Page 3 of Kick

“Shut up, arsehole,” he says and clips me on the back of the head as I walk towards the door. “Kick? Do the blow on your time, yeah? I don’t need you falling off your bike and getting your stupid arse arrested while you’re wearing my patch.”

“Yeah, Prez.”

I stalk through the door to find Tank leaning against the wall outside church. He slaps me upside the head too, but this time I’m quicker with my retaliation. I punch him in the side and shake out my fist when he doesn’t even flinch. He’s one hundred per cent muscle mass.Fucking giant cunt.

“Clean up your face, fuck-stick. You look like you’ve been eating clam with red sauce.”

“Makes sense.” I shrug with a wicked grin. “I about punched a hole through that perfect cunt into her stomach, and then I kissed it better, but what’s a little blood between brothers?”

The warehouse sits empty, save for Dr Calder. No surprise there. It’s 2:00pm on a Sunday in a quiet part of Erskineville. We sit in an unmarked van with blackout windows and fake plates. We sit and we watch. When it looks as though no one’s coming or going, Tank revs the engine and we pull up to the back entrance and slip from the van in plain, dark clothing, hoodies covering our faces.

Tank kicks in the door. It takes him all of three seconds for the thing to splinter off its hinges. We’re under instructions to collect the Dentist, deliver him to the club, and keep him safe until Raphe is out of lock-up.

Easy enough.Right?

Wrong.

The music hits me first, some fucking classical shit played way too loud. I can’t hear fucking jack over the noise, but it’s the scent of blood—a lot of blood—that sets off my twitchy trigger finger. When I see him, bent over a rusty surgical chair, a flash of long chestnut hair behind him, and I feel more so than hear the screams coming from the woman that’s strapped to the seat, I explode. The coke high wore off about two hours ago. I feel a little like shit warmed up, but I have all my faculties about me. I’m thinking one hundred per cent clearly when I raise my gun and shoot him point blank in the back of the head. The dentist lands in a heap, a pair of shiny, blood-drenched dental pliers falling from his hand and onto the putrid concrete floor. The tooth he’s extracted skitters across the ground. It reminds me of the games of Knuckles that Ethan and I would play with the other MC brats at clubhouse parties.

The naked woman beyond him had gone completely still when she watched the dentist fall, but now her screams start up again.

“What the fuck? You still fuckin’ high, motherfucker?” Tank says, shaking his head. “Prez is gonna bust your balls in a fuckin’ vice, brother.”

He raises his gun and aims it at the brunette’s head.

“No!” I shout and throw myself in front of her, knocking over a tripod with a video camera attached. The camera comes lose and slides across the floor. The brunette continues to scream like a fucking banshee.

“Jesus Christ, what the hell is wrong with you?” Tank lowers the gun. I turn and face the woman, who begins thrashing against her restraints.

“I’m not gonna hurt you.” I whisper, but I guess the fact that I just shot a man in cold blood three inches from her face might sort of imply otherwise—she is covered in his brain matter, after all. A gob of something white and globular slides over her collarbone and off her nipple, landing in her lap. Her body quakes with fear, her tits jiggle with the jagged, panic-filled rush of air into her lungs. I close my eyes, trying to get my cock to sit the fuck down. I’m all kinds of fucked up; I know this, but there’s a scent to a woman’s fear, and my dick is all too keenly aware of and enamoured with it. It’s fucked up, but it is what it is.

“Snuff it out, Kick,” Tank says behind me. The motherfucker sounds bored shitless, as if he can’t wait to be done here so he can go and grab a fucking Big Mac. “She’s seen too much.”

“I got it. Shut up, man,” I say. “Do something useful and wrap that sick fucker in that plastic tarp.”

“Do I look like your bitch, Kick?”

“Just fuckin’ do it.”

He holsters his piece and pulls the tarp closer. I turn back to the girl. Her face is a fucking mess, and she’s yanking on her restraints and staring at me with wide, terrified eyes. Her cheeks are swollen and bloody.

“I’m gonna untie you. Okay? I’m just here to help you. I’m not gonna hurt you.” She thrashes against the stirrups, trying to free herself. “If you scream, I’ll be forced to put a bullet between your eyes. You don’t want that. I don’t want that.”

She shakes her head.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Tank moans. “Don’t fucking untie the bitch.”

I lean over and unfasten the buckle strapping her head to the chair. She lets me, and then she lurches as far forward as her restraints will allow, and head-butts me.

“Fucking bitch,” I shout. Backing away, I press a hand to my bleeding lip.

“Oh, I like this one.” Tank chuckles. “Shame we gotta put her out of her misery.”

“Shut the fuck up,” I say, and then press my gun against her temple. “Do that again and I will put a bullet in you. Understand?”

She nods, carefully. Not so fucking brave now that she has a gun aimed at her brain, though I have to admit, her fight has me rock-fucking-hard in my jeans.

“Kick,” Tank warns. “Put her down, or I will.”

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