Abby
Abby slammed the car door shut behind her, shoving her hands in her pockets just to keep herself preoccupied. She was nervous. Most of the time when the sick, heavy feeling of anxiety hit her, Abby tried to deny it, pretending that she was this awesome kick-ass bitch that didn’t fear anything. Fake it until you make it, right? That was what you were supposed to do when you had nothing else to keep you going.
There was just something that she couldn’t shake about Satan’s Blazes though, something that made the ends of her fingers tremble inside her pockets. Her heart pounded erratically the further she and Jagger walked toward the compound, which looked vaguely like a prison, all cold grey concrete. Why am I so fucking nervous? Abby asked herself. It’s just a bunch of bikers, not even criminal ones. There’s no reason to be shaking like a little bitch.
That was Jagger’s voice in her ear, wasn’t it? She only thought they weren’t criminals because he said so. There was no reliable third-party opinion she could consult about the organization. She was walking in there totally blind. After all, Robert had left the group years before, and Jagger hadn’t offered any explanation as to why.
In any case, as they approached the front door to Satan’s Blazes’ compound, Abby couldn’t think of any way to get out of this situation. She couldn’t exactly turn on her heels and run back to her apartment. She had to confront her fears head-on, just like she had to deal with everything else in her life these days.
Jagger rapped his knuckles against the hard iron door at the front of the complex, tapping in a clear pattern that Abby tried to memorize, in case it would come in handy later. That was a habit she had, trying to pick up on tiny details. Usually, she never used them, but she had a database of random facts and figures in her head.
A moment later, the door swung open, revealing a small middle-aged woman with short greying hair. “Jagger, honey, aren’t you on duty tonight?” the lady asked before turning her eyes on Abby, looking her up and down as if she was judging every inch of her body. Abby tried not to physically fidget, even though her organs squirmed like worms on a hook.
“Switched with someone. I’d like to introduce you to Abby. She’ll need a room upstairs for the night,” Jagger said as the woman moved aside to let them into the front room, which looked like a makeshift bar, full of people laughing and clutching cups of beer. A wave of smoke immediately wafted over Abby’s head, filling her nostrils until she coughed loudly, causing half a dozen bikers in the room to turn their heads and stare at her.
“Sorry,” she stammered reflexively, her face heating up even though inwardly she berated herself for showing any form of weakness. That’s what apologies were, right? They were a confession that you weren’t the strong one no matter what situation you were facing. You were begging for mercy whenever you apologized. At least, that was what Abby’s father had always said. She pushed that memory out of her head as soon as it had popped up. She didn’t have the time or energy to deal with that right now.
“Follow me upstairs,” the grey-haired woman said over her shoulder to Abby, who looked at Jagger to make sure he was coming with before moving. She didn’t know why she did that. It didn’t matter if Jagger hung around her or not. It wasn’t like anyone was going to attack her here, right?
Abby ignored the weird glances she got as she walked through the crowd, the strange bikers and other bar patrons gawking like she was an animal in the zoo. Maybe she did look weird, stuck in her dirty scrubs from work. It wasn’t like she had any other clothes she could change into, not with her apartment in total fucking shambles. The tension seemed to break a little when Jagger started speaking up behind her, addressing several members of the crowd by name as they walked toward the staircase in the back corner.
“Hey, I’ll be down later for some drinks, all right? Good to see you, man,” Jagger said to one man before tapping him on the back lightly. Abby wondered if she should ask to be introduced to the crowd if that might make things less awkward, but instead, she ducked her head and walked faster, overtaking the grey-haired woman in front of her. Abby wanted to be out of sight. She couldn’t stand being seen, not now, not when someone was out for her blood.
The middle-aged woman pointed to a door down the second-floor hallway before turning and heading back downstairs. Jagger nodded at Abby, so she opened the door to reveal a small yet tidy bedroom. There was a big bed in the center of the room, taking up over half of the available space, with a bright red blanket spread over the top. Abby wondered if bikers came here to cheat on their wives and girlfriends. It would certainly be a convenient spot for it.
Abby collapsed into a pile on the bed, cuddling her legs under her torso so that she could minimize the amount of surface area she was taking up with her body. Jagger pulled a chair away from the closet and sat down across from her, cupping his chin in his hands as he stared at her quietly. Abby made no effort to break the silence. She wanted nothing more than just to shut her eyes, close out the world, and pretend that nothing terrible had happened the past few days.
“I know you’ve been through a lot today, but the truth of the matter is, it’s a good sign,” Jagger said softly.
“What is?” Abby demanded to know. As far as she was concerned, this entire day had been a blight on the history of the planet. It deserved to be wiped out of the history books.
“What happened to your apartment,” Jagger said lightly. Abby stared at him, probably grimacing a little in confusion and frustration. Jagger sighed deeply and continued, “The arsonist hasn’t ever done anything like this before. He’s only just set fires and walked away. But now he’s showing his face.”
“Not literally,” Abby said bitterly, thinking back to the useless video tape from the hospital.
“No, but he’s showed that something is important to him. That’s an even bigger deal.”
“What’s important to him?” Abby asked. She felt like she was following a script, asking all the right questions that Jagger wanted to hear, but inside she felt dead, numb, completely rotted through. She just needed to sleep. Abby wished Jagger would get out of the room already and let her rest.
“You,” Jagger said. “You’re important. He’s always set the houses on fire when people weren’t home. But this time he fucked up. You and Robert were there. You might have seen something, even if you don’t know it yet. He wants to scare you because he knows you might be his undoing. That means something, Abby.”
Abby sucked her bottom lip into her mouth, biting down onto the sensitive flesh until the pain stung her so badly she had to force herself to stop. The pain anchored her, shocking her back into her body. That’s what she always used to do when she was in the hospital as a teenager, alone in her bed, terrified that it would be her last night alive. She’d focus on the pain, and the pain would carry her through. It worked, like always, getting her heart to stop racing, going steady as a robotic drum within her chest.
She figured Jagger had a point. The arsonist feared her. That had to count for something, some tiny accomplishment even if everything else had turned to shit.
“Okay, well, I’m going to go to bed now,” she said. Jagger nodded but made no motion to get up from his chair. “Um…. Aren’t you going to leave?”
“No,” Jagger said with a small laugh, shaking his head and furrowing his brow like Abby had made a ridiculous suggestion.
Abby was so flustered that she stared across the room at Jagger, her mouth stupidly agape in confusion. “Um. Yeah, you are. Get out,” she told him once the capacity to speak returned to her. In the back of her mind, she was a little afraid of fighting with him. She’d never seen him pissed, but most men had the ability to get scary when they got angry if her life experience told her anything. Still, she held her ground, glaring at him as meanly as she could even as he stared blankly back at her like she hadn’t said a single fucking word.
“No,” he said a moment later, not even bothering to budge an inch from his chair.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? I need to sleep.” Abby reminded him.
“Yeah, go right ahead,” Jagger said with a shrug. “What, do you need more blankets or something? I think there might be some in the closet.” He got to his feet and turned to look, stretching to the top shelf to bring down extra blankets and pillows. “Here,” he said as he tossed them over.
