Page 34 of Savage

A rustling has my adrenaline spiking again. I dart my gaze all around the room, but despite how my vision has adjusted to the lack of windows, I can’t see a damn thing but junk, empty trays of take-out, and unwashed coffee cups. Every freaking surface is covered with filth. Biker’s a pig, but it’s not just that. Apart from a couple of pieces of beaten up furniture and the plasma on the wall that’s probably stolen, there’s nothing here to tell me anything about the man who has me chained to his bed.

The rustling is closer now, and the scurry of tiny feet along hard surfaces has icy fingers creeping down my spine. My eyes roam the room, falling on the table where the biker left the wadded up paper from his sub. The paper moves, falling off the edge of the table onto the floor, revealing a tiny grey mouse with his nose in the air. His little mouth twitches and then he practically pounces on the cookie.

My cookie.

I lurch forward, but my restraints hold me back. I buck and shout, “That’s my fucking cookie!”

The mouse scurries down the table leg and under the armchair the biker had been sleeping in hours earlier, but it isn’t the mouse moving around that catches my eye now—it’s the biker. I was so worked up over that fucking cookie that I didn’t hear or see him come in. He moves through the room like the angel of death, all darkness, and unleashed fury. He pulls the knife from his belt, crouches down and then spears the mouse on the end of the blade.

He holds it up. Blood and innards stain its short grey fur. A single droplet slides down the mouse’s tail and falls onto the carpet. Biker carries it across the room and slams his foot down on the pedal of the stainless steel bin, jiggling the knife over the rubbish until the tiny body slides off the blade and lands in the garbage. Something about his brutality, about his ruthlessness and complete disregard for life, enrages me.

“You didn’t have to kill it,” I shout.

He glares at me. “You’d rather me let it eat your cookie?”

“You’re disgusting,” I hiss.

Rounding the small bench he stands in front of the sink, his back to me. The giant winged skull on his cut mocks me. Savage Saints MC, the patch reads. Savage is right. Biker runs the water and rinses off the blade and pulls a tea towel that’s seen better days from a rail above the sink. He wipes the knife clean, slides the blade back in its sheath on his belt, and turns to face me. “I can promise you that was a much quicker, and more humane death than setting traps.”

“Maybe if you cleaned up this shitty room, you wouldn’t have mice you had to kill.”

“Gotta sink my blade into something, little spitfire.” He smiles as he sits down in the armchair opposite me and leans his elbows on his knees. “Can’t afford to get rusty with a priest and a cop to kill.”

He’s baiting me. I know it, and yet I can’t help but rise to it. “What do you get out of helping me? Besides your tape back?”

“So you’re going to tell us what you know?”

“If I do this, we take down those fuckers, and I walk away. You let me walk away.”

He nods his acquiescence. His dark blue eyes glint with hunger; he’s like a wolf with a prize that he knows is within his reach. I don’t trust him, but what choice do I have? I tell them what I know, or I keep my mouth shut and die anyway. I’m dead if the Priest finds me, so what do I have left to lose?

“Where do we start?”

“You tell me what you know, and we go from there.”

“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?”

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