One Kick: A Novel

by Chelsea Cain

  Not today, she thought. Please, just don’t die today.

  Her gut tightened. She approached the bed slowly, arm extended, forcing each foot forward, the muscles in her face drawn into a grimace. She put a hand on the duvet, summoned all her courage, and snatched back the bedding like she was ripping off a Band-Aid.

  The air rushed out of her lungs in a sob of relief.

  It wasn’t Monster, just a balled-up sheet. The dog hair that she’d disturbed when she pulled back the bedding hung in the air.

  So where was he?

  Kick spun around and whistled again, so hard it hurt, so hard that James probably heard her two floors below. But Monster didn’t come. She had never realized before how much her apartment smelled like dog, how much dog hair there was.

  She heard it again: bthmmp, bthmmp.

  It was coming from the living room.

  Kick snatched Monster’s favorite bacon-flavored tennis ball off the floor and started down the hall with it. She was halfway to the living room when she noticed that her backpack had been moved.

  She stopped in her tracks.

  At first glance, the backpack looked like it was exactly where she had left it, on the floor inside the door to the apartment, propped against the wall. It was where she always left it when she went to punch the security code into the alarm pad. The backpack was facing the same direction it always did, shoulder straps against the wall. The zippers were still zipped. Except something was just a tiny bit off. It wasn’t the kind of thing anyone else would ever notice. But she had a blind dog, and she had places for things, and the place for that backpack was three inches over.

  Bthmmp, bthmmp.

  Kick squinted down the hallway. The living room lights were off. The Realtor had talked up the floor-to-ceiling living room windows as a selling point when Kick had bought the building. They let in so much light, the Realtor said over and over again. Kick installed blinds before she even finished unpacking: seeing out meant that other people could see in, and the last thing she wanted were telephoto-lens photographs of her in her living room ending up in Us Weekly. Now, when the blinds were closed, daylight barely penetrated.

  Kick squeaked the bacon tennis ball. “Monster,” she hissed, even though she knew he couldn’t hear her.

  She checked the alarm pad on the wall. She hadn’t even wanted the stupid thing; her mother had insisted on it. Kick could protect herself. Most of the time, she didn’t even set the alarm. But it was on now, the green light blinking contentedly. Then, as she was looking at it, it stopped blinking. The light went out. Kick drew her towel tighter around her chest. The pad’s digital screen was dark. She pushed the panic button and held it for four seconds. Nothing happened. She pushed “police” and “medical” and “fire.” They depressed silently, uselessly.

  Kick put her back to the wall.

  She knew she should get out of the apartment. It was Self-defense 101: Awareness is the best self-defense. Escape is the second. But she couldn’t leave without Monster. It was a promise she’s made to herself the first time they were separated: she would not leave without her dog.

  With a cautious glance toward the dark living room, Kick moved quickly to the backpack, knelt, and pulled the zipper open. The Glock was still there. She put her hand around the grip and removed it tenderly from the backpack. Mel had taught her how to shoot a .22, but it had been Frank who taught her how to shoot a .45. Kick held the Glock in one hand and the bacon ball in the other.

  Pfttnk, bthnnk. The hair on the back of her neck stood up. It was the same sound, but now she could hear it more clearly.

  Kick peered down the hallway. She knew that sound. She rolled the bacon ball around in her palm and then bounced it hard on the floor so it rebounded off the wall and back into her hand. Pfttnk, bthnnk.

  A ball bouncing.

  She let the ball drop from her hand, secured her towel, lifted the Glock, and started moving forward along the wall.

  Her bare feet were silent on the wood floor. She took slow, deep breaths through her nose, letting her diaphragm do the work instead of her lungs. She made herself quiet.

  Pfttnk, bthnnk.

  As she got closer, the darkness took on shape and texture. She could see only part of the living room from her vantage point, and none of the dining room or kitchen areas. But she could make out the geometry of the modern furniture that her mother’s decorator had picked out. One of the blinds was cranked slightly open and slivers of light penetrated between the slats, drawing bright stripes across the floor. Kick leaned around the corner, trying to see more, and followed a blade of light across the silhouette of her Eames-style chair.