Abby stared down at the fluffy pile he’d created next to her. She was so exhausted at this point that it was tempting to fall into the biggest pillow, allowing her brain to shut off and stop interrogating every aspect of the situation. But no, that wasn’t in her nature. She was incapable of letting things go. “You’re not going to sit there and watch me sleep,” she said, hardening her voice as much as possible to communicate to Jagger that she meant business. “It’s not going to happen.”
Jagger looked unbothered, scratching at his bottom lip casually and leaning back in the chair. “Sorry, darling, but it is. I’m not going to let anything happen to you, okay? I’m not.”
“I thought you said this compound was safe!” Abby said, her voice rising a little in frustration, the heat from her anger spreading throughout her chest. She inwardly bristled at being called “darling” in such a condescending manner. Pet names were a trigger for her, too. Come to think of it, she had lots of triggers. She was like an overly efficient gun.
“It is safe, as far as I know,” Jagger said. “But there’s still a chance someone on the inside is involved in the fires. I’m not going to let you out of my sight.”
Abby could have growled; she felt so fucking angry. All her muscles tensed up like she was a dog about to break into a fight. The fucking utter audacity of this guy, acting like he was her fucking father or something. “Listen, the protective performance is cute and all. I get that the ladies usually swoon over it, you know, with the whole firefighter thing. It’s a part of your shtick. I get it. But it’s not fucking working on me, all right? So, get the fuck out and leave me alone,” she said, pointing at the door and snapping her fingers to tell him to go.
Jagger just shook his head slowly. “Nah, not going to happen.”
They stared one other down, eyes frozen in place, unblinking, as they faced off. Abby’s eyes started burning a little, but she fought through it, squinting at Jagger to demonstrate just how pissed she was. After several more seconds, Jagger finally sighed and looked away. “Okay, okay, we can compromise.”
“Go on,” Abby said sternly, refusing to agree to anything until she heard what he had in mind first.
“I’ll leave you alone,” Jagger began, “if, and only if, you let me lock the door to your room.”
Abby turned to look at the door. There was a lock on the doorknob as well as a latch on the top of the door to keep intruders out. “Sure,” she said quickly. “Sure, I’ll lock up as soon as you leave. I’d do that anyway in case other people don’t know I’m here. Okay? Now please go.”
Jagger shook his head and pursed his lips, becoming increasingly annoyed as the conversation went on. “No. Sorry. No can do. I mean, I’ve got to lock it. There’s a key that only I have.”
“So, you’re saying…” Abby trailed off, trying to make sure she understood the situation perfectly before saying anything. Somehow, she was still afraid of looking stupid, even though she didn’t even like this guy as a person. “You’re saying that I’d be stuck in here all night, and I wouldn’t be able to get out until you came to unlock the door.”
“Basically, yeah,” Jagger said, nodding. “Except nobody would be able to get in, either. You’d be safe.”
“What if I have to pee in the middle of the night?” Abby asked. “I have to be able to get to the bathroom.”
Jagger chewed on his lip, thinking for a minute before answering her. “Just go now,” he said, getting to his feet and walking toward the door. “I’ll show you where the bathroom is. Come on.”
“No, I don’t have to go now,” Abby said, a whining edge to her voice coming out that made her feel like a petulant kindergartener. Her skin began to crawl as a trapped feeling came over her, every cell in her body buzzing to escape. She had to inhale and exhale a few times to cut off the panic attack that threatened to overtake her. It was a habit she got into years ago, back when her dad… Back when things had been bad. Things she didn’t want to think about anymore.
“Are you okay?” Jagger asked her, turning back and sitting on the bed across from her. “Are you—”
“I’m fine,” Abby snapped rudely, cutting him off before he could finish the question. “Sorry,” she mumbled a second later as guilt hit her right in the stomach. “Sorry, I just. I don’t have to pee right now, but I will later, okay? Just leave and let me lock the door myself. I’ll be fine. I know I will.”
Jagger sighed deeply, and for a second Abby thought she was victorious in convincing him, but he slowly shook his head, almost sadly, like he didn’t want to disappoint her. “I can’t leave you alone. It sucks. I’m sorry. But you’re safest when you’re with me.”
“Well, what about work? I’ve got to go out tomorrow afternoon to see my patients, the ones who live at home,” Abby explained. “You can’t exactly go with me there. You’ve got a job to do, too, don’t you?”
Jagger nodded a little, but his eyes went blurry and unfocused, lost in thought. “Yeah…” he muttered, more to himself than to her. Abby felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, her stomach contracting uncomfortably as Jagger’s brow furrowed. It was obvious he was formulating a plan, which could only mean bad news. “How about… how about you take a sabbatical?”
“What, from work?” Abby asked, almost laughing at how ridiculous that notion was. “Give me a break.”
“No, come on, I think it’s the safest option,” Jagger said. “I can’t follow you around at work, you’re right. I think you should take some time off until I find the guy who’s been doing this shit.”
Abby shook her head firmly. “No. There’s no way. There’s just - I’m not quitting my job. And anyway, I couldn’t do it even if I wanted to. I have bills to pay, lots of them. I have to make money.”
“I can loan you money,” Jagger said easily.
“I’m not taking your fucking money!” Abby yelled back. She burned with embarrassment, heat climbing up her neck and down her back at the sound of her angry voice, but she couldn’t help it. She felt as though he was treating her like a ten-year-old child instead of a thirty-year-old woman with her own life. “Jesus Christ, what the hell is wrong with you? I’m not quitting my job, okay? End of story.” Where the hell did this guy get off, thinking he had any right whatsoever to tell her what to do?
“Fine, don’t quit. But you’re taking some time off,” Jagger stated. He didn’t say it like a question, or even like a suggestion. He said it the way doctors used to tell her that she was going to need chemotherapy, a foregone conclusion that didn’t involve her at all.
“No, I’m not!” Abby shot back, gritting her teeth so hard her gums hurt. She didn’t care. Abby could take the fucking pain. What she couldn’t abide was being ordered around. That shit wasn’t going to fly with her, especially not from some stupid man she barely knew.
“Yeah, you fucking are!” Jagger said, getting to his feet and standing next to the edge of the bed with his arms crossed. “What do you think is going to happen? They managed to break into your apartment without even breaking a goddamn window, Abby! You think it’s going to be a challenge for them to follow you to your work and get to you there? Hell, no! They’re scared of you, I don’t know why yet, but they are. They’re not going to let this go. I know it. Just trust me.”
“Yeah, fat fucking chance,” Abby muttered, tearing her eyes away from Jagger to focus again on the blankets on the bed. She wanted to grab the nearest pillow and scream into it until she lost her voice entirely.
“You’re in danger, Abby! Serious fucking danger. A man has died. Do you want to follow him?” Jagger said, and his voice was so hard, so serious, that it shocked Abby into silence.
“Maybe,” she murmured when she found her voice again. “Maybe, yeah, if it means I get to come and go whenever I want, you know? Like a fucking human instead of a goddamn hamster locked in a cage.”
Jagger shook his head. “You’re just not thinking straight. You need a good night’s rest.”
“Yeah, alone,” Abby said, stressing the word as hard as she could. She sighed deeply and buried her head in her hands, peeking out at Jagger’s stressed face through the gaps in between her fingers. “Look, I’m sorry. I know you’re just trying to help, but you’re freaking me out, okay? You can’t control me like this. It’s not fair.”
They were both quiet for a moment, and Abby lifted her head from her hands, curious to see the effect her words were having on him.
“Please just let me stay in the room with you,” Jagger said softly a few moments later. “Please. Just see it as a favor to me. I just want to make sure you can sleep safely. Please.”
For some reason, Abby felt her heart quiver in her chest. It almost hurt, feeling it move like that inside of her. It had been so long since anything had touched it. Jagger sounded so desperate like he was starving for water and Abby had the last drop of it left on Earth.
Fuck it. She’d just have to blame the caregiver inside of her, that part that always made her softer than she needed to be. “Fine,” she finally muttered, stretching out on the bed and slamming her head into a pillow. “You stay in the chair, though, okay?”
“Of course,” Jagger said without hesitation, sitting back down on the chair across from the bed. “Of course, yes.”
“And I get to go to the bathroom whenever I want,” she added. “None of this overprotective bullshit. A girl’s gotta pee sometimes, you know?”
“That makes sense. I understand,” Jagger said.
“Okay. Turn out the light, then,” Abby instructed, and Jagger did as she asked before slinking back down into the chair. She turned to get a look at his face, her eyes straining in the darkness to make out his features. It took a minute for her to see anything, but then his eyes, dark as they were, pierced through the shadows and met hers.
Beautiful, Abby thought, the word popping up into her mind like a reflex. She quickly pressed her head back down, burying her face into the pillow, but she breathed more heavily than before, her lungs working overtime to calm her heartbeat. Where the hell had that thought come from? She’d spent the last five minutes arguing with the guy about his crazy, borderline stalker tendencies. That wasn’t beautiful. That was controlling. That was upsetting. That was wrong.
She couldn’t seem to shake the image of his shining eyes even when she shut hers, or when she imagined her fucked-up apartment, even when she thought of the flames that had consumed Robert’s life. As sleep came to take her, Jagger’s face stayed with her.
Flames licked at Abby’s back, burning her skin away. She was in a hospital bed, surrounded by fire on all sides, but it didn’t hurt to be touched by it. She wanted it. It cleansed her. It consumed her. The fire made her feel whole.
Abby stuck her hands out into the flames, letting it dance up her arms, around her shoulder, attacking her hospital gown and turning it to ash until she was naked in bed. She leapt up and down on the hospital bed, feeling like she was three years old, jumping with joy as every bit of the hospital room was consumed, eaten up.
“I love watching you.”
Abby froze, standing on the bed as she looked over at the door. It was her dad, doing that silly stupid half-smile he always used to do whenever he was in a good mood. He never came to visit her in the hospital before now. What was going on? Was she dying? Was that why they let her have this fire to play with?
She blinked a little to get the smoke out of her eyes, and then when she looked over at her dad again, he was gone. In his place was Mark, her ex-boyfriend, the one who’d charged up all her credit cards and cleaned out her bank accounts. The one who’d fucked her over. He looked scared. Good. He should be, Abby decided. She hoped the fire would eat him too. “You need to get out of there. You’re not safe,” he murmured.
“What the fuck do you care?” she demanded, leaping again on her bed, hard enough now that it squeaked under her weight. “Go away. Leave me alone. Leave me alone!” She closed her eyes when she was jumping in midair, and when she came back down again, it was Jagger standing in the doorway instead, in full firefighter gear.
“I can come get you if you want. I can rescue you,” Jagger said softly, so quietly that she almost didn’t hear him over the roar of the flames.
“I’m fine. I don’t want you to come. I can be fine here.”
“You sure?” he asked, and the words repeated on a loop in her head.
You sure? You sure? You sure?
Abby gasped for air as she sprung up in bed, jerking herself awake so violently that the bed underneath her slammed back against the wall. Fuck. What the hell was that? She wiped the sweat from her forehead and pulled her messy hair back from her head, holding it tightly in her hand in a little ball.
“You okay?” A voice asked, causing her to jump up again in alarm. Oh, right. Jagger.
“How long have you been awake?” she muttered, staring down at her knees rather than looking up at Jagger.
“A little while,” Jagger replied. “You were talking in your sleep.”
“Yeah? What about?” Abby asked. She felt a sense of urgency, a desperation to know the answer, but she kept her voice calm, steady, not wanting Jagger to know how embarrassed she was that she had had a nightmare like a little girl.
“Satan’s Blazes,” he responded. “You were talking about the club.”
Abby shook her head. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
“Want to tell me what it was about?” Jagger asked.
Abby groaned and lay back down, stretching her limbs out on the bed, wishing all the tension in her joints would abandon her body. “No, no thanks. I’m good.”
“It’s normal, you know. You’ve been through a lot. It makes sense that you’ve been traumatized,” Jagger said softly.
Abby knew he was just being nice, but for some reason, she felt irritated. She didn’t need his fucking sympathy or his diagnosis of trauma. She’d been through hell before and come out on the other side of it relatively unscathed. She wasn’t going to let some arsonist get under her skin. “I’m fine,” she said instead of rambling like she wanted to. “I’m fine.” A thousand other words sat on her tongue, ready to launch themselves off into the air and attack Jagger’s poor ears, but she held herself back. She knew that no matter how annoyed she felt with him right now, he was just trying to help. He didn’t deserve her baggage.
Silence fell between them again, but Abby could hear noises from the lower floor, people yelling, people laughing, the sound of footsteps hitting the wood floor forcefully. “What time is it?” she asked, sitting back up again and pulling her hair back into a ponytail.
“Like 3, 4 am,” Jagger replied.
“You guys always stay up this late?” she asked. It was clear that people were partying, almost as if they were celebrating something. It was strange, being surrounded by happiness yet not feeling any relation to it. She almost felt like she was intruding, carrying her sadness and fear and worry into some sacred place where the MC members and their friends somehow managed to feel young and free.
Abby could see Jagger shrug in response to her question. “Sometimes, yeah. It’s a part of the life.”
“It’s hard to picture you with them,” Abby said without thinking, her inner monologue spilling out of her mouth without her brain’s permission.
“What do you mean?” Jagger asked.
It was Abby’s turn to shrug, trying to avoid answering the question. She didn’t want to admit that she had been analyzing Jagger, attempting to figure out just what kind of man he was. Once again the words came out of her mouth, bursting out like they were escaping a trap inside of her. “You seem so serious, you know? Like, so focused. It’s hard to visualize you doing anything but working. Like, I imagine that you don’t sleep. You just work on the fires, searching for any answer you can possibly find. It seems lonely.”
There was a long pause where Jagger said nothing. Abby’s heart started pounding in her ears, blood rushing painfully in punishment for saying too much. Then, mercifully, a few seconds later Jagger finally spoke. “I could say the same thing for you,” he said in a tone so soft, her skin prickled. “That’s why…. never mind.”
“No, what?” Abby asked, curiosity burning a hole in her stomach. She needed to know what he thought of her. It was pathetic, how desperate she was to know.
