One Kick

by Chelsea Cain

  She felt something begin to uncoil inside her and flood her insides with feelings. But the emotions were mixed-up, out of order. She tried to push them all away, but they screamed and twisted to get out.

  Frank was looking at her. She wanted him to stop looking at her.

  She thought the windows might break. The wind was so loud, she could hear it whistling through the walls. Thunder boomed above them. But this wasn’t like other thunder. It was rhythmic. It was getting louder and closer. The hall light fixture trembled.

  “Those are helicopters,” Frank said above the noise. “The guys from the main office like to make an entrance. Can I have the gun now?”

  She was splitting in two. She wanted to give the man named Frank the gun. She wanted to let go.

  Then the living room door opened and her father appeared. All her muddy emotions evaporated at the sight of him. He had come to rescue her. He would be so proud of her, remembering where to find the gun. She would shoot Frank for him. She would do exactly what he wanted. She had always done exactly what he wanted. All she needed was a nod and she would pull the trigger and kill Frank and her father would take her away from this.

  Frank had his hands in the air. She glanced at her father, waiting for his signal to kill, but her father’s eyes were downcast. Then she saw the FBI agent over her father’s shoulder. The agent went an angry pink when he saw her gun pointed at his friend. He elbowed her father hard in the back and he fell to the ground.

  Terror snaked in her belly. “Daddy?” she said. But he didn’t answer.

  The agent leveled his gun at her, the black barrel pointing at her. He was yelling, calling out to the others, the men upstairs. Her father was on his stomach, his cheek on the floor, his face turned away from her.

  “Lower your weapon, Agent,” the agent named Frank growled.

  Her eyes darted to her father, but the .22 didn’t waver. The helicopters were so loud now, she couldn’t think. They sounded like they were landing all around the house.

  She could hear the other men coming down the stairs. Everyone was inching closer to her.

  “She’s just a kid,” Frank said. “I’ve got this.”

  She had to shoot. She had to shoot them all.

  “Daddy?” she asked desperately.

  This time her father lifted his chin. His face was sweaty and red, and his wrists were still handcuffed behind his back. But his eyes were sharp and dangerous. “They killed your mother, Beth!” he hollered over the noise. “Autonuke! Now!”

  It was like a switch being thrown. All those drills they had practiced. She let her body take over. She flew down the hall, toward the back of the house, slipped into the closet under the stairs, went through the secret wall panel, pulled up the trapdoor on the floor, and scampered down the ladder one-handed, the gun still clutched in the other. She could feel the vibrations of the men chasing her, their boots pounding on the floor, as she descended into darkness. She jumped from the fifth rung, her bare feet landing on the carpet, and spun around to the desk where the computer screen’s aquarium screen saver was the only light in the room. She sat down with the gun in her lap and felt around the desk drawer for the thumb drive. A lionfish swam by. She inserted the thumb drive into the computer like her father had shown her. Then she hit the space bar on the keyboard. In a blink all the fish were gone and a blue window appeared on the screen. She had never seen the blue box before, but she knew what to do. A white cursor blinked at the bottom of it. She typed in one word: “autonuke.”

  Then she sat back in the desk chair, brought her knees to her chest, and waited.

  She could hear the FBI agents arguing above her and she knew that they would come down the ladder soon and lock her up forever, but she didn’t care. She had done what she was supposed to do.

  Finally, the trapdoor opened, and she glanced up to see Frank peering down at her. She put her hand on the gun.

  “Can I come down, Beth?” he called.

  She saw other faces behind his, crowding into the rectangle of light, looking at her. New people. The people from the helicopters.

  “I still have the gun,” she called up.

  “I just want to talk to you,” Frank said. He said something to one of the new people and then swung his body over the edge and started down the ladder.

  She turned to the blue computer screen. “It’s done,” she said. “You can’t stop it.”

  Frank’s feet landed with a thud. She hoped his shoes weren’t too muddy. Her mother didn’t like the carpet to get dirty. Frank stepped beside her and peered at the computer screen, his hands on his hips. She saw the words “autonuke complete” reflected in his glasses.

