One Kick

by Chelsea Cain

  Kick winced.

  Bishop’s body tensed.

  “It still hurts,” Kick said to Mel. She extracted herself from his hand, his fingers so entangled in her hair that even when she was free, a few long brown strands remained around his fingers.

  Kick sat, dizzy, with her hands palm up in her lap. Someone was talking to the yelling man now, an insistent, calming voice. She couldn’t hear the words, but the man stopped bellowing. In the absence of his complaints, smaller sounds appeared: the electronic pulse of medical equipment, the low hum of other conversation, the bright crackle of a television tuned to a show that no one was watching.

  “You know I will never share the location of a single safe house,” Mel said.

  “Yeah,” Kick said, unable to keep the anguish from her voice. She sighed and wiped the tears from her face as she stood up. “I know.”

  Mel squirmed against the wrist straps. “But the lock,” he said.

  She froze, waiting.

  “I gave the specs to someone,” he said. “Someone I knew online.”

  Kick and Bishop exchanged a quick look and Kick lowered herself back into the chair. “Why?” she asked Mel.

  Mel hesitated. “He helped me out with a few things. I never knew his name. We used encrypted software to communicate.”

  “What did he do for you, Daddy?” Kick asked.

  She could see him make the decision to give her this, this one thing. His body relaxed, as if he’d given up a struggle with himself. “He was a fixer. He took care of problems. Relocation issues. Fake IDs. Moving money around. The rumor was he was ex-military, or some kind of ex-spy. No one trusted him. But he could get things done. He lent me money once, when I needed it. And a few years before Linda died, he did some banking for us. Putting things in order, so that you and Linda would be taken care of if I ever had to go away. That was when I gave him the lock specs.”

  Kick glanced at Bishop and saw him stiffen slightly. She knew what was going through his mind. Mel’s specs were probably all over the Internet by now. The information was useless.

  “The boy who was abducted,” Mel asked. “Light skin? Dark hair? Small for his age?”

  Kick’s breath caught in her throat. He was describing Adam Rice.

  “Yes,” Bishop answered for her.

  Mel’s yellowed eyes moved to Bishop, like he had been part of the conversation all along, rather than a lurking specter. “He liked to hang them by the wrists,” Mel said. “He posted pictures sometimes, on the file-sharing sites. The boy’s faces were always blurred. The man in the photographs was only visible from the shoulders down. He was big, at least back then. Looked Caucasian, but I can’t be sure. I only glanced at the images. Once I realized what he was capable of, I cut off communication with him. He’s a sadist. A man without a tribe. A stranger. He had no interest in the Family philosophy.”

  The Family. Mel had always used that term to describe them. Like they were a group of benign uncles.

  “He used the Family to acquire used items,” