One Kick

by Chelsea Cain

  “Is anyone meeting us there?” she asked.

  “Like who?” Bishop asked, merging right, across two lanes.

  “The cops? Your bodyguards? Blackwater mercenaries? Your royal footmen?”

  “It’s not called Blackwater anymore,” Bishop said.

  That wasn’t the point. “It’s just us?” Kick asked. Her throat constricted slightly. “We’re going to a house that might be connected to two child abductions, and it’s just us?”

  “That’s the point.” Bishop veered right and exited the interstate. He didn’t lift his foot off the gas. Accelerating is the hardest thing a car can do; the more you kept your foot on the gas, the better. “I just need you,” Bishop said.

  Was that supposed to make her feel better? Kick unzipped her backpack, moved her Glock to her lap, got out her worry book, and opened it.

  Bishop looked at her sideways. “What’s that for?” he asked.

  “It’s a worry book,” Kick said. “If I have a worry, I—”

  “I meant the Glock,” Bishop said.

  “Shooting the kidnappers.” Obviously.

  “No guns,” Bishop said firmly. “I don’t like guns.”

  Everything about this guy made Kick’s head hurt. “I thought you were a weapons dealer,” she said.

  “I used to be,” he said.

  Bishop was paying a lot of attention to the road behind them. His eyes darted between his rearview and side mirrors. “Keep a lookout,” he said.

  Kick twisted around so she could see out the back window. The street was quiet. She didn’t see any headlights behind them. She didn’t see anything. “For what exactly?”

  “We’re almost there,” Bishop said.

  Kick wiped the palm of her trigger hand on her thigh and then rewrapped it around the grip of the Glock.

  When people thought of Seattle, they thought of Craftsman houses and coffee shops and grunge guitar chords and sensible rain gear and guys throwing fish around at Pike Place Market. But Seattle had crappy neighborhoods, like anywhere. This was one of them. Split-level ranch homes with ugly yards, one after the next. There was nothing to walk to and no sidewalks to walk on. The only business Kick spotted was a burned-out low-rent motel surrounded by a chain-link fence and No Trespassing signs. Bishop took a left down a dark residential street. Televisions flickered in the windows. RVs sat in the driveways. The houses were big and cheap and indistinguishable. The road they were on snaked alongside the edge of the hillside and a No Dumping sign warned that there was a $5,000 fine for tossing trash below. A hundred feet later they came to a Dead End sign to the left of a fifteen-foot laurel hedge.

  It was the kind of neighborhood where people didn’t ask too many questions.

  Bishop pulled the car around the hedge, past a For Rent sign that promised 3+ bedrooms for $1,300, and up a gravel driveway. Kick’s body tensed and she inched down in her seat and tightened her grip on the Glock. This was not how she had imagined this going. Where were the helicopters? Where were the friends in the government? The gravel grinding under the tires seemed unbelievably loud. She peeked over the dash, which radiated a violet glow from the touch screen. The sky had faded to a bleak twilight and the house was dark except for a porchlight, but Kick recognized it from the satellite photo, a split-level ranch like all the rest, except more isolated. Bishop pulled to a stop. He braked so expertly the gravel barely crackled. Then he opened the driver’s-side door, stepped out of the car, and left her. Kick hesitated for a second before she followed. Then she strapped on her backpack, tossed the worry book aside, and went after him. She raised the Glock as she exited the car, using the Tesla for cover. The smell of fresh paint fumes lingered in the air.

  Bishop was in the front yard, waiting in the shadows, looking up at the house.

  Somewhere, a dog started barking. Kick gazed at the cheerless house.

  Something wasn’t right.

  There was no white SUV to be seen. In the photo there had been a bamboo wind chime hanging from the porch overhang. Now it was gone. Kick squinted up at the second story. The railing was empty. In the photo, there had been plants.

  A Realtor’s lockbox hung from the doorknob.

  Kick lowered the Glock.

  No one lived in this house. “When was the photo really taken?” she demanded.

  “I told you you wouldn’t need a gun,” Bishop said.

  Heat rose in Kick’s cheeks. She raised her weapon and aimed at the front of the Tesla. “I wonder what would happen if I put a bullet through the 1,000 pounds of battery under your hood,” she said.

