One Kick: A Novel

by Chelsea Cain

  “You have to release a statement,” Paula said. “I’ve been fielding calls all day. You know how rare a live rescue is in stranger abductions. People want to know your reaction.”

  “My reaction?” Kick said. Her legs gave out, but she fell beautifully. She lay in the grass for a long moment, finding strength in the exhaustion she felt, the dilated vessels, the heat, the surrender. When her legs stopped trembling enough that she could manage it, she slowly stood up. Her mother regarded her cautiously from the bench like a nice lady who’s raised a chimp as a pet but knows it’s only a matter of time before the chimp rips someone’s face off.

  Kick wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her wrist. “I’m pro–child rescuing,” she said. “That’s my reaction.”

  Her mother held her gaze for a moment. Ever since she’d read Elizabeth Smart’s book, she acted like she had some psychological insight into Kick’s behavior. “Nothing more complicated than that?” Paula pressed.

  Kick launched herself backward toward the ground. Her body hit the grass and she rolled on her shoulder.

  “What are you doing?” Paula asked with a look of horror that Kick found immeasurably satisfying.

  “Falling,” Kick said. She got back to her feet and threw herself backward again, really putting her weight into it. She winced, then got up and did it again.

  “Stop it,” Paula said.

  Kick rolled up into a sitting position. “Did you bring what I asked?”

  Paula unzipped a hitherto hidden pocket on the knee of her white workout capris and withdrew a business-size white envelope. “Is this what I think it is?” she asked.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t open it,” Kick said.

  Paula held the letter to her heart. “This is disturbed, Kathleen. I know how I feel doesn’t matter to you, but if you pursue this, I will seek a conservatorship over you and your affairs, and no judge in the world will deny me.” She extended the letter to Kick, and Kick snatched it out of her hand.

  The heat from her mother’s body had made the envelope warm. Kick gave it a shake and held it up to the sky, inspecting the triangular flap on the back for signs of infiltration. The envelope appeared untampered with, but who the hell could ever know with Paula? Kick flipped the envelope back over and peered through the plastic window at her name printed above her mother’s address. Her mother thought that it had come to her house by mistake—a bureaucratic mix-up. The truth was more complicated.

  Kick’s stomach clenched as her eyes skimmed the official-looking medical seal on the return address, but she was sure her mother hadn’t noticed.

  “I can take care of myself,” Kick said. She folded the envelope in half, then in half again, and tucked it carefully in her pocket.

  “You can’t take care of yourself,” Paula said, crossing her arms. “You can’t even take care of Monster.”

  Monster had managed to wrap his leash around the leg of the park bench four times, and was blinking at Kick balefully. Kick’s face burned. “Don’t talk about my dog,” she said.

  “Your dog?” Paula said with a look of astonishment. “Who do you think took care of him while you were gone? Who walked him, who house-trained him, who took him to the vet when he was sick? He slept in my bed every night for five years. Look at him.” Monster had stretched out sideways on the grass with his mouth open and his tongue out. “He’s almost sixteen years old. He can barely walk. You want to be a grown-up? Being a grown-up means making tough decisions and living with them.”

  Kick clenched her teeth. Tough decisions? She’d made decisions tougher than her mother could even begin to imagine. If that’s what made a grown-up, Kick was middle-aged. Paula was the teenager. “He slept in a crate in Marnie’s room,” Kick said.

  Paula’s mouth twisted.

  “Monster slept in Marnie’s room,” Kick repeated, enjoying the rising color in her mother’s cheeks. Kick had known all along. Her sister had thrown it in her face enough times. “In her room, not with you.”

  “Your father is allergic,” Paula sputtered.

  Kick’s father had bailed on them almost ten years ago. At some point they’d have to start referring to him in the past tense.

  Kick rolled her eyes and gave Monster’s harness a tug so he’d stand up. “I have to go.” She wanted to make a breezy exit, but it took some doing to unwind Monster’s leash from the bench.

