One Kick

by Chelsea Cain

  Kick struggled, but it was like her mind and body had gone out of sync. Bishop got one of his arms over hers so that he had her from behind by the waist and had her forearms pinned to her chest. Then he spun her around and lifted her off the ground.

  He never stopped moving, never missed a step. He had her out of the office and was carrying her down the hall. He sounded like an animal, straining and grunting.

  It occurred to her that he was going to kill her, like he’d killed the dog.

  She caught sight of the front door ahead. Teslas were made in America; if he put her in the trunk, all she had to do was find the emergency release lever. Bishop shifted his hold on her as he turned the doorknob and used a foot to throw open the door and they stepped outside and onto the stoop.

  A blast of heat hit them from behind and they were thrust forward, and for a moment Kick felt her body lifted from Bishop’s arms, and they were both sailing through the air, bathed in bright light. A deep, hollow sound reverberated behind them, deafening everything. Kick didn’t have time to correct her fall: she hit the dirt face-first, skidding several feet before stopping. Debris rained down on her, she didn’t know what. She covered her head with her hands and waited. She lifted her head slightly to see where Bishop had landed and saw him a few feet away on the singed grass. The house was ablaze in orange. Black smoke billowed into the gray sky. Even where she’d landed, thirty feet from the stoop, Kick could feel the heat from the fire.

  Boom.

  “Remember that smell?” Beth had asked.

  Sulfur.

  Sometimes Kick had helped Mel make the bombs.

  Bleach.

  They had used it every time they moved. Leave no trace, Mel would say. It was the way of the Comanche.

  Kick lifted herself painfully to her hands and knees, her eyes fixed on the inferno that now engulfed the house. Beth was still in there. She was still in the box. Kick had to save her. She rocked back onto her feet and tried to stand, but her limbs felt foreign and the ground kept moving out from under her. She slid forward and her face hit the mud. I’m going to lose consciousness now, she thought.

  8

  AFTER A WHILE, KIT got used to the dark. It was her own little world. She had her own sleeping bag, and a nightgown, and a hairbrush, and a bucket to do her business in. She knew the room with her hands, the rough wood, the heads of nails, the soft padding on the walls. The man who called her Beth came every day. Each day he took the bucket, and each day when he brought it back it smelled like bubble gum. When he was there, Kit was as still and quiet as a mouse.

  Sometimes he brought food. Peanut butter sandwiches. Oreos.

  Today, when he brought the bucket back, he turned on a light.

  The brightness almost knocked her over. She was a bug under a rock, scrambling for some kind of cover.

  “It’s okay,” the man said.

  She was wrapped in a little ball. She was a potato bug. She was a pebble.

  “Look,” he said, “I brought you cherries.”

  Kit looked up, trying to get her eyes used to the stinging light. The man was sitting on the floor, at the light’s center. He had already lied to her. He had not helped her find her dog. But now he was holding out a white bowl. He tipped it forward, and it was full of cherries, and she had been in the dark so long that the red was extra red and the white was extra white.

  “Look what else,” he said. He set the cherries down on the floor and pulled a rectangular board game from behind his back, and a book. The book had a drawing of rabbits on the cover. “It’s one of my favorites,” he said. “It’s called Watership Down. I’m going to read it to you.” Then he tapped the board game. “And I’m going to teach you how to play this game. It says ages eight and up on it, but you’re a smart girl, aren’t you, Beth?”

  “You said you’d find my dog,” Kit said.

  “Your dog is safe, Beth,” the man said. “He’s home. You don’t have to worry about him.”

  Kit nodded and was grateful. If anything had happened to Monster, it would have been her fault.

  “But this is your home now,” the man continued. “With me and Linda.” He set the game on the floor and opened the lid. His blond hair was fine, like a baby’s. “Are you good at following directions, Beth?”

  Kit’s stomach growled and she snuck a peek at the cherries in the bowl.

  He unfolded the board from the game. It was covered with colored squares. “Draw seven tiles,” he said, “and I’ll teach you how to play.”

