One Kick

by Chelsea Cain

  She freed her right hand and immediately transferred the wire to the keyhole on the left bracelet. She turned the notched wire. The locking device inside the cuff lifted. The bracelet opened. Kick glanced at the clock on the Porche’s GPS screen. It had taken her just over two minutes.

  Too long. She was distracted.

  She snapped the handcuffs back on and tossed the mutilated paper clip back into her bag.

  “You got a new car,” she said as she felt around her purse for another clip with her cuffed hands.

  “I have a lot of cars,” Bishop said.

  Kick located another paper clip, slid her purse from her knees to the floor between her feet, and began unfolding the wire in her lap. The dress came to her mid-thighs and her knees were pale and scabbed with scrapes. The wire straightened, Kick notched it in the right-side keyhole, extracted it, and then hooked the notch back into the hole at a ninety-degree angle, pointed toward the locking arm. Twist. Click. Spring. The air coming through the vents on the dash fluttered the hem of Kick’s skirt. She turned her attention to the left cuff. Her mother had bought her the dress. It was not something Kick would have picked out: pale yellow patterned with tiny daisies. It looked like bathroom wallpaper to her. She’d never worn it. She didn’t know why she’d chosen it today. Probably because it wasn’t anything like her; it belonged to some completely different person. The left cuff opened. She glanced at the time. Just under two minutes.

  “I shouldn’t have said that to you, that thing about putting on something nice,” Bishop said.

  Kick snapped the handcuffs on and tossed the straightened paper clip into the purse. “You don’t get to apologize and feel better,” Kick said. She bent forward, reached into her purse on the floor, and dug for a fresh paper clip.

  The truth was, she had torn apart her closet looking for the perfect thing to wear. Something Beth would like. Kick found a paper clip and bent it open.

  Beth liked yellow. Because it was Mel’s favorite color.

  “Are you going to be doing that the whole drive?” Bishop asked.

  It took an hour to get to Salem, Oregon, the state capital and home of the state penitentiary.

  Kick jammed the end of the wire into the first hole. Her wrists were sore from overflexing them, and faint red welts had started to form. “It relaxes me,” she said.

  17

  THE OREGON STATE PENITENTIARY was surrounded by guard towers and a twenty-five-foot wall topped with razor wire. Even after an hour to prepare herself, the prison appeared too soon, and Kick regretted the fact that there hadn’t been a multivehicle accident to slow down the interstate. The gray Taurus that had been tailing them since they left Portland had dropped out of sight when they exited I-5. She knew that Bishop had seen it too. His eyes had returned, again and again, to the rearview mirror. But he hadn’t said anything, and he hadn’t tried to lose it.

  She tossed the cuffs back in her bag as they were waved through the prison gates. The guards seemed to know Bishop by sight. He steered around the compound of institutional buildings and found a place to park like he’d been here before.

  He didn’t try to give her a pep talk; he didn’t talk to her at all. When she got out of the car, she followed him. The closer she got to Mel, the more blank she felt. Like she was shedding herself, cell by cell, molting down to nothing.

  She could do that. She could disassociate.

  Reactive attachment disorder, one of her early shrinks had called it, when Paula complained that Kick wasn’t showing the proper level of affection.

  The spring after Kick’s rescue, Paula had shipped her off to a clinic in Colorado for a week of in-patient rebirthing compression therapy. Every day, two practitioners would restrain Kick, wrap her tightly in sheets, and then simulate contractions by sitting on her until she managed to “emerge from the birth canal.”

  If Kick hadn’t had an attachment disorder before that, she certainly had one after.

  Years later she had found the clinic’s report in some of her mother’s things. They’d diagnosed her based on how she scored on a set of twelve items, including “seeking comfort when distressed,” “responding to comfort when offered,” and “willingness to go off with relative strangers.”

  “Kick?” Bishop said.

  Kick looked up to find a prison guard in a blue uniform staring at her expectantly from the other side of a counter. A cacophony echoed from every surface: buzzers, walkie-talkie static, footsteps. Everything smelled like concrete.

