by Sophia Gray
“What? What’s wrong?” Jagger asked, hurrying around Abby’s body to see what she was looking at.
Abby’s apartment looked like a hurricane had hit it. Her furniture was all over the place, some of the legs of her chairs and tables ripped off, lying in pieces on the floor. Articles of clothes were strewn about, mostly ripped apart. Chunks of Abby’s sweaters and dresses and scrubs made a pathway into her bathroom, where a message could be seen on the mirror, written in red smudges: BACK OFF BITCH.
Abby dropped to the floor, wrapping her arms around her knees, frozen to the ground. Jagger wanted to grab her, take her into his arms and carry her back to the car, driving away as far as possible to keep her from whoever was responsible for this mess. Instead, he ambled around the room, surveying the damage. There were other messages written on the wall in similar red print, written with what looked like lipstick they’d probably found in her apartment. “We’ll fucking kill you, cunt” was written beneath her window. Jagger licked his fingers and rubbed at the words, trying to erase them before Abby could see them. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway; she was immobile, a pile of inert limbs on the floor.
Jagger walked back over to her. “Do you have anything important here? I can look for the stuff you need,” he said softly. “Otherwise I’ll go ahead and call the police.”
Abby shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I’m sure they got everything I have that’s worth shit,” she said, dropping her head down lower until her eyes disappeared under her arms.
Jagger walked over to the drawers, which were pulled halfway out of their hinges in the dresser next to the bed. There was a pile of documents hanging out of the bottom one. Abby’s birth certificate stuck out. Jagger leaned down to check the rest of the papers, including her Social Security card and old transcripts from her college. He dropped the papers again and moved on to the next highest drawer.
And, there, underneath a few shirts that miraculously escaped the attacks of the intruder, was a pile of cash, a thick wad of twenties that Abby had probably saved up over the course of a few months.
It was nice, Jagger thought, that she didn’t lose absolutely everything. After a second Jagger’s insides turned cold, realizing what it meant. They didn’t want to steal anything. They just wanted to scare her. They weren’t petty thieves. They meant what they were saying. This was the work of a murderer.
“Is there…?” Abby started to say, cutting herself off. Jagger turned to look at her and saw that she was still huddled up in a little ball, hiding her eyes so that she wouldn’t have to acknowledge the damage that lay before her.
“What is it? I can look for it, whatever it is,” Jagger replied, staying close to the dresser. He figured that she needed space right now, given the day she was having. It didn’t get much worse than this.
“There’s a small box in my top drawer, underneath my socks and underwear. Can you see if it’s still there and open it for me?”
Jagger nodded, even though Abby wasn’t looking at him and couldn’t possibly see anything other than the inside of her elbows. He searched the top drawer, rifling through clothes until his fingers landed on a hard box in the furthest, most hidden corner. Jagger pulled out the box and opened it, revealing a long chain with two gold letters hanging off its center: E.B.
“It’s here,” he said, holding it out so that Abby could see it if she wanted visual proof.
“Thank you,” Abby said, burying her head back into her arms a second later.
Jagger burned a little with curiosity, wondering what the piece of jewelry meant to Abby. He decided not to ask, instead dropping the necklace back in the little wooden case. It wasn’t fair to try to get to know her when she was in this state, seeing as she seemed to keep herself carefully guarded at all other times.
“Can you bring it to me?” Abby asked a second later, reaching one hand forward even as she kept her head bowed, her eyes glued to the scuffed-up floor.
Jagger did as he was told, walking over and dropping the box into Abby’s outstretched hand.
“Where are you going to go?” he asked her after a short pause, staring down at the back of her head, her wavy hair tangled up into a knotty mess.
“Nowhere,” Abby said. “I think I’m going to sleep right here.” She laughed a little, but the sound was harsh and hard. Jagger wondered if she was hiding her face due to tears, but somehow, he didn’t think she was capable of crying.
“You can’t stay here,” Jagger argued. “It’s not safe. They’ve already broken in. They can get to you whenever they want to if you stay here.”
“They— They just want to scare me. I can stay here,” Abby murmured, sounding as though she was trying more to convince herself than Jagger.
“Yeah, they want to scare the shit out of you, that much is obvious,” Jagger said, his voice coming out a little bit ruder than he had intended. His frustration was starting to show, no matter how hard he tried to stay calm rather than freak Abby out even more than she already was. He blew out his breath, trying to steady himself to speak plainly. “Look, you’re just not safe here. You know that, even if you don’t want to admit it.”
“Yeah, well, where the hell am I going to go?” Abby asked, finally looking up from her arms, glaring up at Jagger. “I can’t exactly go stay at a hotel. I don’t have the fucking money for it.”
“Do you have any friends you can stay with?” he asked.
Abby just shook her head, averting her eyes to stare at the wall behind Jagger.
Jagger bit down on his lip, struggling to restrain the words that threatened to bubble out of his mouth without his permission. Ah, fuck it. He was just going to say it sooner or later. Might as well go ahead. “You can come with me.”
“I don’t want to stay in your apartment. No offense,” Abby said softly, rubbing her eyes roughly with her knuckles.