  Something moved.

  Kick drew back and flattened herself against the wall.

  She had seen a foot, she was sure of it—as if someone were sitting in the chair and had shifted a foot back out of the light.

  She closed her eyes.

  She was not young. She was not soft. She was safe. She knew how to take out someone’s eye using her finger as a fishhook. She could shoot, and take a fall, and break someone’s trachea with a snap of her elbow.

  She opened her eyes, felt around the corner for the light switch, flipped it, raised the Glock and entered the room.

  The man sitting in her living room smiled at her.

  If Kick had not been so startled, she would have shot him.

  He didn’t look like a meth head out to steal her TV. She guessed he was in his mid-thirties. His dark hair was short and sculpted with a sharp part on the side. He was clean-shaven. But there was something about him that seemed off, something dead about his eyes. His face was gaunt and his features were all hard angles, light and shadow. His hawkish features made the smile seem menacing.

  He was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and the sort of fashionable sneakers you aren’t supposed to exercise in. The shoes looked new, never worn. A black blazer was draped over the arm of the chair, folded neatly. He didn’t have the comportment of someone in the midst of committing a crime. He was fit and long limbed, his body draped in the chair like he sat there all the time, like she was the one who’d barged in on him. One of his elbows was propped on the arm of the chair, and in that hand he held a purple tennis ball.

  He seemed to be expecting her.

  Monster was sitting at his feet, quivering with anticipation, his tail wagging.

  The man held up the tennis ball, then bounced it off the floor, against the wall, and caught it without looking. Monster followed the motion of the ball with his head.

  Kick moved her finger over the Glock’s trigger and aimed the sights at the man’s head. “Get away from my fucking dog,” she said.

  4

  THE MAN DIDN’T MOVE. Kick didn’t move. A trickle of cold water dripped between her shoulder blades.

  Then he let the ball go again.

  Again it hit the floor, bounced off the wall, and back into his hand. Again, Monster tracked it with his frosted corneas. Kick didn’t know if her dog could somehow hear that ball, make out a blur of color, of if he was just smelling it, but he was mesmerized.

  Kick inched closer, her eyes moving between her dog and the man. Her small steps were meant to keep the towel up as much as they were out of any sort of caution. She felt hyperaware of her body: the bottoms of her feet pressing against the floor, the air in her lungs, the way her eyelids stuck for a fraction of a second when she blinked. The Glock remained perfectly steady in her hands. Out of the corner of her left eye, she could see the orange plastic handle of the comb, still stuck in her hair. It was the same color as the man’s shoes.

  Now the room seemed too bright, too colorful, like spilled candy.

  Monster whined and nosed at the ball.

  “I guess Frank and I have something in common,” the man said smoothly.

  Kick hesitated at the mention of Frank’s name. Her eyes flicked to
the end-table drawer by the man’s elbow. She never responded to Frank’s Christmas cards, but she read them, and displayed them, and then saved them, in a stack with a rubber band around it, in that drawer. “What are you talking about?” Kick demanded.

  The man’s irises were dark gray, like stones. “Now you’ve pointed a gun at both of us,” the man said. He smiled some more. But his eyes remained empty.

  Kick didn’t like the way he looked at her. His gaze pulled at the roots of her hair. She took another step toward him, steadying the Glock. Her fingers were still wrinkled from the shower. “Who are you?” she demanded, trying to keep her voice calm.

  Monster’s ears perked up.

  “You can call me Bishop,” the man said, turning the ball in his hand.

  The way he said it made her wonder if it was really his name. Kick narrowed her eyes at him. Maybe if she shot him in the kneecap, he’d tell her something true.

  “Frank recommended you for a job,” Bishop continued. He let the ball go again, and it hit the same two points and then landed neatly in his palm.

  Monster barked for him to do it again.

  Kick eyed Bishop warily. There was something coiled about him, as if he were holding in something dangerous that he wasn’t ready to let out. “I don’t want a job,” she said.

  “Frank said you’d say that,” Bishop said.

  Kick didn’t like it when he said Frank’s name. It made her bite her tongue a little. “I haven’t seen Frank in years,” she said.