“I just don’t think you should get involved in the investigation. Not anymore. That’s all,” Jagger said quietly.
“That’s… fucking stupid,” Abby said as bluntly as she could. She was, as always, a little regretful after the words left her mouth, but by that point, it was too late. The deed had been done, and she had to carry on being the bitch she always was. It was like she was incapable of being soft and kind anymore, except when it came to her patients. Abby figured she should file that away as something to beat herself up about later. For now, she had a job to do: convince Jagger that he was wrong. “I’m sorry, but why do you think I can’t help you? Like you said, I’ve pissed off the arsonist. I got them to show themselves and give you more evidence to work with than you had before.”
“Yeah, but at what cost?” Jagger said. “I don’t need you endangering yourself by getting involved anymore. If you could just stay here…”
“Oh, my God, come off it,” Abby snapped, cutting him off. “There’s no way I’m just going to hang out here and sit pretty until you solve the case. I’m going to help you. Learn to fucking deal with it.”
“You can help…by staying out of it, okay?” Jagger suggested. “I’m a professional. I can handle this. It’s my job to solve cases like this.”
“Yeah, which is why it’s happened almost a dozen times, and there have been no results,” Abby muttered. She heard him inhale a little shakily in response, and the guilt hit her square in the chest, heavy and sharp all at once, but she tried to talk herself out of regretting it. She was right, wasn’t she? Jagger hadn’t succeeded yet, and a man had died. If she were looking for someone to blame, maybe he’d be a reasonable place to start.
“You can be angry at me if you want,” Jagger calmly said. “I understand. But I know what I’m talking about here. There are people in the world that will do anything to hurt another person if they get in their way. I don’t want you to get hurt. Is that so bad?”
Shame burned its way up and down the back of Abby’s neck, turning her skin beet red. She was thankful for the darkness for hiding her from Jagger’s gaze. “Fuck. I’m sorry,” she sighed out. “I’ve just been… I haven’t been myself lately. Or maybe I have, and who I am is just an awful, ungrateful cunt. I don’t know. But I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. It’s not your fault.”
Abby felt like she was split in two, the separate sides of her at war, tearing each other apart. On the one side, there was an angry little girl, still sick, still bitter, still trapped in a hospital room, biting into anything and everything that stood in her way. On the other side, there was an adult nurse, the person who took care of other people, the person who healed, the person who soothed. The person who didn’t set fire to everything she touched. She wanted to be the latter, but it was hard. Most of the time she felt like she was faking it, playing a part that didn’t fit her.
“It’s okay,” Jagger whispered a moment later as if he were weighing her apology in his mind and had only now realized that it was sufficient. “Please just stay out of it, okay? As a personal favor to me. Or for Robert. Please.”
Abby bristled at that, feeling like Jagger was trying to manipulate her into doing exactly what he wanted her to do. Instead of answering, she just sighed, long and ragged, and collapsed back against the bed. Abby wouldn’t say yes or no. That way she wouldn’t have to lie.
“What about my other patients?” Abby asked. “They need my help. It’s not their fault there’s a psychopath on the loose.”
Jagger was quiet a moment. “I’ll go with you tomorrow night, then. You shouldn’t be alone.”
Abby opened her mouth to fire off a retort, but ran out of words to use. None of them were going to work on him. “Fine,” she mumbled, rolling over onto her side to bury her head into her pillow. She was all out of fight for tonight. Maybe in the morning she’d press the issue again, but somehow, she knew that he wasn’t going to let her out of his sight.
She would have to find a way to help with the investigation, even if it wasn’t with Jagger’s permission. He didn’t fucking own her. He didn’t get to tell her what to do. Nobody got to do that to her. Not anymore.
# # #
Jagger
Jagger’s beeper went off in the early morning, around six-thirty. He jolted awake in the chair, banging his head on the back of the wooden seat, but Abby appeared to have slept through it at least, cuddled up with the blankets on the bed. Jagger stared at the back of her head before checking the notification on his beeper. Her hair was still a total mess, but there was a weird kind of beauty to it. Jagger was tempted to reach out and tangle his hand in it, rub her scalp until sweet dreams penetrated her skull and embedded into her brain.
Creepy, he said to himself. You’re fucking creepy. Knock it the fuck off. He felt like he had a sickness: the illness of caring too much. He barely knew this girl, but he felt like he had a responsibility to keep her safe. If that meant he had to lock her up in the compound for a week until he solved the crime, so be it. He could deal with the consequences of his actions later. He had far too much experience with people being pissed at him, especially recently, that it no longer deterred him from doing what had to be done.
He finally pulled his beeper out of his pocket and checked the message that had woken him up: BENNET STREET. LEVEL FOUR. Oh, fuck. That meant a fire had started and was liable to spread if the wind caught it. Jagger leapt out of the chair, hurrying out of the room and across the hall where he kept his backup equipment in a spare closet. He hurriedly got dressed before heading downstairs and out to his car, heading toward Bennet Street as quickly as possible. Technically he was supposed to meet up at the station with the other men and use the fully functional truck to put out the fire, but Jagger was closer to Bennet street than they were. He could get there faster and help if anybody was trapped inside.
He sped to Bennet street, arriving in under ten minutes. There were already sirens and flashing lights in front of the apartment building by the time he arrived, overwhelming Jagger’s senses so much that it took him a long time to realize that he’d been at this exact location only the night before.
Oh, no. Oh, fuck no.
Abby’s apartment.
Flames engulfed the entire building. Abby’s neighbors stood outside on the sidewalk, staring up at their homes crackling and crumbling above them. “Is everybody outside? Is everybody out?” Jagger demanded as he approached the burning building.
“There’s a girl who lives on the top floor. We barely see her. I don’t know if she got out…” one of the older ladies said to Jagger with tears in her eyes, wrapping a blanket tightly around her daughter’s shoulders.
“Abby? Is that the woman’s name?” Jagger asked, and the senior woman nodded.
For a brief, beautiful second, Jagger didn’t feel anything other than relief, sweet and soothing inside his veins, calming his blood. At the very least, nobody was in physical danger. Everybody was okay. Everybody was safe, including Abby. Jagger rushed to get his phone out of his pocket, dialing his best friend Tony’s number. Tony lived in the compound, on the same floor that Abby was staying on.
“Whaaaaat?” Tony groaned on the other end of the phone. Jagger had clearly woken him up early.
“The woman I brought to the clubhouse last night. Is she still there?
“Hold on,” Tony said, grumbling a little before putting the phone down to check. Jagger fidgeted on the sidewalk, the flames of the building keeping him warm despite the winter cold. “Yeah, she’s sleeping like a rock,” Tony said a minute later. Jagger exhaled heavily, so loudly that Tony must have heard it. “You okay, man?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, I’m fine,” Jagger mumbled. “Listen, I got to go. Just… Make sure she stays there, okay? I’ll call you in like an hour or so.” He hung up without saying goodbye, rushing to his car to stick his phone and beeper inside before putting on his helmet and running into the building. Maybe he could save some of Abby’s stuff, at the very least.