  “Ask her again,” Bishop said to the guard.

  “You carrying any weapons, sweetheart?” the guard asked Kick. She looked at Kick with an air of professional boredom. If she recognized Kick, she didn’t show it.

  Kick pulled open her red purse and showed her the army fixed-blade survival knife, the recon camo tactical knife, a three-pack of throwing knives, the Leatherman, her lipstick pepper spray, a pouch of throwing stars, the handcuffs, and a pen with a steel tip that could be used as an emergency window breaker.

  “Anything else?” the guard asked.

  Kick unzipped one of the purse’s inside pockets, reached behind the envelope from Trident Medical Group, retrieved her nunchakus, and dropped them on the counter with a ka-thunk.

  Bishop gave the guard an apologetic smile. “She’s safety conscious,” he explained.

  The guard handed her the key to a locker and told her to put her arsenal in it. Then she put two orange vests on the counter. Bishop reached for one and started to put it on.

  “What are these?” Kick asked.

  “Put it on,” Bishop said. “If anything goes wrong, the guards will know not to shoot you.”

  Kick pulled the orange vest on over her dress.

  Once they cleared the metal detector, the first full set of metal bars closed behind them, and they were issued prison ID badges that clipped to their vests.

  Kick shed another layer of skin.

  Bishop gestured for her to follow him, and Kick had the uneasy realization that they were not going to get an escort. “I know where I’m going,” Bishop said, already walking. She followed him. It came easily, matching his steps as they moved down cinder-block corridors. She found it comforting, actually. A strange type of surrender. When they came to a barred door, Bishop would hold his ID badge up to the security camera mounted above it, and the door would unlock with a pop. Kick kept her face neutral and her head down, trying to disappear behind her hair. But there was no way to blend in. The guards they passed were in uniform; the prisoners were in orange jumpsuits; she was wearing an orange vest with the number three ironed on the back. Bishop stopped. They were outside a large gray door stenciled with the word INFIRMARY. On the other side of the door, she could hear someone crying.

  This was really happening.

  She was rooted to the spot. She couldn’t move.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Bishop said, in a voice so light it was barely more than a breath. “Just tell me no,” he said. “I can’t make you see him.” He touched her arm. “Just say no and we walk out of here right now.”

  Kick pulled her arm away. “What happened to your brother?” she asked.

  Bishop hesitated.

  “The boys in the photographs at your house,” Kick pressed. “One is you.” She had wanted to knock him off balance, and for a moment it worked. “The other boy is your brother, am I right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened to him?” she asked.

  He regarded her warily. “What do you think happened to him, Kick?”

  “I think he died,” Kick said.

  Bishop’s face didn’t show anything. “He did die.”

  “I think he was murdered,” Kick added. “I thought maybe he was missing, but James and I searched, and we couldn’t find him. Which means he’s not missing. He’s dead.” Kick searched Bishop’s eyes for some sign of pain. If it was there, he didn’t let her see it. But she knew she was right. “That’s why you do this,” she said. “Why you don�
��t care what it costs.”

  Bishop was motionless. “That is very observant of you.”

  She turned away from him, toward the door.

  “I’m ready,” Kick said.

  18

  THE LAMINATE FLOOR OF the infirmary was the color of a swimming pool. It gleamed, reflecting the fluorescent lights overhead, so that the floor seemed to ripple like water. Bishop didn’t pause. He nodded at someone in a medical coat at the nurse’s station and then led Kick across the room, through the sea of hospital beds, to an area partitioned with hanging-curtain dividers. A TV was on somewhere. A black man about Kick’s mother’s age was sobbing in a hospital bed nearby. Kick could feel his eyes following her.

  When they got to the curtains, Bishop stopped. Kick reached out, lightly touching the thin cotton that separated her from Mel. It had a light-green checkerboard pattern, like children’s pajamas. Her fingers were trembling. She looked down at her legs. She never wore dresses bare-legged. Her legs were too pale and scabby and bruised. Her blackened toenails were visible through her sandals. Act normal, Mel would say. Above all else, fake it till you make it.

