to check on his breathing and make sure he was taking all his medication.
In any case, she got up from her seat and walked out into the hallway and back into the waiting room, seeing Jagger’s back disappear out the front doors of the hospital. She was tempted to run after him, or say something, apologize for being so nasty and unhelpful. But she was tired. Her bones ached like someone had been chipping away at them with a sharp knife all day. She needed to relax and unwind if she was going to make her shift at the hospital tomorrow. It wasn’t like she had any other choice.
A half-hour later, Abby walked into her tiny apartment and straight into the bathroom, shucking off her dirty clothes and running the water in the bathtub as high as it could go. Abby got into her tub, sighing as she sunk into its warmth. Her phone was still on the side of the tub, totally charged and prepared in case she got from the hospital.
Abby inwardly coached herself to breathe in and out as deeply as she could, trying to get her lungs to stop burning. She leaned back against the edge of the tub and threw a damp washcloth over her eyes, trying to get the tension between her eyebrows to fade. Her muscles hurt like she’d run a marathon. She was stuck in a moment of stress and effort, but as the minutes ticked by, she felt a little bit of the pain abandon her body. It left her feeling limp as she allowed the water to take the layer of dust and soot and ash off of her body.
She trailed her fingers up and down her arms, partly cleaning herself off but mostly just trying to give herself a little massage to relax, her mind wandered back to Jagger. He did seem like a nice guy who genuinely cared about Robert’s safety, as well as that of the rest of the motorcycle club, even if he had questionable ethics. Maybe that was why she kept thinking about him. At the hospital, she met hot guys all the time, most of them cute young nurses that stuttered and faltered when they attempted to ask her out. There was something different about Jagger, something that made her want to see him again, if only for a roll in the sack.
It’s those arms, she told herself. Jagger’s got muscles that could do things to me that have never done before. A man like that could wear me out, make me feel good. But in her mind, another voice insisted that it wasn’t just that. She was worried about the fires. If Jagger was right and there was a conspiracy targeting members of Satan’s Blazes, that meant that Robert might still be in danger, and he was important to Abby. As weird as that was, as inappropriate as it felt to be so attached to one of her patients, she still felt grateful that he was alive and well. And it had to do with Jagger, not her. If anything, Abby had failed Robert. She couldn’t lift him out of the house, no matter how hard she had tried. And for that matter, she should have called the fire department sooner, as soon as she smelled smoke. Instead, she had been an idiot, endangering her charge’s life by waiting until she saw flames split the building in two.
That reminded her: Robert’s house was torched. Maybe he can stay with me, she thought. She didn’t have a lot of room, ever since she had to move into this cheap piece of shit apartment after her ex, Mark, had cleaned out her bank accounts a year ago. But still, it would be good for Robert to have somebody to watch over him. He had nobody left, probably because he spent his youth riding bikes and drinking with Satan’s Blazes instead of starting a family. Abby couldn’t get a handle on her feelings when it came to the MC. On the one hand, Jagger had saved Robert’s life, and he was the only one other than Abby that seemed to give a shit. But on the other, it looked like all the MC members had abandoned Robert in his old age, letting him decay on his own. Then to top it all off, Jagger had asked her to lie for him.
Abby had to stop and think about who Jagger really was. Was he a gorgeous man who fought to save lives, who seemed just as invested in keeping people safe and healthy as Abby was? Or was he an unstable lunatic just trying to con her into believing something that wasn’t real?
Before she could get a firm grip on her train of thought, the phone rang, the shrill sound causing her to jump in the tub and send water splattering over the side. “Jesus, fuck,” she muttered to herself, slicking the hair back from her face so she could more clearly see the name on the caller ID: Unknown.
Abby hesitated for a moment. She usually didn’t take calls from numbers she didn’t recognize, but she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, anxiety rising in her stomach like an expanding balloon. Her finger slipped down and accepted the call without even thinking about it. “Hello?” she answered, pressing the cell phone up to her ear.
“He’s dead,” a male voice said on the other end. The words made her heart sink into her torso, and it took her a long moment before she realized that it was Jagger’s voice speaking to her.
“Who?” Abby asked, even though she already knew the answer, her body trembling in preparation, waiting for the knife to pierce her heart.
“Bobby,” Jagger said. “He’s gone.”
“I don’t— What— What?” she stuttered, standing up in the tub and reaching over the side to grab a towel and started wiping her body down. “No, there must be some mistake. Robert was fine an hour ago. What could have happened? I don’t get it.”
“Neither do I,” Jagger said at the other end, and she could detect deep sadness in the way he sighed into the phone. “But it’s real. I went back to the hospital and saw his body. It’s him, Abby.”
Abby was silent, staring at herself in the mirror as she listened to Jagger’s breathing through the phone. The rhythm of it almost calmed her, so she tried to match it, breathing in when he inhaled and out when he exhaled, trying to get her heart to stop pounding in her chest. It was no use. She approached the mirror, staring at the way the water ran down her legs and arms, thin little transparent trickles that followed the lines of her body before dropping down onto the bathmat beneath her feet. “I can’t believe it,” she murmured, more to herself than to Jagger. In fact, she’d almost forgotten that she was holding a phone at all.