By the time he got to the top level, it was practically a cinder. Everything was either burnt black, crispy and ruined or otherwise turned straight to ash. Jagger stepped over the flames, carefully placing his feet on the secure spots on the floor, to check the remains of the dresser for Abby’s cash. But it was ruined, turned to dust. That was it, then. She’d officially lost everything.
The arsonist had done this. There was no way around it.
Jagger could feel his stomach boil over in anger, but he had a job to do. He couldn’t afford to focus on his rage until the fire was out. Over the next thirty minutes, he and the other firefighters that showed up salvaged what they could from the flames all while dousing the building with water.
When the fire was finally extinguished, he pulled out his phone from his car to call Tony again. “Hey. Wake her up, okay? I need to tell her something.” He figured that for the sake of efficiency he really should have just had Tony break the unwelcome news, but it needed to come from somebody she knew, even if they were still barely more than acquaintances.
“What?” Abby’s irritated voice said on the other end of the phone a moment later. It was clear that she was highly annoyed at being woken up.
“Hey. Abby, I need you to come to your apartment building, okay?” Jagger said, slowly enunciating his words so that they’d get through her sleep-clogged brain.
“Why?” Abby asked, her voice still caught somewhere between sluggish and angry.
“I just… I need you to come here. Something’s happened. Something bad.”
There was silence on the other end of the line, punctuated only by the shallow noises of Abby’s breathing. “Did… Are my neighbors okay?” she asked after the long pause.
“Yeah, they’re fine, they’re all fine,” Jagger said hurriedly, looking over at the huddle of old people sadly looking at the embers of their home. “But your apartment… Just come look, okay?” Jagger didn’t know why he was struggling to get the words out. Maybe he should have had Tony do the job for him after all. There was something keeping him from saying the truth out loud. It was too terrible, too awful to say. Somehow, he was afraid that if Abby heard the news directly from him, she’d hate him forever.
“I don’t have my car anymore, remember?” Abby snapped at him.
“Ask Tony to bring you. He’ll take you here.” Jagger responded quietly, struggling to get his voice to rise above a whisper, his throat still sore from the smoke.
Abby hung up on him without saying goodbye. Jagger almost smiled at that, but the circumstances of the situation kept him frowning as he stared down at the sidewalk, looking at his own shadow. He felt so fucking inadequate, so goddamn insufficient. Why hadn’t he camped out at Abby’s apartment to see if the arsonist would return? He could have caught the guy and prevented this whole mess. Now the trail had gone cold again.
Then agiain… maybe not. Come on, think, he insisted to himself. The arsonist’s attacks were targeted, but they’d gotten broader than just members of Satan’s Blazes now. There was no other connection to this apartment building, as far as Jagger knew, except for Abby. Maybe the arsonist knew that she came to the compound, Jagger thought. But for that to be true, it’d have to be a current member of Satan’s Blazes. There was no way an arsonist could camp out far enough away that nobody would notice them and still be able to see Abby coming in.
So, maybe it didn’t have to do with her coming to Satan’s Blazes’ clubhouse. That meant the arsonist had wanted to kill Abby tonight instead of just scaring her like before. Jagger felt anger sear its way up his spine at the thought, all his muscles stiffening. There was nobody to fight yet, nobody to punish. I have to find him now. No way around it. He can’t get away with this, whoever he is. Abby was an innocent in all this. She wasn’t affiliated with Satan’s Blazes in any way. Why did the arsonist have to come after her? What was their game plan?
Except… she wasn’t entirely unconnected to Satan’s Blazes, was she? The link had to be Robert, Jagger realized as he stared at the smoke that still billowed out of the top of the building. Maybe Abby noticed something in Bobby’s house, maybe she knew something about the arsonist that no other witness to any of the arsons had. Whoever the perpetrator was, he terrified of Abby, so much so that he was trying to kill her.
Jagger’s thoughts were cut off when he noticed a new car rolling up to the apartment complex. Tony. That meant Abby was here, too. Through the front window of the car, Jagger could see her face, watching her mouth fall open and her eyes widen as she realized what had happened to her home.
Even if she blamed him for it, even if she hated him for it, he’d be there for her. He had to be.
# # #
Abby
Abby jumped out of the car as soon as it slid to a stop, bolting toward the black hunk of brick that used to be her home. Somebody yelled out her name, one of the neighbors, but she ignored it, heading for the open archway at the front of the building. My money, she thought as she ran inside the building. My fucking money. Before she could make it to the crumbled remains of the stairway, a pair of strong arms wrapped around her chest and yanked her backwards, back out into the smoky night.
“Fuck—let me go!” she screamed, kicking her legs to try to shake herself free. It was no use. Whoever was holding her was too strong.
“It’s not safe yet. There’s nothing left in there. I looked,” the man holding her said softly into her ear. Jagger. Of course. That fucking asshole telling her what to do. Abby kicked her legs a few more times, hoping he’d get the message and let her go, but he kept walking backwards, taking her back with him until he put her down on the hood of his car.
“I checked, Abby,” Jagger said, letting go of her once she stopped squirming in his strong arms. “There’s nothing.”
“So, everything’s gone,” Abby said, her voice coming out dull and hard, devoid of any emotion, even though her blood rushed through her veins.
Jagger nodded slowly, his eyes glued to the pavement, as if he were afraid to look at her. He should be, Abby thought angrily, wanting to feel tough and scary rather than small and meek, which was the truth of the situation. She was hopeless. She was useless. Everything she owned had been taken away from her and there was nothing she could do about it.
At least I have my mother’s necklace, she thought sadly, patting the pocket in her pants to make sure the little wooden box was still secure. If I have that, I can be strong. I can be tough. I can survive.
“So, I don’t imagine this was some weird freak coincidence, huh?” Abby said with a bitter laugh, finally getting Jagger to look up from the ground and meet her eyes.
“The most obvious answer is usually the correct one,” Jagger said, his eyes sad and deep and dark. Abby wanted him to look away from her again, the honest raw emotion in his eyes was too much to take, but she couldn’t bring herself to look away either.
“Right,” Abby replied, sniffling a little. She couldn’t tell if she was coming down with a cold or if her body was holding back tears without even trying. Abby had lots of practice doing that nowadays. “So, any clues or…?”
“Don’t worry about that,” Jagger said, offering Abby a sad smile.
Abby just scoffed and stood up straighter, stretching up to her full height. It was still several inches shy of Jagger’s eyes, so she had to keep staring up at him, feeling ridiculously tiny in comparison. “How can you say that to me?” she said, and embarrassingly the question came out sounding more hurt than accusatory. She set her jaw and forced herself to look and sound tougher than she really felt. “I mean, what the fuck am I supposed to do? Just sit back and wait for you to bring the guy in?”
Jagger shifted his weight from one foot to the other, crossing his arms in front of his body. He was clearly uncomfortable, but he cleared his throat and said, “Well, what else can you do?”
“I can fucking help, asshole!” Abby said, her voice coming out high and shrill. She knew she sounded hysterical, but at this point she really didn’t give a shit. Her entire life had just been burnt down to a crisp, the cherry on top of the worst year she’d ever experienced, and now this asshole who barely knew her was telling her that there was nothing she could do about it. How the hell was she supposed to react? “I’m not going to sit back like a good little girl and let you do all the heavy lifting. I’m helping. End of story.”