  She hesitated for only a second before she scooted forward across the wood floor, just close enough to reach into the bag. She took a handful of what was inside and eyed him across the game board as he drew his own letters and placed them one by one on a wooden rack. She looked around for her own rack and found one in the box and put it on her edge of the board and started setting up her wooden letters too. As she counted them from her fist to the rack, she realized that she’d drawn one too many. She should have put it back in the bag, but she didn’t. Instead, heart pounding, she hid it in her hand.

  “See if you can arrange your letters to make a word,” he said. He held her gaze. She was not used to grown-ups doing that, and her face got hot, and she wanted to let go of the tile, put it back, but she was afraid that she would get in trouble. The man smiled and picked up the bowl of cherries and held them out to her. “It’s your turn, Beth.”

  9

  KICK WOKE UP COUGHING, gasping for air. Something was pressed against her face, covering her mouth. She clawed at it, but something was in the way.

  “Easy,” a woman’s voice soothed. “It’s an oxygen mask. Deep breaths now, hon.”

  An oxygen mask?

  Where was she? Kick’s eyes stung. Her ears were ringing. The sky was dark and full of fireflies. She was on her back. Everything hurt. The smallest movement echoed through her skull. She felt grass under her fingertips.

  She blinked. There were sirens. She could feel people running past, their footfalls reverberating through the ground. Embers floated and whirled, hundreds of thousands of them, tiny stars. A dry heat puckered her skin. The house was on fire. The sound of the blaze was punctuated by exploding glass. Her eyes burned with grit; she could taste smoke. She strained to turn her head toward the orange glow, but the woman holding the oxygen mask to Kick’s mouth was taking up too much of her visual field.

  “Breathe,” the woman said. Kick could do that. That was easy. She’d had a therapist once—all they’d done was breathe; they’d breathed for hours. Kick inhaled. Kick exhaled. Breathe. Check. The woman had a ponytail and a gold paramedic’s badge on her left pocket. A patch on her uniform sleeve read: King County Medic One. Exhale. Inhale. Check. The oxygen was making Kick a little light-headed. She felt the paramedic’s fingers find the inside of her wrist, between her bone and tendon, looking for a pulse. Her face flashed blue and red.

  The paramedic lifted the oxygen mask from Kick’s mouth. She leaned close. Her lips moved. She was wearing tiny silver stud earrings shaped like turtles.

  Kick heard sirens. Her face hurt. She didn’t know why. “What?” she croaked.

  The paramedic’s head came closer. “Where’s Beth?” the paramedic asked. “Is she still in the house?”

  Half the sky was orange. The other half was charcoal.

  The ponytailed paramedic had the oxygen mask back over Kick’s mouth. “It’ll be all right,” she said. “We’ve called your mother.”

  Kick vomited. The paramedic pulled the oxygen mask away and rolled Kick onto her side.

  Inhale. Exhale. Check.

  Now there was a man squatting in the grass next to her. A fine sheen of sooty sweat gleamed on his olive-colored skin, and the knees of his pants had grass stains on them. A gold detective’s badge hung around his neck. Kick stared at him, trying to make him come into focus. His black hair was flecked with white.

  The detective smiled at Kick and then gave his head a shake, and the white flecks fell out of his hair.
r />   “Ash,” he said.

  She watched as the white flecks floated away behind him.

  The fire made a sizzling sound, like frying flesh. Even from across the yard, she could feel the heat on her face. Through the flames that engulfed the house, she could see that the entire second floor was already skeletal, burned down to the studs. Water from the fire hoses turned to steam.

  “They’re letting her burn herself out,” the detective explained. “Her?” He pointed to another part of the yard. “That’s where you landed,” he said. “Blast threw you almost thirty feet. I’d say you got out of there without a second to spare.”

  She was thirsty. Her head felt funny.

  “Bishop saved your life,” the detective said.

  “No,” Kick said through her fog.

  “He told us everything,” the detective said. “The body,” he continued. “The hidden room. The fact that someone was using the house to hide abducted kids.”

  Kick made a noncommittal noise.

  “Unfortunately,” the detective continued, “any evidence, including the corpse, is now charcoal. But we can name the people who lived in this house as persons of interest. The media will pick it up. Might lead somewhere.”

  A thought formed in Kick’s rubbery brain, and she pushed it to the surface. “The dog,” she said.

  The detective’s eyebrows knitted.

  “Bishop . . . killed . . . Lassie.” No, that wasn’t right. Her head throbbed. “A collie. He killed a collie.”

  “A three-legged collie?” the detective asked.

  Kick looked at him uncertainly.

  “Turn around,” the detective said.

  Kick looked over her shoulder. A three-legged collie sat at the edge of the yard, nose in the air, alert and definitely alive.

  “First responders found her loose in the yard,” the detective said, “barking at the fire. Looks like she busted loose from her collar. The people across the street say she lives there.” He nodded at the house next door. “But they’re not at home. Animal Control is around here somewhere. They haven’t been able to catch her yet. She’s fast for an amputee.”

  This didn’t make sense. “Maybe he killed a different three-legged collie,” Kick said.

  The detective scratched the back of his neck and looked at her funny. “Sometimes,” he said, “a blow to the head can cause this kind of stuff.”

  She had not imagined it. She did not imagine dead dogs. She tried to stand.

  “I’m not sure you should be doing that,” the detective said.

  Kick braced herself on his shoulder and forced three words through her gritted teeth. “Where. Is. He?”

  • • •

  The detective was gone. The ponytailed paramedic was back. Kick, fueled by adrenaline, weaved around patrol cars and in between fire hoses, searching in the direction the detective had pointed her in, as the paramedic tripped along behind her. She could see the satellite dishes of news vans over the other side of the front hedge. But no cameras. The press was being kept at a distance. She found Bishop perched on the back bumper of an ambulance, shirtless, and bathed in the headlights of a nearby fire truck. Kick stomped toward him in her socks, wondering if he’d even bothered to check on her or if he’d just left her there, unconscious in the yard. He had the nerve to smile when he saw her, half his face blackened with soot, blood in his ear.

  Kick slapped him across the face as hard as she could.

  The force of the blow knocked Bishop sideways, revealing a startled paramedic behind him, a blood-tipped scalpel in her latex-gloved hand. A suturing kit was open at her side: a syringe, a hemostat, forceps, gauze, sutures, and all the bloody slivers of wood that the paramedic had already extracted from Bishop’s back. “Oh,” Kick said.

  Bishop grimaced and sat back up.

  Someone grabbed Kick from behind, pinning her arms, which was okay with Kick because she wasn’t sure she could stand much longer on her own.

  “I’m fine,” Bishop said. “Let her go.”

  Kick barely managed to stay upright when the ponytailed paramedic released her. “We’ve been pulling wood out of him for an hour,” the paramedic said. Kick could see his wounds now, a dozen of them, many already cleaned and sutured. A few splinters, the size of toothpicks, were still visible under his skin.

  Bishop’s paramedic used a gauze pad to wipe up the blood from the wound her scalpel had unexpectedly inflicted. “Sorry,” she said.

  “My fault,” Bishop said, with a look at Kick that said otherwise. “I shouldn’t have moved when you had a scalpel in my back.”

  “When I want you stabbed, you’ll know it,” Kick told him.

  “You have some anger issues,” Bishop said. “You know that, right?” His forearms had scratches on them, like he’d fought a cat and lost.

  The ponytailed paramedic was still hovering next to Kick. Too close. Crowding her.

  “She’s suffered a concussion,” the paramedic said to Bishop. “She’s agitated.”

  “She’s always like that,” Bishop said. His abdominal muscles tensed and the paramedic in the ambulance dropped a four-inch splinter on the tray.

  Kick refused to be distracted. She jabbed a finger in Bishop’s face accusingly. “You didn’t kill the dog,” she said.

  Bishop’s cheek was red where she’d slapped him. He looked at her with bewilderment. “You’re angry I didn’t kill a dog?” he asked.

  She saw the paramedics exchange a look, like she might need to be subdued.

  “I don’t like being lied to,” Kick said, clarifying.

  She caught a sudden, strong whiff of vomit and had the vague sense that it was in her hair. She didn’t remember throwing up. She needed a shower. “Where’s my backpack?” she asked Bishop, searching the ground around his feet.

  Bishop took a moment to answer. Then, with what she thought might be just a hint of merriment, he directed her gaze to the burning house.

  Kick pivoted toward the two stories of flames. She shook her head emphatically, refusing to believe it. He’d picked the backpack up after she dropped it. She remembered. “No,” she insisted. Emotion welled in her throat. She had to choke it back to keep it down. She looked at Bishop pleadingly. “You had it.”

  The paramedic behind Bishop threaded a black suture through his skin like she was sewing up a Thanksgiving turkey. He barely registered it. “I must have dropped it while I was trying to save our lives,” he said evenly. He turned his forearm up, displaying the cat scratches. “Thanks for these, by the way.”

  Kick looked at her hands. One of her nails was broken. Those last minutes in the house were hazy, but whatever she had done, he had it coming. She turned her face back to the flames. Part of the skeletal second floor had caved in on itself. They’re letting her burn herself out. By morning “she” would be reduced to ten feet of cremated rubble. Kick could feel the grit of ash in her eyes, on her eyelashes. Her beautiful Glock. No gun could survive that kind of sustained heat. It was lost.

  “Are you crying?” Bishop asked incredulously. “Because that very expensive automobile we drove here in is now a burned-out metal husk, so if anyone should be crying, it’s me.”

  “It’s the smoke,” Kick snapped at him. It took a moment for what he’d said to sink in. The Tesla? She had left her composition book in the Tesla. “My worry book,” she whispered. She wouldn’t know what to worry about now.

  “Seriously?” Bishop said.

  Kick wiped the ash out of her eyes with the blanket. She was going down the worry maze, letting herself get overcome by negative thinking.

  “Am I free to go?” she asked the ponytailed paramedic. “Or do I need to give a statement first?”

  “You already gave a statement,” the paramedic said hesitantly. “To Detective Alva.”

  “Good,” Kick said, trying to seem as if she remembered that. “Then can someone call me a cab?”

  The ponytailed paramedic was starting to look a little alarmed. “Your mother’s coming. I c
alled her. Remember?”

  Kick coughed and vomit burned the back of her throat. The paramedic was talking to Bishop now, a hand worrying one of her turtle earrings. “We always look for ‘Mom’ in the person’s cell phone contacts in a situation like this,” she was saying. “I’ve already explained this to her,” she said. “She keeps forgetting. It’s the concussion.”

  Not her mother. Anyone but her mother. “No,” Kick said.

  “She needs to be monitored through the night,” the paramedic continued. Maybe the earrings weren’t turtles. Maybe they were tortoises. Kick didn’t know the difference. The other paramedic’s elbow went up and down as she threaded another suture into Bishop’s shoulder blade. Kick must have looked stricken, because the paramedic with the ponytail gave Kick’s arm a reassuring pat. “Your mother will be here within the hour,” she said.

  “No,” Kick said again. Her brain felt soft and thick, like ice cream.

  “It’s either that or we admit you to the hospital,” the paramedic said.

  “I said no hospital,” Bishop said. “No media. No paperwork.”

  The ponytailed paramedic gave Kick a nervous glance and leaned a few inches closer toward Bishop. “Do you know who ‘Beth’ is?” she asked him.

  Kick didn’t know why the paramedic kept bring Beth up. Beth was dead.

  “She kept asking for her when she was coming to,” the paramedic continued.

  Everything was wavy, like Kick was looking at it from the surface of a rippling pond.

  Bishop rubbed his face with his hands and sighed. His gray eyes looked blurry. The paramedic behind him tied off a suture. “Fuck,” Bishop said to no one in particular. He looked at Kick, studying her again, like he was trying to get to the bottom of her. She’d seen that look on cops and therapists. His eyebrow lifted. “You’re crazier than I thought,” he said.

  “I have dirt in my mouth.” It was the last thing Kick remembered saying before losing consciousness.

  10

  THE CEILING WAS FAR away, with exposed wooden beams that came together at unnatural angles. Kick started to sit up, but a pair of hands on her shoulders stopped her. Bishop was standing over her, wearing a red robe.