“No, that’s not what I mean. You wouldn’t have to do that,” Jagger said in a rush, afraid that Abby thought this was a pickup attempt. “Satan’s Blazes. We have a whole compound.”
“Your clubhouse?” Abby asked, her thumb moving over to her mouth so she could chew on her nail.
Jagger nodded. “There are lots of people there. Nothing could happen to you. I promise.”
Abby scoffed a little before getting to her feet, walking past Jagger into her bathroom to splash water on her face. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but promises don’t mean much to me.”
“Okay, don’t take my word for it. Just come to the compound and see what you think. There’s no way anybody would try to do anything to you there. If they did, they’d get caught immediately. You’d be safe.”
Abby was silent, staring up at the words that dripped over her bathroom sink. “I don’t think I’d be safe anywhere,” she said softly, and her tone was so serious, so somber, so devoid of fear, that Jagger couldn’t help but think that she wasn’t just talking about physical safety. Jagger didn’t know what to say.
“I’ll go,” Abby whispered, staring at herself in the mirror. “I’ll go with you, okay? You don’t have to convince me. But just for one night. One night and that’s it.”
“Okay,” Jagger said without thinking, although after a few more seconds had passed he realized that he didn’t truly believe he could follow that stipulation. “Come on, let’s go,” he said, deciding he’d argue for her to stay longer at a different time.
He saw Abby stuff the box with the E.B. necklace into her back pocket before she turned on her heel and headed out of her apartment, waving her hand forward until Jagger followed her back outside.
“Fuck it, it’s a shitty dump of a place anyway,” Abby said as she locked up, heading back downstairs toward Jagger’s car. The fear seemed to melt off her, disappearing like water evaporating from a hot sidewalk in the summer. Jagger didn’t know whether to be relieved or worried that she turned into such an efficient robot, walking briskly back to his car and leaping inside without a single look back at the ruins of her life.
Jagger d
ecided not to challenge her sudden shift in disposition, jumping into the front seat next to her and rapidly pulling out of her apartment’s parking lot, heading back onto the highway toward the compound.
“Now we don’t have a choice, huh?” Abby said when they were a few minutes down the road.
“What do you mean?” Jagger asked, unsure what she meant by that.
“You’ve got to let me in on the investigation now if we’re going to the clubhouse.”
Ah. Well, there it was. Jagger didn’t know whether to be frustrated or impressed that the state of her apartment hadn’t scared her off entirely. “I’d rather you didn’t,” he said.
“Do you want my help or not?” Abby snapped, turning her head abruptly to stare out of the window rather than look at him. “Listen, again, I’m not trying to be an awful bitch, but this protective bullshit is getting old fast. I’m not your little sister. In fact, you don’t even know me.”
The car fell silent for a moment, Abby’s words hovering between them. They stung a little, but it wasn’t like they weren’t true. She was right. It was weird that Jagger felt like he had a responsibility to her at all, but he was used to feeling weird. He cared too much about everything. That was his curse.
“I’m sorry,” Abby said again. “I just want to help. I don’t want to feel…useless.”
“I can understand that,” Jagger said. “Better than you think.”
Abby sighed deeply. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that she had turned back from the window and was now staring at him. His skin crawled a little uncomfortably, almost tingling as she continued to look at him, but he didn’t tear his eyes away from the road. Jagger kept driving, speeding up a little and taking corners a little too sharply, growing more and more anxious under Abby’s gaze. He waited, sensing that she needed to say something to him.
Finally, right before he took the last turn on the dark highway that led to the clubhouse, she cleared her throat and spoke again. “That’s what scares me,” she said, her voice soft.
“What do you mean?” Jagger asked.
“I can tell you understand. I think, maybe, we’re too alike. That’s part of what makes me so nervous,” she said with a little laugh, but it was strained, designed only to break the tension in the car. It didn’t work, the air practically crackling with nervous energy.
“You’re scared of me,” Jagger said quietly. It wasn’t a question. He already knew the answer. He understood it all too well.
“Maybe,” Abby said. “Maybe, yeah. That’s only because…” She trailed off, falling back into silence as she turned to stare out of the window again. Somehow Jagger felt like he could hear the unspoken sentence anyway. She’s afraid of herself, Jagger thought. She’s afraid of how much she cares about this. He swallowed hard around the lump that formed in his throat as he approached the clubhouse. Jagger realized with a sinking feeling that he was afraid of her, too. Together they were just a tangle of fears and bad decisions. They were both going to launch forward into this investigation at full force, holding nothing back, no matter how scared they were, no matter the consequences.
Somehow Jagger thought that wasn’t something to be proud of. Still, he didn’t think he could change. As he rolled to a stop in front of the compound and looked over at Abby, he thought: Maybe there’s a chance for her. Maybe she can escape this whole mess.
Jagger decided, then and there, that he wasn’t going to let it consume her the way it had done to him. It wasn’t going to kill her either. To keep her safe, he knew, he’d have to make her angry. He’d have to fight her. It was worth it, even if she hated him. If it meant she got out of this whole thing alive, she at least deserved that, even if Jagger didn’t.
Chapter Three
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.