Jagger shook his head, and his expression changed from sad and sympathetic to exasperated. “You can’t. It’s too dangerous. Just leave it to me. I can handle it. I’ll take care of it for you. I promise.”
He sounded so fucking sincere and sweet, but it only made Abby madder. She felt like one of her patients, being talked down to by an arrogant doctor. She didn’t want to be comforted. She didn’t want to be placated, having her anger contained and regulated and controlled. She wanted to let it loose, send it out flying into the night sky like a projectile weapon, aimed right at anyone who’d ever hurt her. Instead, Abby grumbled under her breath, not even saying words but just mumbling noises that felt good to say, letting Jagger imagine the meanest thing he could think of rather than coming up with anything herself.
“Look, you’ve had a hard couple of days—” Jagger started to say, but Abby cut him off.
“Yeah, you can say that again,” she said with another harsh, humorless laugh. She knew she was being a bitch, but she just didn’t have the energy to care.
“I know,” Jagger said softly, stepping a little closer to her and dropping his voice when he spoke again. “Look, I know you’ve been through so much lately. It’s not fair. You deserve better.”
Abby could feel herself glaring at him, incapable of softening her eyes even if she wanted to.
Jagger kept talking. “I know you want to help, but it’ll go better if you let me handle things. I’m a professional. I know what I’m doing here.”
Abby clicked her teeth and laughed a little, but it came out more like a frustrated huff of air. “Yeah, right. And that’s why there have been a dozen fires now, and you still haven’t found the guy who did it.”
Silence fell between them, the air crackling with the weight of what Abby had just said. She kept her eyes trained on Jagger’s, refusing to look away or show any sign of weakness, preventing herself from even blinking once. Jagger returned the action, staring deeply into her eyes, his expression stony and unreadable. Abby wondered if she finally crossed a line and used up all Jagger’s patience with her. She knew she wasn’t easy to even tolerate, let alone be kind to, when she was pissed off. She wasn’t always this way. Back in the day she was nice to everyone, not just her patients. After she got sick and especially after the debacle with her ex, she just didn’t have the ability to be compassionate and sweet and light anymore. It had been taken from her, just like her money, just like her favorite patient, just like her home. She had nothing left except her anger, and she was going to use it as well as she could.
Jagger finally tore his eyes away from her, looking back at the burned apartment building. “You’re right,” he said a moment later, still not looking at her. “I have fucked up. I should have handled this by now. I know things about this guy that I didn’t before. He fucked up somewhere, and he knows it. If he hadn’t…” Jagger trailed off for a second, sighing deeply. He sounded so tired that Abby felt a little glimmer of sympathy for him spark up in her mind before she shut it down, not wanting to feel anything but the hard bitterness that kept her going. “If he hadn’t targeted you, I wouldn’t know anything about him, except that he apparently hates Satan’s Blazes. Robert must have known the guy, known him pretty well, to figure out where you lived. Even if he’s just been following you around since the fire at Bobby’s place, it tells me something. He’s invested in you because you’re invested in Robert. That means the arsonist had a special thing for Robert that he didn’t for the rest of the victims.”
“Murderer,” Abby said softly.
“What?” Jagger asked, turning to look at her again in confusion.
“You keep calling him the arsonist. He’s more than that now. He’s a murderer. He killed Robert. I know it. You know it. It’s the truth,” she said, her voice quiet and sad. She couldn’t bring herself to be scary and tough, not when it came to Robert.
Jagger nodded again, frowning deeply. “You’re right. He’s a murderer. And I’ll find him. I promise. I swear to you, Abby.”
Abby cleared her throat, willing all the emotion in her body to go away. “Okay,” she said, barely above a whisper. “Okay, do it, then. Please just do it. Find the guy.”
Jagger smiled then, sadly but genuinely, his eyes lit up for a second before dimming again. “Just do me a favor, okay? Stay out of it. Please. I can’t do my best possible work on this if I’m worried about your safety. Just stay at the compound and you’ll be safe.”
Abby suppressed a groan, instead burying her head in her hands, staring at Jagger only through the cracks between her fingers. She couldn’t understand why Jagger was being this way. Maybe he thought he was being a gentleman, treating her like fragile goods, but she just felt insulted. At this point, however, she’d yelled at him so many times for it that it was clear that approach wasn’t going to work. It was evident that there was no way he was just going to back down from this and trust her enough to include her in the investigation.
Abby couldn’t help but think that if he was going to treat her like a toddler, she might as well act like one and stamp her feet until he gave in and did what she wanted. She figured that wouldn’t work on him. He was determined. Well, Abby was determined, too, and she wasn’t going to be shut down that easily. She’d save her energy for where it counted, though.
So, for tonight, she allowed Jagger to usher her into his car, sitting passively in the passenger seat and staring out the window toward the smokestack that used to be her home. It wasn’t everything to her. It was honestly a pretty shitty place, but it was what she could afford. It was what she had worked for, to have a little slice of independence, a space of her own, a life of her own. And it was taken away. There was no way she was just going to sit back and let Jagger handle the whole situation. No way in hell. But she’d have to be smart about it. She stayed silent the entire ride back to Satan’s Blazes’ clubhouse, getting out of the car when Jagger did and slowly following him wherever he went. Letting him think he’d talked her into being obedient. Things were easier that way.
“You should get some sleep,” Jagger said as they walked back into the compound, heading up toward Abby’s temporary room. The sun had started to rise outside, sending orange streaks of light streaming onto the bed. It was so tempting that it was almost seductive, the idea of cuddling up to her blankets and pillows and allowing the sweet warmth of dawn to wash over her.
“Yeah,” Abby agreed, sitting down on the bed and taking her shoes and socks off, stretching her body out like she was preparing to sink back into sleep. “I guess I should call into work tomorrow and tell my patients I can’t see them for a while.”
Jagger nodded quickly, his head moving so fast up and down that Abby wondered if it was about to pop off his neck and fly across the room. What an eager puppy, she thought to herself. It was almost cute. “Yeah, yeah, that’s a good idea. That’s what you should do. Just stay put and everybody will be safe.”
Yeah, right, Abby thought, but she nodded back at him, biting her lip and feeling guilty about her decision. Regardless of the feelings eating away at her, she’d never felt so certain about anything in her life. She was going to sneak out of here as soon as the opportunity arose. Jagger was being too difficult, so she’d have to find a way to work around him. Abby figured it was easier to lie to him than waste any more energy trying to convince him. It had become obvious that he was a lost cause.
“Sleep well,” Jagger said as he backed up, heading for the door. “Please let me know if you need anything. Or if I’m not around, you can ask Tony. You can trust him. He’s a good guy, and he’ll take care of you when I’m not around.”
Abby bristled at that phrase. “Take care of me?” As fucking if, she thought. Nobody had ever taken care of Abby unless they were paid to do it. Her time in the cancer ward as a teenager taught her that much. She quickly decided not to show any of her frustration to Jagger. He couldn’t be trusted to deal with the reality of the situation. She would have to treat him the same way she treated her problematic patients, the ones who couldn’t handle the truth about what she was going to do to help them. She would help Jagger the same way, take away the burden of handling the arsons on his own— But first, she had to get out of there. She had to take care of her patients. There was no other option.