  It was the first time she’d seen Bishop flinch. “The sat photo was taken ten days ago,” he said, eyes on the gun. “I didn’t get it until early this afternoon. I sent my people here immediately, but the place had already been cleared out.”

  His people? He hadn’t mentioned any people. What else wasn’t he telling her?

  She raised an eyebrow and flipped the safety off with her thumb. The Tesla was twenty feet away. Even in the low light, the hood practically gleamed. It would be like hitting the broad side of a barn.

  Bishop directed a worried look at his car and then reached into his blazer, withdrew a small spiral-bound black notebook, and opened it. “According to the landlord,” he read, “the occupant moved out ten days ago. Josie Reed, in her fifties. Worked at home. No kids living at the residence, neighbors think she might have had a boyfriend, but no one got a good look at him. She drove a decade-old Outback. Packed a U-Haul trailer and moved out in the middle of the night, no forwarding address.” He closed the notebook with a flick of his wrist and looked at Kick. “Josie Reed isn’t her real name,” he said. “She used a fake social, and the landlord never ran a background check. He owns several properties in the neighborhood but isn’t very hands on due to the fact that he is currently living in an assisted-living facility. He says he’s keeping her deposit.” Bishop scratched his temple. “Anything else you want to know?”

  “Why did you bring me here?” Kick asked warily. The dog was barking its head off now. No one yelled at it to shut up.

  “I wanted to know what you thought of the house,” Bishop said.

  “The rent seems a little high.”

  His gray eyes didn’t leave her. “Tell me about the house, Kick. Does it look right?”

  She knew what he meant. She had lost track of how many houses she had been moved to during her life with Mel. Forty? Fifty? They never stayed anywhere long. The houses changed, but their attributes remained the same. Each was ideally suited for one purpose: hiding a child.

  Kick took a tiny step back and slowly lowered the Glock. The bottoms of her feet itched. She tried to focus, to push back the tide of fractured images she was so practiced at keeping at bay. “You said she drove a Subaru?” she asked.

  Bishop nodded.

  Then it wasn’t her white SUV. “What did the boyfriend drive?” she asked.

  “No one noticed.”

  Kick scrutinized the house. The ranch style allowed for a big footprint, and a big footprint meant a big basement. “If I wanted to hide a kid,” she said, “I’d want a sizable basement like this one.” She peered at the basement windows closest to them. Both had been blocked from the inside with dark cloth. She cleared her throat. “I’d want a rental, month to month, ideally. Streets with no sidewalks means no foot traffic, few unplanned interactions with neighbors. I’d want a hedge around the property, or a tall fence.” She turned and looked behind them down the driveway. “I didn’t see any bikes in the yards we passed. I’d look for that too. I’d want a neighborhood without too many kids. Kids notice other kids in a way that adults don’t. And they talk to one another. So if a new kid moves into the neighborhood, all the kids know.” She snuck a glance at Bishop. He was studying her. Not the way that people usually did. She didn’t see any of the usual sorrow-tinged pity. But the weight of his attention still made her uncomfortable. She slipped the gun into the pocket of her jacket. “So, yeah,” she said, “the ho
use looks right.”

  “What else?” Bishop asked.

  He was still testing her. Kick didn’t like it. It made her feel like a child. “I don’t trust you,” Kick said. “I don’t even like you.”

  Bishop did not appear overly devastated by this news. “I don’t care,” he said. “What else?”

  “The chalk,” Kick said. “There’s a piece of light-blue sidewalk chalk on the porch steps.”

  “Good girl,” Bishop said.

  Good girl. The words sucked the air out of Kick’s lungs. Some words were like that: they circled her head like flies. She didn’t know why.

  When she was a kid, the shrinks told her she had anger issues. But she didn’t have anger issues, at least not the way that they meant. She was just angry.

  She had learned to redirect her anger since then, and to reduce triggers that led to aggression. She had used that last bit of pop psych to get out of her mother’s house during the emancipation hearing, because her mother—she was one giant walking rage-trigger. But redirecting was the most useful, and it was the only thing stopping her from body-slamming Bishop to the ground, because she wanted to, she really, really did.

