Page 33 of Kick

“Can I at least pee first?”

“If I uncuff you are you gonna run?”

“Really?” I ask, impatiently. “You left me sitting here for an entire day, staring at a fucking cookie and trying desperately not to think of running water and you’re asking me if I’m going to run? Hell yes, I’m going to run, straight to the freaking bathroom, and then you’re going to feed me, and then we’ll talk.”

He smiles and shakes his head, walking over to the dresser he produced the cuffs from a few hours ago. He holds the keys up in front of him as he walks forward and sits on the edge of the bed. “What I said before still stands. Until Prez gets the info he wants, if you leave this room, they will not hesitate to put a bullet in you.”

“Yeah, yeah, big bad bikers come equipped with lots of guns and big hurty bullets. If you don’t hurry up and uncuff me, I’m going to pee all over your bed.”

He sighs and then slips the key in the lock. The sound of that tiny latch unlocking has to be the greatest noise I’ve ever heard. I don’t remember the sound of him unbuckling the restraints in the warehouse—he knocked me unconscious for that—but I don’t think even that sound could have compared to this. When he saved me from that warehouse, I wasn’t truly free, and while I might be held in the tender loving care of the Savage Saints Motorcycle club right now, the fact is that once we find the arseholes who abducted me, I’m free. Forever. I’ll take karate, learn how to fire a gun—I’ll carry an entire bag full of pepper spray with me everywhere I go. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure another man can never enslave me again.

The knot in my belly twists and I fear that the half a pizza sitting heavily in my insides wants to revisit the outside. That could have something to do with the fact that I haven’t eaten a real meal in weeks, but it’s more than likely because the biker is sitting on the armchair opposite me, while I sit on this worn, shit-stain coloured couch. His dark blue eyes burn into mine. He waits, though not patiently, because the label from the beer bottle he finished almost as quickly as he opened, is torn into tiny pieces and strewn all over the floor.

“Start talking, Indie,” Biker says.

“Where did that name even come from?”

“I don’t know. You reminded me of the Indy 500.”

“I reminded you of a car race?”

“You reminded me that we’re runnin’ a race.”

“Shouldn’t I remind you of shoes then? I could be Nike, or Puma? Now that’s a bad-arse name.”

He sighs. “You’re wasting time. Tell me what you know.”

“Where do I even start?”

“At the beginning. Before you were taken. Did you see anyone, hear anything? You were a couple blocks from your house, right?”

“How did you know that?”

“I saw it on the news. CCTV saw you get off the train at around 9:00pm. A woman was interviewed by the cops, said she walked a ways with you before you reached her door.”

“Rachel. She’s two blocks before me. She’s a student too; we shared a class that night, and it ran late. We caught the later train. I walked Rachel to her gate, like I usually do, and then I headed for home. Only I never made it. I didn’t hear anyone behind me. I didn’t see anything suspicious. I just hurried along the footpath, and then I was pulled back into a little laneway between a set of row houses. He covered my mouth, and stuck a needle in my neck. I remember seeing a garbage bin in front of me. I reached out, and pulled it over—glass shattered as the recycling spilled out. That’s the last thing I remember before I passed out.”

“And when you woke up?”

“I was in the warehouse. They didn’t have the chair at first. The room was empty. I was suspended from a beam in the ceiling by chains, stripped naked and freezing. I could feel the cold winter air coming up from under the door. I don’t know how long I was out; it was still dark outside. Or maybe that was just the blindfold over my eyes.

“The Priest was the only one there the first time. At least, I think he was alone. In the beginning, they’d blindfolded me. His was the only voice I heard that first night. I can still remember it, you know? When I close my eyes, I hear him whispering in my ear. ‘And if they have a change of heart in the land where they are held captive, and repent and plead with you in the land of their conquerors and say, “We have sinned, we have done wrong, we have acted wickedly.”

“1 Kings, 8:46-47. Do you know how I know that?”

Biker shakes his head.

“He’d recite those verses; every time.” A short humourless laugh escapes me. “I never knew what it meant, but I think I’m starting to. And then he’d tell me that ‘we were all sinners and that it was time to atone.”

“They ever use their names in front of you?”

“No. They called him Father. That was it. The Cop liked to wear his full uniform when he fucked me, and you already saw the Dentist in action.”

“What did the Priest do, that first night?”

“What do you think?”

“I think this will all be over a whole lot quicker if you tell me everything you remember. I can’t find these guys if I don’t know exactly who I’m looking for. There are hundreds of churches in Sydney; that’s a lot of fuckin’ clergies’ doors to bust down. And the Cop could be anywhere; he could be anyone. How do you know the uniform was real, and not just part of his M.O.?”

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