Page 6 of Dark Biker Protector

"Well, it might be a start," she agreed. For a moment, silence hung there in the air between us – I stared down at her, this bright little twenty-something with a warm smile and those green eyes. Damn, I could just imagine her...

But then, a noise came from behind us, and both of us snapped around to see what it was.

Chapter Three – Abbey

"Chuck?"

Jaxon was leaning in the doorway, eyeing the two of us as we stood out there on the street together. Chuck let out a sigh.

"Jaxon," he muttered. "You working late?"

"Yeah, couldn’t sleep," he replied, shooting a doubtful look at me. "What’s she doing here?"

"She has a name, you know," I fired back. Honestly, I knew I shouldn’t have been giving any of them attitude, given that Chuck had finally agreed to give me what I had been waiting for all this time. Chuck fired a look at me, telling me to keep my mouth shut before he changed his mind.

"Yeah, and she needs to be getting home," Chuck replied. "Where do you live? Is it far?"

"I can make it back by myself, don’t worry," I replied, waving my hand. "And I’ll be here tomorrow for my interview, okay?"

"Your interview?" Jaxon remarked, sounding surprised. After how against the idea Chuck had been all this time, it must have come as a shock to know that his boss had finally agreed to the interview I had been hounding him for since we met. I knew it had been a long shot, coming out here by myself tonight, but my gut had told me to give it a go – and my gut was rarely wrong about these things.

And look where it had gotten me, he had agreed to give me an interview. I lifted my hand and waved, then headed back towards my block of apartments.

I knew Chuck was likely right, and I should have been more careful about wandering around here late at night, but after everything that had happened with Franco, I wasn’t going to spend my time here glancing over my shoulder, being terrified and jumping at every shadow. I was fine. I knew how to handle myself. I’d grown up in foster care, and if that didn’t give you the ability to handle a rough part of the city at night, I didn’t know what would.

Chuck had seemed different tonight. Not just because he was drunk, though that was a part of it. No, there was clearly something different about him, something...off. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Every time I had seen him before, he had always had this grouchy and grumpy attitude with me, like he couldn’t wait to get rid of me. But tonight, he had almost seemed...glad to see me? Maybe that was an overstatement. But he didn’t seem to have the usual irritation at my presence. Maybe he was starting to like me. A girl could dream, right?

Not that many women would have dreamed about a man like him, and with good reason. I might not have known the ins and outs of everything that the Dark Dogs did, but I knew none of it could be good news. There was no way he could be involved in anything above-board. Yet, he had taken Star in when she had needed it most – from the story she told, he had been the one to make the call to keep her around, even Jaxon had done most of the work to keep her safe. What was it about a girl in trouble that made him feel the need to get involved? I was determined to get to the bottom of it.

Suddenly, as I turned the corner onto my street, a flood of anxiety came once more, and I flicked my gaze around to figure out where this was coming from. It had happened a few times since I had heard that Franco had left Lilyvale, but I didn’t know why. There was no way he could have tracked me here, was there? Hardly anyone knew where I had gone to in the first place, and that was the way I wanted to keep it. As far as everyone was concerned, I was well and truly gone, vanished from the life I’d lived before. I had even used a pen name for the article I had published about Star and her family, though maybe someone had clocked the similar writing style and had worked out that it was me...

Fuck, I was getting paranoid. I needed to pull my shit together. Yes, Franco was an asshole, but he wasn’t going to stalk me across county lines, was he? He was probably bored with me now that he had worked out that I was never going to come back to him. He couldn’t just twist my arm into giving him what he wanted. He might have been possessive, and he might have been obsessive, but there was a difference between that and following me to a whole new city.

Wasn’t there?

My eyes scanned the dark street around me: it was empty, aside from a woman leaning in her apartment door and smoking. She eyed me for a moment, her lips curling downward, and I kept walking quickly, not wanting to cause any trouble. Chuck was likely on to something when he had told me I should keep to my own place, but I never worked like that. I wasn’t the kind of girl who would just duck down and do the sensible thing. Hell, if I had been, I would never have been able to chase half the stories I’d managed to pull together. It was part of my journalistic instincts, to be a little stupid and willing to put myself in the middle of trouble, even when I should have known better.

I hurried down the street and turned the corner to reach my apartment building – and stopped dead outside of it. The smell of something was in the air, something acrid and chemical-y...

And then I saw it. Graffiti, sprayed on to the side of the apartment block. Huh. Okay, maybe that was why my nerves had been on edge – I'd probably overheard some kids running around, doing some street-art in the middle of the night. The paint was still dripping down as I moved to get a better look at what they had created...

A typewriter. Oh, okay, that was kind of...strange. I took a step towards it, twisting my head to the side, wondering if I was just imagining it. Because there was no way they would have created an image that looked so similar to my tattoo, would they?

I glanced down at my ankle, where my jeans had ridden up slightly – there was a small doodle of scratch-art there, one a friend in college had done for me. An old-fashioned typewriter. It was a little faded and blown-out now, but I still loved it.

I showed it to everyone. Everyone knew about my tattoo. Which meant...

I stared at the graffiti in front of me. No, there was no way this was anything other than a coincidence. The thick scent of paint filled my nostrils, and I coughed, trying to expel it from my throat. It was just some kids, playing at being artistic. It didn’t have to mean anything. Sometimes, shit just happened, right? I didn’t need to read into it as some huge conspiracy...

I scurried towards the front door and unlocked it, my hands shaking slightly as I went. Why hadn’t I heard any of the kids doing this? Because it had to be kids, right? There was no way – I mean, there was no way it could be...

I hurried up the stairs and stepped into my apartment, locking the door behind me, double-checking it was totally shut. I heard a noise inside and jumped – until Cinnamon came pitter-pattering towards me, bumping his head against my leg and whining until I picked him up.

"Oh, hey, buddy," I murmured to him, scooping him up in my arms. "You okay? You hungry...?”

Fussing over him gave me something else to focus on, and I was glad for it. I snuck a look out of my bedroom window, which looked down to the street below, biting my lip as I scanned it for any sign of activity. There was nothing. I tried to let that calm me, but, if anything, it just made me even more tense.

Who had left that graffiti there? And why was it so similar to my tattoo? It wasn’t like a typewriter was the kind of thing you just saw scrawled all over the city, like the smiley faces or dick drawings on every street corner. No, this felt specific. Pointed, almost.

---