  “You deleted the files?” Frank asked. She could tell he was trying not to sound angry.

  She made herself small in the chair. The white of her nightgown looked blue in the light from the computer, and the giraffes were faded. It hadn’t fit for years. She stretched the hem over her knees.

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?” Frank muttered. He moved so suddenly she thought he might hit her, but he was just reaching for the light switch.

  Their basement movie studio lit up. Four sets: a princess bedroom, a classroom, a doctor’s office, and a scary dungeon. Beth’s father took each set apart into pieces and packed it every time they moved. She wasn’t allowed to touch the cameras. She had to be careful not to trip on all the black cords that snaked across the floor.

  Frank spun slowly back to her. Her father had said that people would look at her differently if they knew. He said that it would make grown-ups angry. But Frank didn’t look mad. He looked a little scared, like she was a bomb that might explode if he didn’t figure out which wire to cut.

  “Agent Moony?” a man hollered from above them. “You okay down there?”

  Frank took a moment to answer. He probably hadn’t seen movie sets before.

  “Frank?” hollered the man.

  “We’ll be up in a minute,” Frank called. His eyes moved from one set to the next. “Then you’ll want to see this,” he added.

  The basement air tasted like mildew. The basements always tasted like that.

  Frank wasn’t saying anything anymore. He was just rubbing the back of his neck.

  “Is my mother alive?” she asked.

  He took his glasses off and cleaned them on his shirt. “I don’t know who your mother is,” he said gently.

  “Linda,” she reminded him. She twisted the hem of her nightgown around her fingers. “She shot herself.” She knew about caliber size. The faster and heavier a bullet was, the more damage it caused. Some people survived gunshots to the head. “I’ll know if you’re lying,” she said.

  Frank hooked his glasses back over his ears and stared at her for another moment. His eyes were wide. His red eyebrows and beard were streaked with blond, like he’d spent time in the sun. Even his ears had freckles. “She’s dead, Beth.”

  She pulled at the nightgown, stretching the giraffes. “Oh,” she said. Hot snot filled her nose, and her eyes burned, but she didn’t cry. “She was nice. She couldn’t have kids, you know.”

  “Is that what they told you?” Frank said.

  “They took care of me,” she said.

  Frank knelt beside her chair so that they were eye to eye. “I need to know: Were there any other kids?”

  His glasses were octagons, not ovals. His shaggy curls were still wet from the storm; his beard sprouted wildly in all directions. Men were supposed to shave every day. It was a sign of discipline. “I want to stay with him,” she said.

  Frank looked pained. “I’m sure that your family has never stopped looking for you,” he said.

  She wondered if that was true.

  Frank hadn’t done a very good job cleaning his glasses. She could see his fingerprints on the lenses. But his eyes seemed nice enough.

  A dog was barking outside. Not theirs. They didn’t have any dogs. She wasn’t allowed.

  “How old are you now, Beth?�
�� Frank asked her.

  “Ten.” She hesitated. Her chest hurt. It felt like someone was squeezing it. “But . . .”

  He raised his sun-bleached eyebrows at her.

  She could still hear the barking. Or maybe it was just the screen door banging. She didn’t know. Her skin felt hot.

  “I had a dog once,” she said, remembering.

  Frank was motionless. “What was its name?” he asked.

  “Monster.” She felt warm tears slide down her cheeks. She was shaking. The memories were coming up her throat. She had worked so hard for so long to swallow them down. It was a relief. “My old birthday was in April,” she added, wiping her nose with her hand. “Mel changed it. So I guess I’m actually eleven.”

  Frank squinted at her and tilted his head. He was close, but not too close. “How long have you lived with Mel?”

  She thought for a moment, trying to piece the details together. “Monster used to run away. I was in the front yard looking for him, and Mel said he could help me find him. He said he’d drive me around the neighborhood. I was in first grade.”

  “What’s your name?” Frank asked, and she heard the crack in his voice.