  “Well, he remembers you,” Bishop said. He tossed the ball up in the air with a flick of his wrist and caught it. Kick was getting tired of that ball; she was thinking about shooting it. Monster’s tail thumped rapturously on the floor.

  Kick let out a sharp whistle.

  Monster’s ears lifted and angled toward her. He leaned forward, but something was preventing him from moving. He pawed lightly at the floor, his nails scratching noisily against the wood, and Kick realized that he was straining against a short tether. Bishop had used it to secure Monster to the base of the chair.

  She crossed the rest of the room in three steps, stood in front of Bishop, and pointed the Glock squarely at his forehead. Monster scratched at the floor some more and strained to touch her knee with his wet snout. She inhaled his dog smell: flea soap and fur and old-dog stink.

  Bishop’s eyes darkened. He let the purple tennis ball drop from his hand. It bounced twice and then rolled under the red couch.

  “I told you to get away from my dog,” Kick said.

  “You don’t want to shoot me,” Bishop said. “You’ll ruin that lovely new gun. Firing an empty Glock puts tension on the firing pin. Pin could come loose. You know that.”

  Kick glanced at the Glock uncertainly. She had been so relieved to find it still in the backpack, she hadn’t thought to check to see if it was still loaded.

  Bishop’s face was absolutely, unnervingly still. Monster whined and pulled at the tether. “Personally, I’m not a fan of guns,” he said. “They make it too easy to hurt someone.”

  Kick’s brain was racing. A loaded gun and an unloaded gun felt exactly the same. There was only one way to know for sure. Kick ejected the magazine and her fingers went cold. The magazine was empty. She pulled the Glock’s beveled slide back and checked the chamber. Nothing. “Shit,” she said.

  Bishop reached up and took hold of the Glock’s barrel. “Want to know an interesting fact?” he asked. “People who keep guns in their homes have a 2.7 times greater chance of being murdered.” He moved his hand along the barrel toward the grip. Kick flinched as his fingers grazed hers, but she didn’t let go of the Glock.

  Bishop sighed. “Fine,” he said. “Let me try another tack.” His gray eyes settled on her. “Adam Rice,” he said.

  Kick stared at him, stunned.

  Bishop’s fingers moved over hers. She could barely feel the gun anymore. She couldn’t tell where her flesh stopped and the gunmetal started. He continued to try to pry the Glock from her grip, and she continued to cling to it. She thought about using it to bludgeon him.

  His eyes showed a flicker of impatience. One of his fingers moved to the inside of her wrist. “Mia Turner,” he said.

  Blood pounded in Kick’s ears.

  “Think they’re connected?” Bishop drew a small circle on her wrist with his fingertip. It sent shudders up her arms. Her hand opened, and he lifted the Glock from her palm and set it on the end table next to his chair. She couldn’t stop it.

  “Who are you?” Kick asked him.

  “An interested party,” Bishop said with a faint, dark smile. He reached into the pocket of the blazer and removed a handful of .45 GAP bullets and set all nine, one by one, on the end table next to the gun. “I wanted to make sure you wouldn’t shoot me,” he said. “Before we had a chance to talk.”

  Kick glanced at Monster. Monster growled.

  Bishop leaned back in the chair and regarded her with his dead eyes.

  Kick inched her right foot forward on the floor, between his orange sneakers, and softened her knee.

  Bishop’s eyes traveled slowly down the towel that covered her. He didn’t leer, but there was something about the attentiveness of his gaze that made her skin crawl. His eyes weren’t the color of stone, she realized. They were more the color of concrete. “I’ll wait,” he said. “If you want to change.”

  Kick brought her knee up, aimed, and snapped her lower leg forward. The ball of her foot connected with the crotch of his jeans. She could feel the give of soft tissue underneath the denim. He doubled forward and coughed hard like he was choking on something and then slid off the chair onto his knees on the floor. His hands cradled his midsection. His head was down, dark hair in his face, but she could see that his forehead was flushed and lined with pain. She adjusted her towel and waited for him to collapse fully. When he didn’t, she put her hand lightly on his shoulder and gave him a small push, and he fell over on his side on the floor into a fetal position. She knelt and hurriedly untied Monster’s tether.