  Instead, she stalked past him, over to the steps, and picked up the blue chalk. Take a time-out—that was always the first step on the anger management lists. Kick concentrated on the chalk. The edges were smooth where it had been dragged over rough concrete, used by a kid to draw pictures on the sidewalk. Kick’s fingers were blue with chalk dust. She smiled. What was the second redirection strategy? Identify possible solutions. She had to get inside the house and see for herself what was going on. Bishop was clearly some sort of unreliable psychopath. Kick snuck a peek at him, then looked away when their eyes met. She returned her attention to the chalk, rolling it between her hands until her palms were entirely blue.

  “Catch,” she said, and she tossed the chalk to Bishop—or, more accurately, tossed it at him.

  He snatched it easily out of the air.

  Kick nudged the heel of one boot off with the toe of the other.

  “That’s a bad idea,” Bishop said.

  She didn’t like that, how he seemed to know what she was going to do almost as soon as she did. What was the third redirection strategy? Think before you speak. Now, there was a lesson that had been drilled into her as a kid. She was thinking Bishop was a fuckwad, so she didn’t say anything. She got one boot off and then the other, and set it beside the first. Then she tucked the Glock in her backpack, strapped it on her back, and started walking the perimeter of the house, looking for her way in.

  “You don’t take constructive criticism very well, do you?” Bishop asked.

  Kick kept her eyes skyward. Even with the sun gone, light pollution from the city kept the clouds bright. For her purposes, it was better than a full moon.

  The second-story deck was her best shot. She visually backtracked down the side of the house, identifying her route: water meter, windowsill, gutter bracket, cable box, railing. What was the fourth redirection strategy? Get some exercise. She put the toe of her socked foot on the water meter, hooked a chalked hand around the window frame, and lifted herself upward.

  The barking started almost instantaneously, a steady yap yap yap, like artillery fire. It sounded like the same dog as before, close, but not too close, just some neighborhood K-9 wannabe who didn’t know how to mind his own business.

  She had to ignore it, to focus.

  Scaling the side of a house is a lot like rock climbing: it’s all about adequate handholds and footholds. The chalk helped with traction. Kick kept her center of gravity over her feet and pushed up with her legs, her braid smacking against her shoulder blades. The fading light was a challenge. She groped for another handhold, using the chalk for traction, and managed to find a cable box, then she found another foothold. The dog was going ballistic. The noise it made was crawling under her skin, made it hard to concentrate. She willed the dog to shut up. Climbing was all about solving one problem at a time. Power was relative to body size. Balance and flexibility were paramount. As long as you had three points of body in contact with the wall and you didn’t panic, you were fine. Having a high percentage of Lycra in your pants didn’t hurt either.

  She was almost there. But the dog was rattling her. She wished she had her worry book so she could add the dog to the list and worry about it later, but the book was in the car, so she had no choice but to do the worrying now. She craned her head over her left shoulder, in the direction it sounded like the noise was coming from. The laurel hedge that separated the house she was attempting to climb from the house next door had a dead spot where the leaves had shriveled, and it made a kind of window. There was light coming from the other side, and Kick swore she saw a flash of movement. She snapped her head forward. Sometimes it was better not to see the things that go bump in the night. Don’t look. Eyes forward. She managed to get a toehold on the cable box and was in the process of shifting her weight to it, when a sudden blast of pain shot through her foot. She caught herself as she cried out, biting her tongue so that her shriek came out more like a startled turkey gobble. It didn’t matter. The dog went bonkers. Kick lost her footing and barely managed to catch herself with her hands, clinging to the slats of the upper-deck railing as her feet scrambled in midair, searching for solid ground. The dog sounded like Cujo now, like it was horse-size and rabid. But one problem at a time. Kick knew she’d lost a toenail. She’d felt the pop as it caught. She found the cable box again with her foot, pushed off it with a grunt, and, using all her arm strength, pulled herself up just enough that she was able to hook her foot between the railing slats. She clung horizontally to the railing, twenty feet off the ground, and hoped that Bishop could see this. Not the slipping part but the awesome, badass recovery. The idea gave her strength as she clawed her way slowly over the side of the railing. She had to take a moment to catch her breath. Her big toe throbbed. Cujo was howling even louder than before. Kick moved onto her knees and crawled across the patio deck, to the railing nearest the dog. The house was dark but an outdoor fixture had been left on, and Kick could make out the general geography of the yard and the movement of a manic, barking shadow in the grass. There was an ancient cherry tree in the yard, massive and gnarled, and the dog was circling it. No, he was tied to it, or at least to a stake near the base of the trunk. From up here, the dog looked small and hobbled, pacing along with a weird hopping limp. As it moved closer to the light, its silhouette sharpened, and Kick recognized the distinctive shape of its long snout and pointed ears. Not Cujo. Lassie. Kick realized then, as it rounded the tree, why it moved so strangely. Her nemesis was a three-legged collie.