  “Burn the letter,” her mother ordered. She looked pointedly at Monster. “Or I will take control of your affairs.”

  Had Paula really just threatened to euthanize her dog? “You wouldn’t,” Kick said.

  “I’m not afraid of you hating me, Kit,” Paula said. “You decided to hate me a long time ago.”

  “You don’t get it,” Kick said, pulling Monster closer to her. His white eyes were half closed. His ear twitched. He had been such a sweet puppy. When Mel appeared out of nowhere and told her he’d help find him, Kick had been so grateful, she hadn’t even questioned it. “I lost him once,” she said. “I’m not losing him again.”

  “That was fifteen years ago,” Paula said. “You’ve been back with us for ten.” She tried to put her hand on Kick’s arm, but Kick backed away. “A decade,” her mother said, as if that were any sort of length of time at all.

  Ten years to the day, but who was counting?

  “I have to give you credit,” Kick said to her mother. “I thought you’d make a bigger deal about wanting some bogus family photo op today.”

  Paula took a step closer to Kick and cupped Kick’s face in her hands. “Long lens, kitten,” she said. She brushed a stray piece of hair off of Kick’s forehead and frowned at the faint contusion there. “It’s more flattering anyway,” she said. She gave Kick a wink, took a step back, snatched her white jacket off the bench, and jogged off.

  Kick turned slowly and saw a quick flash from the back of a black SUV, the telltale reflection of a camera lens.

  Paula was halfway across the park, a bobbing figure, getting more distant by the moment. The black SUV sped off with a squeal of rubber on concrete. Kick sank onto the bench, defeated. She should have taken advantage of the fact that Paula had removed her jacket. Kick knew four ways to kill someone with a jacket. Now she regretted not trying any of them out.

  Monster nuzzled at her feet. Kick gazed across the park. Her mother was gone. She reached into her pocket and extracted the envelope. It already looked the worse for wear, wrinkled, its corners bent. She examined it with a blank kind of resignation, then slowly tore it open and withdrew the letter from inside. It had been months since Kick had gone to the Trident Medical Group to get tested. She hadn’t told anyone, not even James. It was a simple blood test, funded by a prisoner rights organization. Full medical confidentiality. Kick had it all planned. The results would come back negative, she would be absolved, Mel would die, and that would be that. Kick had done the research. The odds of a kidney match between nonrelatives was 1 in 100,000.

  And if she was a match, well, it didn’t mean she had to do anything about it.

  Kick unfolded the letter and read it. She stared at it for a long time afterward, not knowing how to feel. Then she worked the letter back into the envelope.

  Across the park, the leaves on the trees were coming in and out of focus—one moment individual shapes, the next an indistinguishable blur.

  14

  SAN DIEGO SMELLED LIKE dust and salt, and it was exactly the same temperature indoors as it was outdoors. Beth was wearing her new blue swimsuit, an orange towel wrapped around her chest. The wet suit stuck to her skin. Her eyes burned from the chlorine. Everything was a little blurry. She blinked.

  There was a boy in Mr. Klugman’s kitchen.

  She hadn’t seen another kid up close in so long, she thought he might be imaginary.

  Neither of them moved.

  “Can I have a snack?” Beth asked.
r />   Mr. Klugman appeared from the dining room and Beth could see her father leaning back in his chair, watching through the doorway. He always watched her when Mr. Klugman was around.

  “Go back downstairs,” Mr. Klugman said to the boy.

  They had been in San Diego for two days. Mel and Mr. Klugman went to the store every day and came home with camera equipment and costumes.

  “Let them play,” Mel called from the dining room.

  The boy was eyeing her like she might bite him.

  Mr. Klugman shrugged.

  Beth wanted someone to play with. “What’s your name?” she asked the boy.

  The boy looked at Mr. Klugman before he answered. “James,” he said. “I’m James.”

  “Do you want to play in the pool?” Beth asked.

  “I’m not allowed,” the boy said.