  Bishop moaned, his knees clenched together, and rolled onto on his back. He looked like he was trying to talk, but he couldn’t stop grimacing long enough to get the words out. Pulling Moster protectively behind her, Kick snatched Bishop’s jacket from the back of the chair and started going through the pockets. She found a black leather wallet and flipped it open and shuffled through the contents, keeping one eye on Bishop as he struggled to get a breath.

  A Washington State driver’s license said his name was John Bishop. She pulled out other cards: a black American Express card with the same name on it, insurance cards, a private banking card.

  Bishop squirmed, his eyes following her.

  Kick put the wallet back into his jacket and felt around for anything else, her fingers landing on a folded piece of paper that was tucked in an inside pocket. She pulled it out and quickly unfolded it.

  It was a satellite photo of a house. The house had a rectangular roof, a second-story deck, and a large fenced-in backyard. There were neighbors on either side, but neither close enough to ask too many questions. A white SUV was parked in the driveway.

  Kick glanced down at Bishop, who was still on the floor. “Is this the car from the Mia Turner Amber Alert?” she asked.

  Bishop nodded at her, his face still tense with pain.

  “Why do you have this?” Kick demanded.

  “I wanted to show it to you,” Bishop said, gasping between each word.

  Kick studied the photograph. She needed to get this to the police. They could identify the people who lived in this house. They could identify the owners of the car.

  She sensed movement an instant too late.

  Before she had time to react, Bishop was off the ground and had one arm hooked around her waist, the other around her neck, the crook of his elbow pressed under her chin. The photograph fluttered t
o the floor. Kick tried to twist free of him, but he just tightened his grip. She flailed her arms around her sides, fingers curled to scratch, but he just moved with her, his body against hers, reading her, anticipating her movements. Monster was growling at the air, hackles raised, disoriented. Kick jabbed her elbow back, expecting to make contact with Bishop’s gut, but he just shifted sideways so that her elbow cut through the air, wrenching her shoulder. The towel loosened as she struggled, like she was sloughing off an extra skin, until the arm he had around her waist was all that was keeping it up. She was out of breath, panting and grunting. She managed to get a handful of Bishop’s T-shirt and heard a satisfying rip as the cloth tore before she lost her grip. She kicked at him, and he heaved her up off the ground so that she was flailing, unmoored, with no leverage, her blackened toe skimming the floorboards.

  She hated him.

  Monster was trembling now, ears flat against his head, tail tucked under. Kick could feel saliva on her chin. Threads of it snapped in her throat as she breathed. “It’s okay, boy,” Kick called. But Monster kept pacing.

  Kick’s hair was stuck to her face. The towel was around her waist, exposing her breasts. She couldn’t get Bishop off her by brute force. The pressure of his arms was unrelenting. He was stronger. He knew how to do this. But she was smarter. And she knew something he didn’t: she knew that she would not be forced to do anything against her will, ever again. She let herself go limp, to make her body heavy. Five years of yoga and progressive relaxation had been good for something. As her muscles softened she felt his grapple start to give, and then he slowly lowered her feet back to the floor.

  The gun was still on the end table, several arm’s lengths away, the bullets a neat line of brass soldiers beside it.

  Bishop hooked his left foot around her leg and then placed his orange sneaker on the floor between her feet, forcing her knees apart and securing her to the spot. Their embrace was so tight, she could feel his rib cage expanding against her as he breathed. His arm around her neck was like a choke collar, tightening if she made even a micromovement from where he wanted her to be. She could smell him, a faint clean odor like lime. She felt his arm unwind from her waist, and braced herself. Without his arm to hold it up, the towel dropped to the floor and Kick felt the air like cold hands on her naked body. Her stomach muscles went rigid. She tried to bring her thighs together, but it was impossible with the hold that Bishop had on her. He wanted her afraid? Well, screw him. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Monster nosed around her feet at the towel. Kick held on to the arm Bishop had around her throat. Goose bumps covered her skin; every hair was on end. But she didn’t try to cover herself, and her body didn’t give an inch.