  Her name. She knew it. She could feel it under her collarbone. It was like having a word at the tip of your tongue, when you can see it, the shape of it, but you can’t quite remember what it is. She concentrated. “Kick?” she guessed.

  He tilted his head more and leaned forward a little. “What did you say it was?”

  “Kick?” she tried again. But that wasn’t it. Something close to that . . .

  “Kit?” Frank said. “Do you mean Kit Lannigan?”

  It was like she had touched an electric fence, that feeling of all your cells crying out at once. She scrambled backward in the chair. “We’re not supposed to say that name,” she whispered.

  Frank’s eyes ran over her features. “It is you,” he said.

  She was seeing faces, images, flashes of color. She couldn’t breathe. Everything was unraveling. “I didn’t mean to let Monster out,” she said quickly, the words tumbling out. “I opened the door to get something off the porch and he just slid out before I could stop him.” She swallowed a wet hiccup and put her hand over her mouth. “It’s my fault,” she said between her fingers.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Frank said. He looked like he wanted to pat her hand but he didn’t. “Easy,” he said. “It’s over. It’s over now. No one’s mad at you about the dog, I promise you. You’re not in trouble.” He dug something out of his pocket. “Here,” he said, extending his hand, palm up. “I think you dropped this.” Her father’s Scrabble tile lay in his palm. Kick reached tentatively for it.

  “It’s okay,” Frank said. “Take it.”

  She plucked the tile from his hand and squeezed it in her fist until her hand hurt.

  Frank rocked back on his heels. “Kit Lannigan,” he said. “Holy shit.” He was blinking at her, mouth open. “You’ve been away a long time.”

  Behind Frank, she could see the canopy princess bed, pink and frilly. She was shaking. She couldn’t stop. “It’s over?” she asked.

  Frank nodded. “The worst part is, kiddo.” And he smiled at her, and she knew she was supposed to smile back, to be happy, but she couldn’t find the right feelings inside.

  It was like dying. That’s what Mel had said. Kit is dead, he’d told her. Now you are Beth. But now Beth was dead too. And if Kit was dead, and Beth was dead, then she was someone new, someone who didn’t even have a name.

  “So what happens now?” she asked numbly.

  “Now I take you home,” Frank said.

  1

  TEN YEARS LATER

  KICK LANNIGAN AIMED THE sights of her Glock, lined up the shot, and squeezed the trigger. The paper target shuddered. Kick inhaled the satisfying smell of gunpowder and concrete and squeezed the trigger again. And again. She emptied the magazine. The gun barely moved in her hand. She had learned to shoot with a .22, but she’d been firing a .45 since she turned fourteen and first started coming to the shooting range. Even at fourteen, she’d known she wanted something that could bring down a bigger target.

  She laid the gun on the counter, pressed the button to reel in the target, and watched it flutter toward her. Half the targets they sold at the range now were zombies—everyone loved shooting zombies—but Kick preferred the old-fashioned black-and-white image of a square-jawed guy in a black watch cap. The target arrived and she inspected her handiwork. Bullet holes collected at the heart, groin, and center of the forehead.

  A blush of pleasure burned her cheeks.

  For the last seven years she had only been allowed to fire range rental weapons. Now, finally, she was firing her own gun. Some people went out and got drunk when they came of age; Kick had picked out a Glock with a ten-round magazine and applied for a concealed-weapons permit.

  The Glock 37 had all the performance of a .45 ACP, but with a shorter grip. It was a big gun sized for small hands. The beveled slide and sleek black finish, the finger grooves and thumb rests—Kick loved every millimeter of that pistol. Her knuckles were raw and the blue polish on her fingernails was chipped, but that Glock still looked beautiful in her hand.

  She glanced up from the gun and listened.

  The range was too quiet.

  The skin on Kick’s arms prickled. She set the Glock back on the counter and tilted her head, straining to hear through her noise-reduction headphones.

  The muffled crack of gunshots had been steady around her. There were only three people using the range that morning, and Kick had taken note of them all. Her martial arts sensei called it being mindful. Kick called it being vigilant. Now she listened to the muted shots around her and tried to pinpoint what had changed.