“Neither can I,” Jagger said with a humorless laugh. “He was fine, you know? He was totally fine.”
“Yeah,” Abby replied, but her brain was distant, almost switched-off. She felt like her skin was buzzing. Her entire body, including her mind, was consumed by this one sensation that rendered her numb. She kept staring at herself in the mirror. Her hair hung down in long wet flat strips. She looked completely deflated, as worn-out as she felt.
I fucked it up. I fucked Robert up. I failed him. I killed him. I’m so weak. I’m so weak. I’m so weak, she thought to herself, her anti-mantra returning to her with the familiarity of an old friend. She used to repeatedly say that to herself, especially years ago when she was stuck in a hospital bed, wasting away to nothing. Stop it! Abby inwardly shouted at herself, setting her jaw as she continued to look in her reflection. You’re only weak if you say you are, so fucking stop it. You need to be tough. You need to be strong. You need to hold it together. For Robert. For all your patients, dead and alive.
“Did they… Did the doctors say what happened?” Abby asked, finally tearing her eyes away from her own pale, drawn reflection to stare at the wet mat on the floor.
“They’re going to do an autopsy,” Jagger explained. “Usually they wouldn’t, given his age and diagnosis, but they don’t know what happened. So…you know, we might find out over the next few days.”
Abby nodded, forgetting that Jagger couldn’t see her over the phone. “Do you think that something…?” She sighed, her lungs aching with the effort that it took to breathe as hard as she was. She couldn’t believe she was about to suggest this, but she couldn’t help it. She had to say it, or it would just haunt her, staying in her mind like all the other things she said to torture herself. And Abby couldn’t afford another dark thing living inside her brain. She just couldn’t. She had to get it out, forcing the words to her lips as quickly as she could. “Do you think somebody did something to him, to hurt him?” To kill him? Abby thought.
“I…” Jagger was quiet for a moment, his breath filling Abby’s ear again. “I think so.”
“But there’s no proof,” Abby said reflexively. She had hoped he would shoot her down, prove her wrong, take the worry from her mind. She wanted to be mistaken. She wanted to dismiss the thought and mourn Robert like she would any of her other patients who died a natural death. On the other end of the phone, Abby could hear Jagger click his teeth, probably in impatience at her stubbornness.
“There’s no proof yet,” Jagger said, stressing the last word. “But the autopsy report will come out, and we’ll see if someone poisoned him or did anything else to get rid of him.”
“Do you think that maybe somebody was trying to put him out of his misery or something? A girl I used to know at work got fired for something like that, a couple of years ago,” Abby suggested, imagining the nurse from the hospital doing something to make sure Robert passed quickly rather than suffering gradually.
“I think,” Jagger began slowly like he was choosing his words carefully. “That Robert posed a problem for somebody. If that was the case, they needed to get rid of him to protect themselves.”
“The man in the suit?” Abby suggested, thinking back to what Robert had said to them before falling asleep. Pain clutched Abby’s heart as she thought about the last time she saw him, the way he peacefully shut his eyes and breathed. There was no way his death was natural. It didn’t make sense.
“Yeah, or someone connected to him, maybe,” Jagger said with a sigh. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I wish I could say it was the man in the suit, but maybe, just maybe it was somebody else entirely. Perhaps somebody that thought Robert might have seen him when he really didn’t.”
“Or it could have been a ‘her’,” Abby suggested, picturing a woman pouring gasoline and lighting a match on top of Robert’s body.
“Right. There’s no way of knowing,” Jagger said, and Abby could hear the frustration in his voice. “I’m fucking stuck. I don’t know what to do.”
“We could go to the hospital, ask around, see if anybody saw anything suspicious,” Abby suggested, feeling energy return to her body. She continued to towel off, rubbing the soft terry cloth material over her naked limbs and torso before dropping it on the floor and walking into the main room of her studio apartment to get clothes out of her dresser.
“We?” Jagger asked in a whisper that caused Abby’s hairs to stand up on the back of her neck.
“Yeah, um, you know, we’re the only ones who saw Robert before he died, and can attest that he was okay before, you know, it happened,” Abby replied softly, not wanting to say the words too loudly. It was as if she verbalized the truth of the situation, that Robert was dead, it would suddenly become all too real. If she held back from saying it out loud, she could avoid the finality of it, at least for the moment. She knew it wasn’t a healthy approach, but it was the best she could do while still holding onto her sanity.
“You’re right,” Jagger said slowly. “Um, so when do you want to go? Now?”
Abby was tempted to say yes immediately, but then she groaned a little in realization of how late it was. “I have to go to work in six hours,” she said, staring at her unmade bed, blankets still messy from the previous night.
“Tomorrow then?” Jagger suggested. “Tomorrow night, we’ll go and see if we can talk to the nurses and doctors there.”
Abby felt nervous, anxiety mounting inside of her as she considered what she was agreeing to. “I can go by myself,” she suggested. “You don’t need to come with me.”