  “Oh,” Beth said, with a rueful glance toward the pool in the backyard.

  Her father got up from his chair and came through the doorway and stood behind her, and she pressed herself back against him.

  “Why don’t you show her your room, James?” her father asked the boy gently.

  The boy gazed up at her father, right into his eyes. Beth could hear the blood rushing in her ears. Then the boy turned away and trudged across the kitchen toward the open door that led down the dark basement stairs. He looked back at her. “C’mon,” he said.

  Beth peeled herself away from Mel and followed him.

  15

  KICK DID NOT REMEMBER walking home from the park, so she was surprised when she found herself sitting on the front steps of her apartment building, Monster on his haunches next to her, head cocked attentively. The envelope from the Trident Medical Group was back in her hand. She touched her forehead and winced.

  “I told you to get that checked out,” Bishop said.

  Kick whirled around, disoriented. Bishop was leaning against her building’s front door. She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them. There were two Bishops, actually—superimposed, one just slightly to the left of the other, both wearing black baseball caps, black jeans, and gray T-shirts. They merged and stopped shimmering. Kick stuffed the envelope back into her pants pocket, then got to her feet and pulled the keys from her other pocket so she could get inside and Google “concussions.”

  “We need to talk,” Bishop said as she approached.

  “Every time I talk to you, I regret it,” Kick said. “You’re not even a real person.” She had to concentrate to walk straight, had to think about placing one foot in front of the other. Monster pressed against her calf, as if trying to give her ballast. But when they got to the door, Bishop didn’t budge. A scar on his throat turned up slightly on each side. It looked like it was smiling at her.

  “Move,” Kick said.

  Bishop stepped to the side. Monster leaned hard against her leg. If the dog moved suddenly, she’d fall. Kick looked at the key in her hand and went to insert it in the lock as she’d done a thousand times before. She missed. She tried again. Monster was panting. She jammed toward the lock again, and this time the door seemed to sink away from her, and the keys fell from her hand.

  Bishop caught her by the elbow as her knees buckled. She felt like she was floating, like the laws of gravity had changed. It took her several moments to get her bearings. Bishop didn’t say anything. He just held her firmly, at a decorous distance, while Monster circled, nose in the air, whining softly.

  “She’s okay, buddy,” Bishop said to the dog. “I got her.”

  Monster glanced at Bishop and then put his ears back and settled down in the space between their feet.

  “I got you,” Bishop told Kick. The grooves her nails had dug into his forearms were starting to scab.

  “I’m fine,” Kick said. “I just need a second.” She practiced her intentional breathing and tried not to stare at Bishop’s scar. Her hair felt sticky with sweat. Her clothes stunk. He kept holding her. His fingers pinched her skin, but she didn’t care.

  “See? I’m real,” he said.

  Kick felt a feathering of nerves in her stomach. “I meant on the Internet,” she said. “James researched you. He used a custom-designed neural”—she searched her foggy brain for the right words—“something.”

  “A neural network filtering algorithm,” Bishop said.

  “Right. That,” Kick said. She balled up her hand and then opened it between them. “Poof,” she said, showing him her empty palm. “Nothing.” She lost her balance, and Bishop tightened his grip.

  For an instant Kick thought she’d caught him looking at her with an expression something like concern, but then it was gone, and she wasn’t sure it had ever really been there. “How did you do it?” she asked him. “How did you erase yourself?”

  “I told you,” Bishop said. “I have a lot of friends.”

  “Can they help me?” Kick asked, regretting the words even as they left her mouth. She hadn’t meant to blurt it out.

  Bishop recoiled slightly, like he’d been burned, and he loosened his grip on her. “Erase your image from the Web?” he said.

  She held her breath.

  “No,” he said, firmly. “No, Kick. They can’t.”

  Kick’s disappointment acted like smelling salts. It cut through the mental haze; everything was clarified. She shifted her weight to her own feet. “Let go of me,” she said.