  The woman a lane over from Kick had stopped firing. Kick had seen the woman’s weapon when she crossed behind her, a pretty Beretta Stampede with a nickel finish and a revolving six-bullet chamber. The Stampede was a replica of an Old West gunslinger’s weapon, a big gun. Fire it at a car, and the bullet would pierce the body panel and crack the engine block. It was too much gun for that woman. Which was why Kick had noted it.

  The woman had fired all six rounds, reloaded, and then fired just three.

  Kick could feel her heartbeat instantly quicken. Her muscles tensed. Her calves itched. Fight or flight. That’s how the shrinks explained it. For a few years after she’d first come home, the feeling would overcome her and she’d just take off, pell-mell, on foot. Once her mother found her nearly five miles away in a Safeway parking lot. Her mother and sister had to force her into the car, screaming.

  Biofeedback. Meditation. Talk therapy. Drug therapy. Scream therapy. Sensory deprivation tanks. Yoga. Tai chi. Chinese herbs. Equine therapy. None of it had helped.

  It had been Frank who suggested letting her take kung fu when she was eleven. The FBI had transferred him to Portland to help get her ready to testify, and he told her mother that martial arts would give Kick confidence, help her get through the trial. But he probably knew she just needed to hit something. There was no getting her into the sensory deprivation tank after that. She started martial arts, boxing, target shooting, archery, and even knife throwing. Her parents thought she did it all to feel safe, and in a way they were right. She wanted to make sure that no one—not even her mother—would ever be able to force her into a car again. After her father left, she took on more: rock climbing, mountaineering, flying lessons—anything to keep her busy and out of the house.

  Kick scanned the floor for spent shell casings. Now when she felt the itch in her calves, she didn’t think about running; she thought about how to thrust her right arm forward so that the meaty part of her hand between her thumb and index finger connected with her opponent’s throat. She eyed a casing on the concrete and gave it a nudge with the steel toe of her boot and watched the brass cartridge rattle out of her shooting stall. Then she followed it. The woman from the next lane over was leaning up against a back wall, texting someone. Kick ha
d her sweatshirt hood up, covering her hair, headphones on top of the hood; she was wearing protective goggles, black jeans, boots, and a sweatshirt zipped up to her neck. She could have robbed a bank and gotten away unidentified. But this woman? She recognized Kick. She wasn’t even subtle about it; she inhaled so sharply, she almost dropped her phone. Kick instinctively turned her head to hide her face, reached for the shell casing on the floor, and stepped quickly back into her stall.

  Kick had not been a good witness in court. The prosecution had called her four times over the three months Mel was on trial. They wanted to know what she remembered about other people who had come to the house, other children, what she’d seen or heard, where they’d traveled. But there was so much that had faded into darkness.

  She had spent the last decade training herself to notice details.

  Tightening her fist around the still-warm spent cartridge in her hand, Kick conjured a picture in her head. The woman was in her mid-fifties and expensively maintained. She was in full makeup at nine a.m., and her black hair around her hot-pink noise-canceling headphones had been teased perfectly, which had to have required fifteen minutes and a mirror. Kick dropped the spent cartridge into a plastic tub with the rest of her shell casings. But she was at the gun range at nine a.m. on a Tuesday, so she didn’t work banker’s hours. No wedding ring. Some people took them off to shoot, but Kick guessed the woman didn’t know that. Kick glanced across the open lanes but couldn’t see the woman’s target. A middle-aged woman picks up shooting for self-defense, after a violent incident or a change of circumstance, like a divorce. The woman hadn’t been looking for Kick. She’d stumbled upon her. Now she was texting . . . whom? The hair and makeup could mean TV reporter. Kick didn’t recognize her, but then, Kick’s interest in the news was very subject-specific.

  Kick ejected the empty magazine of her Glock and reloaded it with ten .45 GAP rounds.

  The ten-year anniversary of her rescue was coming up. They always came looking for her before the anniversaries. Where was she now? How was she coping? Her mother was probably already angling for another Good Morning America appearance.