“When are you going to work?” Abby asked as innocently as possible, stuffing her face into a pillow and yawning as though exhaustion was overtaking her. “Just wondering when I should look for Tony rather than you.”
“Basically… now,” Jagger said, looking briefly at his watch. “I have to be on call at the fire station for the next 24 hours. I’ll sleep over there.”
“Jesus,” Abby said. “And I thought my 12-hour shifts were rough.”
Jagger laughed a little, giving her the first happy-looking smile that she’d seen in over a day at this point. “I’m pretty sure your job is a lot harder, trust me. I’ll end up playing cards with the boys for most of the time.” He cleared his throat and smiled at her again, but this time sadness slipped back into his eyes. “Get some sleep, okay? You deserve it.”
“Will do,” Abby promised, clenching her teeth behind her lips as soon as the words left her mouth. Somehow, despite everything, directly lying made her feel a little sick. Honesty just came more naturally to her, probably causing a lot of her problems. She was usually a little too blunt, avoiding saying anything if she couldn’t afford to tell the truth. But desperate times called for desperate measures, right? Jagger had left her with no other choice.
“Goodnight, Abby,” Jagger said as he finally stepped back through her door and shut it behind him, leaving her alone in the bedroom. She exhaled heavily and pressed her head back into the pillow, allowing her muscles to relax for just a second before sitting up in bed. All her muscles were tense as she listened to Jagger’s steps receding down the hallway and down the stairs. So, he really was leaving. That meant it was show time for Abby.
Abby quickly assessed her options, looking around her room for tools to use for her mission. She could jump out of the window and scale down the wall, staying close to the building until she was sure Jagger was gone. Then how could she get off the acre of land that stood between her and the rest of civilization? She didn’t have a car, and it wasn’t like she knew how to steal one. Of course, that was a ridiculously stupid idea anyway. The MC members would hunt her down like a rat if she stole anything from them.
She groaned to herself and stood up, beginning to pace around her room in circles. How the hell was she going to accomplish this? She needed someone to give her a ride, but it wasn’t like there was anybody she could call. Maybe she could call a cab, but that might garner unnecessary attention. She didn’t want the whole club to notice she was leaving and alert Jagger to her motives. Abby knew he would jump right away at the chance to ruin her plan. Dammit. What am I going to do? She was positive that she wasn’t going to get out of this compound without some help.
Anyway, maybe Jagger had a point, right? Someone must be tailing her, at least enough to figure out where she lived. So, she was in some degree of danger, even if Jagger was exaggerating the stakes of the situation. It was safer if she brought someone with her. But who?
The answer hit her all at once, the way all clever ideas presented themselves to Abby. Tony. He’d driven her to her apartment before, and she could tell that he was exactly what she needed. He was a grumbly, impatient fellow, as far as she could tell from spending twenty minutes with him in the car, but he was also the strong and silent type. Tony was Jagger’s immediate inferior, maybe even his assistant or an overly loyal best friend. He was also huge, a hulking mass of muscles and tattoos. Abby knew what to do. She reached down and put her socks and shoes back on, rushing out of her room and across the hall to where she knew Tony was staying.
He was asleep in a chair, his head slumped against the wall, frowning as he dreamed. Abby carefully walked over to him, shutting the door behind her so that anyone else awake in the compound wouldn’t overhear the following exchange. “Tony, Tony,” she whispered as she shook him by his shoulder. “Tony, wake up, please, I need you.”
Tony twitched awake like a kitten. “Hm? What?” he mumbled, rubbing the sleep from his eyes before even opening them.
“Jagger needs you to take me to my appointments. He’s working today,” she said, keeping her voice as steady and casual as possible. “Please, Tony, I need to meet with my patients.”
Tony groaned and rubbed his forehead. “Jesus,” he mumbled.
“Yeah, I’m sorry. I keep waking you up. But I only have three or four appointments to make today, and then I’ll shut up and leave you to sleep, I promise,” Abby swore, meaning every word. She felt pretty guilty, manipulating this poor guy, but she had to do what she had to do. Her patients needed her.
Tony was quiet a moment, holding his head still in his hands and breathing deeply. For a second Abby was afraid that he had just fallen back asleep before he finally spoke again. “How long’s it going to take?” he mumbled.
“Five hours, six tops,” Abby rushed to answer, ignoring the grimace that crossed Tony’s face in response. “I’ll be as quick as ever, I swear.”
“Okay, okay,” Tony finally said. “But I’m sleeping in the car while you visit them.” He got to his feet, stumbling a little as he crossed the room to grab his car keys off the dresser. “Let’s go.”
# # #
Jagger
Jagger struggled to keep his eyes open on the ride home, blinking furiously to stay awake. He was usually better at staying alert on his long shifts, but things had been so stressful lately, they weighed him down. Too fucking bad, he said to himself. Toughen the fuck up. People are depending on you. He straightened up in his seat as he took the last turn to Satan’s Blazes’ compound. He breathed a sigh of relief as he parked his car and got out, stretching his wound-up body in every direction imaginable. He was finally going to get some well-deserved rest. Jagger was going to need it if he was going to find the arsonist that was targeting Abby.
He waved politely at various MC members on his way through the first floor of the clubhouse, but he didn’t have the energy to engage with them. In the back of his mind, Jagger wondered if he was starting to annoy people with how distant he’d been. It was affecting his work. He used to hang out with the other firefighters after his shifts, getting drinks and talking about their personal lives, but now he was so focused on the investigation that he’d lost touch with people even though he still saw them every day. Still, he couldn’t let himself be bothered by that. He was willing to sacrifice his personal relationships if it meant finding the fucker who was targeting Satan’s Blazes. They were his family, after all. He had to protect them.
Jagger quickly scaled the steps to the second level of the clubhouse, rounding the corner to Abby’s room. The door was shut and locked, but Jagger had a key. He slowly stuck the key into the lock and opened the door gently, trying not to make any noise in case Abby was asleep. But when he opened it up she was sitting on her bed, staring at a pile of papers. Jagger didn’t have time to ask what she was doing before she leapt to her feet, fire burning in her eyes. “What the hell? I know I locked that.”
“Yeah, I have a key,” Jagger said.
Abby huffed out a humorless laugh, stepping closer to Jagger. “What? And you think that’s okay? Give it to me.”
“No, it’s mine,” Jagger said, confused as to why she was suddenly so angry.
“So, what, you can just come and go whenever you fucking want to? What if I was undressed? What then?”
Jagger burned with embarrassment at the images that popped up in his brain in response to Abby’s hypothetical question. “I, uh, I’ll knock next time, okay?” he stuttered out, his brain still flooded with thoughts of Abby in her underwear.
“Not good enough,” Abby said, shaking her head furiously. “You could lock me in whenever you wanted, and I know you’d just love that, wouldn’t you?”