  Her fury at the dog was momentarily supplanted by her fury for its owner. What kind of jackass tied a dog up outside all night like that? The backyard was fenced in. It didn’t even need to be tethered.

  Then the dog’s howl went up a decibel and her sympathy for it instantly faded. Lassie was clearly on a mission, intent to wake up the whole block.

  Kick crawled along the balcony deck over to the sliding glass door and gave the handle a try. It was locked. She sat down, shrugged her backpack into her lap, and unzipped it.

  It was the sound that tipped her off, the bright, familiar, everyday zwippp of all those zipper teeth parting. The barking had stopped. Had Lassie thrown in the towel? Kick looked back over her shoulder. The twisted black branches of the neighbor’s cherry tree seemed to reach for her. Kick was tempted to peek back over the railing, to check on the beast, but she didn’t want to risk setting it off again.

  Focus on a task.

  That was the fifth redirection strategy.

  Mel had given her her first padlock the Christmas she turned eight. A Kwikset. He showed her how to pick the lock with a bobby pin. By New Year’s she could get it open in under ten seconds. Anyone could get into any lock. He brought her home a new lock every few weeks, each one heavier and shinier than the last. She kept them on a shelf in her bedroom and displaye
d them like dolls. By Presidents’ Day she could get into an Abloy Protec padlock in under five minutes. After that, Mel said she was ready for doors.

  Sliding glass doors were the easiest.

  Some people used crowbars to pop the handle off, but Mel had taught Kick how to leverage her body weight and push down at just the right angle. She leaned into it, using both hands, pushing so hard she wasn’t even breathing, and after ten seconds of pressure the handle snapped off cleanly into one hand.

  Kick was sweating now. But the handle was perfect. It had popped right off its screws like it was supposed to. She put the handle in her jacket pocket, and then took off the jacket and laid it on the deck. She dug the Leatherman out of her backpack, along with a penlight, folded out the flathead screwdriver, put the penlight between her teeth, and knelt down in front of the now-exposed lock mechanism. She had honed her lock-picking skills by practicing on the sliding glass door at her mother’s house. Out the front door in the middle of the night, around the side yard, and back inside through the sliding doors that her mother had paid for with Today Show money. Ten times a night sometimes. Her mother never had a clue.

  The mechanism on this door looked standard. The threaded shanks of the two screws that had held the handle in place were now exposed, as were two holes that hid the screwheads that operated the lock. Kick inserted the flathead screwdriver into each of the holes and turned the screwhead inside clockwise. This unsprung the lock. It was that easy. A clean entry, Mel had called it. When you left, all you had to do was use the screwdriver again to relock the door from the outside, then screw the handle back on, and there’d be no trace you were ever there. Any junkie with a brick could break into a house, but it took some skill to break in and out again without someone noticing.

  Kick returned the Leatherman and penlight to her backpack, shrugged the shoulder straps back on, and slid open the door. Venetian blinds were a bitch. They were ugly and loud and you could get tangled up in them if you weren’t careful. Kick took her time, inching sideways around the blinds. The room was dark and smelled overwhelmingly like bleach. Kick’s skin prickled. She could make out the general shape of the room, a box spring on the floor. A bedroom. The blinds shuddered in the wind behind her. The fumes from the bleach made her eyes water. Kick stepped forward, her socked feet padding silently on carpet.