  He was right there. After all these years. She moved her hand into the fabric of the curtain. It was so light. Nothing, really. She moved forward, pushing the cloth to the side. The curtain rings jangled overhead. And then her hand touched air and the curtain fell behind her.

  Her heart was racing. She couldn’t look. She moved her hair in front of her right shoulder, the way that Mel had told her it was prettiest, and averted her eyes to the floor, emotions pressing at her throat. Bishop was right next to her; maybe he had always been next to her.

  She heard a cough and looked up.

  He had lost weight since she’d seen him in the courtroom. His blond hair had faded to the color of wet sand and had thinned to a fine, soft fuzz on top. His skin seemed delicate, almost transparent. He lifted his head weakly from the pillow. His lips were chapped. They cracked when he smiled.

  “There’s my girl,” he said.

  A flood wall gave way inside her. She felt everything all at once: the devotion, the fear. It was as easy as lowering a zipper. She had held so much in for so long. She had tried to do what people expected. She had been good. She had always done what he told her.

  She sobbed and lifted her hands to her mouth in surprise at the sound. But it was like being caught from behind by a wave, like a force of nature overwhelming her. She rushed, shaking, to a plastic chair at his bedside.

  His fingers struggled to touch her as his hands strained against the leather straps that bound his wrists to the bed. She moved her hands to his and wrapped her fists around his fingers. The moment their hands met, she lost it and dissolved into tears. His skin felt waxy and warm.

  She was shaking all over. She laid her head down, her cheek on his knuckles.

  Through the blur of her tears she could see Bishop standing stone-faced at the foot of the bed, watching.

  “Thank you, John,” she heard Mel say.

  Bishop didn’t bat an eye. “No problem,” he said.

  19

  KICK KEPT BOTH HANDS wrapped tightly around Mel’s fingers, her face pressed against his liver-spotted skin.

  Bishop was ramrod straight with his hands clasped in front of him. She could feel his eyes on her, monitoring her, watching for clues, cataloging every reaction, every word.

  She knew Mel’s hand. Even swollen from edema, she knew his joints, his knuckles, the shapes of his nails, the map of his veins. Its familiarity was an anchor. Her tears drained onto his skin.

  “I thought you’d be mad at me,” Kick said.

  “Never.” Mel’s voice cracked. His hand trembled under her touch. She knew he was struggling not to cry. “I want you to be happy,” he said. “I always tried to protect you.”

  A rush of relief pressed at Kick’s sternum and then escaped her mouth as a whimper.

  “Let me look at you,” Mel said.

  Bishop was all soft edges now, an abstract shape through Kick’s tears.

  For a moment she couldn’t move. It was like an electrical short circuit, a blown fuse. She wasn’t sure which wasn’t cooperating, her body or her brain. But she was frozen.

  “Please, Beth,” Mel said.

  She lifted her head at the sound of his voice, as surely as if he had cupped her chin and raised it. She turned to face him, keeping one hand on his, afraid that if she let go, she’d be pulled away by some unseen, dangerous current.

  He was trembling. The whites of his eyes were threaded with red. His scalp, visible through his thinning hair, was pocked with blemishes where patches of skin had flaked away. He lowered his head back onto the pillow and weakly squeezed her hand as his gaze traveled up and down her body.

  She sat very still, on the edge of the chair, motionless, straight-backed, like she was posing for an old-fashioned photograph. Her hair hung in a curtain on either side of her face, strands of it stuck to her wet cheeks. Her eyes felt swollen. Her nose was running. Her yellow dress seemed inappropriate now, too bright, too cheerful.

  His eyes continued to move over her with a sort of curious astonishment. And it dawned on Kick that while Mel had changed since she’d seen him last, she had been a child the last time he had seen her. And now she was sitting there, a grown-up.

  She pulled at the hem of her skirt.

  “You’re still my girl, Beth,” Mel said.

  Bishop coughed, and Kick glanced at him. There was no judgment in his face; there was nothing at all. But as their gaze met, he moved his eyes pointedly up to the corner of the ceiling. Kick followed them to the dome security camera mounted there, aimed at Mel’s bed. When she looked back at Bishop, he had returned to his sentry pose.