In all honesty, she was right. Jagger had been considering using his key to keep her in the compound, where he knew she would be safe. He got the sense that it wouldn’t go over well with Abby if he said that, and he was already losing this argument as it was. “Look, I won’t lock you in, okay? Just stay here, and there won’t be a problem.”
Abby smirked at him a little bit, and Jagger was wondering what he said that could possibly be construed as funny until she spoke again, waving the handful of papers around in his face. “Too fucking late. I already went to see my patients today. So, suck on that.”
It took a second for the words to sink fully into Jagger’s brain, but when they did, his heart immediately pumped harder, sending his blood rushing painfully through his veins. “What?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
He saw a flicker of uncertainty pass over Abby’s face, and she backed up a little until her legs hit the bed behind her. “I went to see my patients today.” Her voice was small and tight.
“How?” Jagger demanded. He remembered that she didn’t have a car.
Abby shrugged then, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible even as Jagger’s temper built under his skin. “Tony took me.”
Jagger immediately turned on his heel and marched through the door, out into the hallway and toward Tony’s room across the hall. He swung the door open without knocking to find Tony tangled up in a pile of blankets on his bed. “Tony!” he shouted. “Tony, wake the fuck up!”
Tony twitched his way awake, opening his eyes slowly as Jagger continued to shout his name. “What the fuck, man?” he mumbled.
“You took Abby out of the compound? What the fuck is wrong with you? You could have both been killed!”
Tony slowly shifted until he was sitting up in his bed, crossing his legs and rubbing his hands through his hair. “Yeah, so what? You weren’t here, man.”
“She’s not supposed to leave the clubhouse, Tony. It’s not safe. Somebody’s out there looking for her.”
Realization slowly dawned over Tony’s face. “Oh. So, she lied to me, then.”
Abby had appeared in the room behind Jagger. “Not exactly!” she said. “I just - omitted some things. It’s not like Jagger is the boss of you, right?” Tony was silent, staring blankly at Abby to communicate the obvious answer to that question. “Oh. Well, that’s sad,” Abby said with a sheepish smile.
“No more fucking field trips, all right?” Jagger said before turning and marching back out of Tony’s room, allowing his MC brother to collapse onto the pile of blankets and fall back asleep.
Abby followed him back into her room, shutting the door behind them. She knew this was about to get loud. “What the hell, man?” she asked as she looked up into Jagger’s eyes.
“You know you weren’t supposed to do that,” Jagger said through clenched teeth. Anything could have happened to her. Both she and Tony could have been killed. Jagger was having a hard time understanding how she could be so stupid, so foolish to risk her own life like that.
“Supposed to?” Abby parroted back in a mocking tone. “What are you, my elementary school teacher? Newsflash, Jagger: You’re not the fucking boss of me, even if you are the boss of every other sad sack in this club. Where do you get off telling me what to do?”
“It’s not—” Jagger cut himself off when he realized he was yelling. He didn’t want to scare her, but he was just so fucking mad. “It’s not about me bossing you around. It’s about keeping you safe. You did something incredibly dangerous and you just happened to get lucky.”
Abby glared at him, her jaw set. “Do you realize you’re acting like a Neanderthal right now, tugging a woman back to the cave or some shit? You don’t fucking own me. I’m not your property, I’m not your responsibility, so back off!”
“You are my responsibility!” Jagger argued back, stepping closer to her until their breath mingled. “I have to keep you safe! It’s my job.”
“Says who? You?” Abby demanded to know, her brow furrowed in authentic bewilderment. “You appointed yourself my protector and now that means you get to tell me what I do with my days? That’s not fair!”
Abby’s eyes had started shining, the blue and grey and green shades within becoming clearer with each passing second, catching the fading light from the sunrise outside. She looked so gorgeous, it was almost distracting Jagger from his anger, but in the end, his rage won out. “You don’t know what you’re doing. I understand you feel like you have a responsibility to your patients, but you can’t exactly help them if you get fucking killed. Which is exactly what’s going to happen if you don’t start listening to me.”
“How do you know, huh?” Abby asked. “You don’t know who the arsonist is. You don’t even know if it’s one guy or twelve different ones playing a stupid prank that went wrong. Where do you get off bossing me around? I’m not a little child, Jagger! I know what I’m doing!”
“Oh, is that right?” Jagger asked, stepping impossibly closer to Abby’s panting chest. “You don’t know what you’re doing. Unless, of course, you want to be in danger. Unless you want to die. Is that it? Is that what it’s about? You want to get hurt, Abby?”
Abby scoffed again and turned her head away, tearing her eyes away from Jagger. But the frown on her face told him that he hit a nerve with his last question. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she muttered, but it didn’t sound particularly convincing.
Jagger felt his anger transform into something sharper, harder, something that threatened to pierce his chest and tear out his heart. Pain, thick and heavy and unbreakable. “That’s what it is, isn’t it?” he said softly. “You want to get hurt.”
Abby shook her head but still refused to look directly at Jagger. “You don’t know a thing about me,” she whispered.
“I know you deserve to live,” Jagger said, stepping a little closer still until their chests brushed together.
“You don’t— You don’t know that,” Abby murmured. “You’re just a biker punk with control issues. You don’t know me.”
“You don’t know me either,” Jagger said in an accusatory tone of his voice, his anger returning quickly. “You don’t know thing one about me, or about this investigation, or about…” He trailed off, running out of accusations.
“Fuck you, asshole,” Abby muttered, her voice getting louder with each syllable. “Acting like you fucking own me, acting like you know what to do. You don’t know a goddamned thing. You’re just pretending to be this big tough man, but you’re—”
Jagger slammed their mouths together, caressing her lips roughly with his. After a second, Abby returned the kiss, opening her mouth to allow his lips and tongue inside. “Mmm, oh,” she murmured in between their mouths, kissing him more and more deeply with each passing second, grabbing the back of his head to encourage him on.
Jagger reached down and wrapped his arms around Abby’s lower back, pushing her closer until he could grab her legs and wrap them around his waist, holding her by her ass so that he wouldn’t drop her. All the while, Abby licked her way into his mouth, pulling at his bottom lip with her teeth. Jagger groaned into the kiss, tangling one hand in her hair to make sure she didn’t stop touching him. Jagger felt like if he stopped touching her, he would die like she was a supply of fresh sweet blood that he desperately needed to survive. He bit down on her lip, causing her to cry out, a beautiful, high sound that made his skin prickle. He wanted more of that sound. No, no— He needed it.
After they pulled apart several moments later, gasping for air, Abby turned a deep shade of red before jumping out of Jagger’s arms. “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, no,” she muttered, rubbing her mouth with her fingers as though she’d just been burned.
“Get out, get out, please get out,” she whispered, walking away from him and turning to the window.
“Abby…” Jagger said, unsure of what else to say.
“Please. I can’t do this. Not right now. Please, get out,” Abby said, sounding more desperate and sad than he’d ever heard her.
“Okay,” he murmured, quietly turning to walk out of the room, freezing when he heard Abby speak again, barely audible this time.
“I’m…. I’m sorry. For the way I am,” Abby whispered just as Jagger’s hand touched the doorknob.
Me, too, he thought as he walked through the door, shutting it behind him but stopping short of locking it. Me, too.