  Bishop removed his hands, swooped down for the keys she had dropped, and placed them in her hand. “Double vision,” he said as his fingers closed around hers, the keys in her palm. She steeled herself against his touch, growing armor over her skin. “Loss of balance.” He was moving his hand up along the length of her arm, his fingers just above her skin, not quite touching her. “All expected side effects of a concussion.” His hand hovered at the side of her face, then he brushed a stray piece of her hair behind her ear. “This is the worst of it.”

  Kick turned her head away from his hand and concentrated on putting the key in the lock. “Fucking a paramedic doesn’t make you one,” she said, pushing open the door.

  “Ah, another classic symptom,” Bishop said. He followed her through the door into the lobby. “Irritability.”

  Kick pulled Monster toward the elevator as Bishop tagged along, reaching down to pet her dog.

  “I’m not going with you this time,” Kick said. “Whatever game you’re playing, I’m out. You’re rich. You’re bored. I get it. You want a hobby. You sold guns. Now you feel bad about it. So you want to track down missing kids. Whatever. I have a headache. And I want to lie down.”

  “You can’t, Kick. I’m sorry.”

  His expression was impenetrable. The elevator dinged and the doors opened. Kick made a slight movement and he blocked the elevator door with his arm.

  “Mia Turner had something you might be interested in,” Bishop said.

  Kick tugged Monster’s leash and stepped back, away from Bishop. He didn’t make a move to come after her. He kept his head down, his cap obscuring his eyes, like someone who was good at disappearing, like someone who had a reason not to be noticed; Kick recognized the tactics. Her eyes went up to the lobby security camera mounted in the ceiling corner. The camera. Bishop was positioning himself so that he couldn’t be identified on the video feed.

  The elevator doors had closed behind Bishop’s arm. Someone who didn’t want to attract attention wasn’t going to risk making a scene. Kick stepped forward and reached around Bishop to press the elevator button. The car was still on the first floor, so the doors opened instantly. Bishop raised his eyebrows. She ducked under his arm and pulled Monster into the elevator with her.

  “You can’t walk away from this,” Bishop said, letting his arm drop.

  Monster looked back and forth between Kick and Bishop.

  “Kick?” Bishop called as the elevator doors closed.

  He tossed something t
hrough the narrowing gap between the closing doors. Kick caught it in her fist. She didn’t want to open her hand, because she knew what it was, what she’d find in her palm. She could already see it in her head, the shape taking form in her imagination. She felt a stab of vertigo as the elevator went up, up, up.

  Kick opened her eyes and unclenched her fingers, revealing the Scrabble tile, the letter E. The elevator stopped and the doors opened on her floor. She could see her apartment door across the hall. James’s apartment was a mirror below it, a matching set. He was home right now and he’d know what to do. All Kick had to do was select the second floor, and ride the elevator down, and step off when the doors opened. Her hand hovered over the button. But her finger didn’t select his floor; instead she pressed L, for “Lobby.” Monster pulled at his leash, disoriented. The elevator began its descent. The doors opened.

  Bishop was standing exactly where she’d left him. He stepped into the elevator and hit a floor without looking at the buttons.

  The doors closed.

  “It was found in Mia’s pocket,” he said.

  He inserted a small key into a keyhole on the elevator control panel and Kick felt the elevator halt with a bump.

  Bishop took off his cap and ran his fingers through his hair. “You should think about installing a camera in here,” he said, looking around. “You’d be amazed how much crime goes on in elevators.”

  Kick stared, mesmerized, at the nineteen-millimeter-by-nineteen-millimeter wooden tile in her hand. It was almost weightless yet seemed to burn a hole in her skin. “Where did she get it?” she asked.

  “You first,” Bishop said. “What does it mean?”

  Kick glanced up from the tile. Bishop had his arms crossed, feet apart. The elevator remained frozen, a box in a wall. All the access Bishop seemed to have, and he didn’t know this? “I thought you knew Frank,” Kick said.