“It’s dangerous,” Jagger argued back. "You shouldn’t go on your own. Somebody who works at the hospital could be involved, or worse. You need backup. You need me.”
Abby sighed deeply, her pulse pounding painfully in her throat as she forced out the following words. “You know, no offense, but I don’t even know you. Like, at all. I know nothing about you.”
“You know I give a shit,” Jagger said without hesitation as if he were expecting that response. “That should be enough.”
“It’s not,” Abby argued. “I’d rather go by myself, okay? I’ll handle it, and I’ll let you know what I find out. Trust me, it’ll go over easier if it’s just a nurse poking around. They’ll think I work there. I’ll be able to hear shit on my own that I wouldn’t be able to find out if you’re hanging around,” she explained. It was barely half the reason she didn’t want to go with him. She just didn’t trust the guy, no matter how sincere he seemed. There was something off about him. Of course, Abby thought that about most people these days, especially men. It was hard to know who could be trusted, so it was easiest not to trust anybody except her patients.
There was a long pause where Abby only heard silence, not even the sound of Jagger’s breathing. She wondered if he’d hung up on her, but then a second later he spoke again. “Okay.”
“All right,” she said, struggling into a pair of sweatpants using only one hand. “I gotta go, okay? I’m going to hang up now.”
“One last thing,” Jagger hurried to say, the urgency in his voice causing Abby to drop the shirt she was putting on over her head down onto the bed, her entire body and mind focused on what he was about to say. “Have you… given any thought to what I suggested before? About what you might have seen earlier tonight?”
Abby swallowed thickly. Should she just lie, for Robert’s sake? He would have done it for her. She knew that without a doubt in her mind. Robert would have done anything for her. That was the type of man he was, strong even at his most fragile. Something was still holding her back, keeping her from feeling comfortable enough to lie. “I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I have to think about it.”
“Okay. Let me know if you change your mind,” Jagger said on the other end of the line, sounding a little disappointed. “Goodnight, Abby.” A second later, he hung up, leaving Abby in silence.
She groaned and collapsed on the bed, still not wearing a shirt. What the fuck am I going to do? Abby questioned herself. She knew she had no choice but to investigate what happened to Robert, that much was certain. Most likely they’ll find that he had a health issue that I didn’t know about, she thought. I missed something. That’s what it is. I just fucked something up, just like I always do, and now he’s dead. It won’t have anything to do with the firefighter’s crazy conspiracy. That can’t be real. It can’t be.
Jagger seemed so committed to the idea, so completely convinced. She had to admit that the pattern was suspicious. It wasn’t like he was pulling it out of nowhere, if he was telling her the truth, at the very least. Abby suddenly sat up and reached for her phone again, searching the Internet for news articles on local fires. She couldn’t find all ten previous fires, but a few reports mentioned that the victims had been members of a local motorcycle club. At least Jagger wasn’t making the whole thing up from scratch, she figured.
The problem was, Jagger seemed like he cared so much. That was what scared her. He seemed like he’d do anything, absolutely anything to find the person that was responsible for this. She didn’t know whether that was a good thing.
Abby stuffed her face in her pillow, willing the abyss of sleep to take her into its dark arms. It always scared her a little bit, sinking into that darkness. If only I had somebody to hold me, she thought wistfully before mentally slapping herself for having that kind of thought. Don’t be fucking weak. Be strong. Be tough. Be a goddamn grown-up.
But the words sounded weaker and weaker as she began to shake in the bed, clutching the blankets for warmth. She always shook like this, right before she fell asleep. Her ex used to make fun of her because it. Ever since she was in the hospital as a kid, she would shake uncontrollably in bed at night like she was vibrating with an energy that only came out when she was about to fall sleep.
She would have to find a way to harness that energy, use it to find the truth. For Robert. That was what mattered now.
Even still, Jagger’s face lingered behind her eyelids, wide and sincere and innocent-looking. If only she could tell whether he could be trusted. If only she knew what to do.
“Fuck it,” she muttered to herself, flipping over in bed to hug her pillow. “Tonight, I’m going to be fucking weak. So fucking sue me,” she grunted out loud, speaking to her inner voices, the ones that would torment her whenever she was soft. She expected them to yell back at her, to convince her to flip back over and stop hugging the damn pillow for comfort. Instead, they remained forgiving, quiet, barely protesting. As Jagger’s face loomed larger and clearer inside her mind, the voices grew more distant before fading away into nothing.
Something about Jagger’s face distracted her from her self-hatred. Something about him made her scared and safe at the same time. Just before she slipped off into sleep, one last thought crossed her mind, filling her with dread and excitement all at once.
I want to see him again, she thought, her heart stuttering in her chest as she squeezed the pillow closer to her body.
She tried to force the thought out of her mind, but it hovered over her like a dark cloud of confusion. She wanted to see him. She wanted him to be a good guy, a trustworthy guy, not somebody who was just ranting about a crazy theory that wasn’t true. She wanted to believe him.
Deep inside, she knew that she already did.