  “You know what today is?” Mel asked.

  His wide, hollow eyes brimmed with tears.

  She knew he didn’t mean the anniversary of her rescue. “It’s the anniversary of Linda’s death,” Kick said.

  Mel nodded, his weak grip spasming around her fingers. He gulped, his lips drew back over his teeth, and he began to weep. “She loved you,” he said.

  Had Linda loved her?

  Linda had loved Mel. She had been good to Kick. She had said some of the things that mothers say and done some of the things that mothers do. She had taught Kick how to play the piano a little.

  “It’s my fault,” Kick said quietly. She looked away, letting her hair form a wall between them so Mel couldn’t see her face.

  “No,” Mel said firmly.

  His tone stirred something in her. There was the Mel she remembered: that voice, always so full of authority and commands. Neither she nor Linda ever questioned him.

  She threaded her fingers between his and leaned slightly forward. “Do you remember that house we lived in?” she asked. “In Seattle?”

  Something changed. An almost imperceptible shift in the room. She could tell that Mel felt it. She could see it in his eyes. He was suddenly wary of her.

  Kick snuck a peek at Bishop. His head tilted slightly. “Mel taught me how to pick locks,” Kick explained. She smiled at the irony of it. All the drills, the target practice, paper clips and handcuffs. “He abducted me and then he taught me a hundred ways to get away.” Mel’s hand tightened around hers. “And you were right,” Kick said, leveling her gaze at Mel. She slowly pried her hand from his. “It never occurred to me to use any of those skills to get away from you.”

  “I trusted you,” Mel said, his fingers pawing the bed, reaching for her. “You’re a good girl.”

  “Yesterday, I came across one of the locks we used to make.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Kick noticed Bishop take a step closer to her.

  Mel’s face creased with pain. “Your mother and I couldn’t work. We couldn’t risk it. Those locks helped support us.”

  Your mother. It rolled off his tongue so easily. Kick’s eyes started to fill, and she had to turn her head and clear her throat. Sometimes she had so many emotions at once, she
couldn’t put a name to any of them. Sometimes she had to put them in a box in a jumble and sort them out afterward. “A little girl was abducted in Seattle,” Kick said, “and when they found her, she had one of my Scrabble tiles.”

  She could see the blood throbbing in Mel’s temples, the veins pulsing like they might burst through his fragile skin.

  “She says she got it from a boy who was abducted three weeks ago,” Kick continued. “The boy was kept in a house with a box, hidden behind a closet, behind one of our locks. I was there yesterday. I know your locks. But it wasn’t a place I’d been kept in. When you are kept in the dark, with long periods of nothing to do, you explore. I know the shapes of all those rooms you locked me in. Which means the boy found the tile in another box, in another house.” She looked at him intently. “Were we ever in Seattle, Dad?”

  Mel’s eyes were pleading, his mouth contorted.

  Kick could feel his pain, like a physical presence, a band of pressure around her chest. She reached out and took his hand again, that hand she knew as well as her own. “I know you tried to be good to me,” she said. “Be good to me now. The house I was in, there was an explosion. It was wired with a bomb. You want to protect me? I’m lucky to be alive.” She moved her hair aside and lowered her chin so he could see the lump at her hairline. “I was knocked unconscious.”

  A flush of red washed across Mel’s sweaty cheeks.

  “Do you want to feel?” Kick whispered.

  Beyond the curtain partition, the man started to wail again.

  Mel nodded a fraction of an inch.

  Kick scraped her chair across the bright blue floor and laid her head down on the bed, in front of where Mel’s hand was tethered, and slowly eased back into Mel’s grip. Bishop stood silently a few feet from the end of the bed. She was surprised he didn’t stop her. His face didn’t register any reaction. She locked eyes with him, made him watch, as Mel’s fingers started to crawl along her scalp. Bishop didn’t blink. Mel’s fingers found her hairline, stroking the edge of her forehead. He paused at the knot of tissue.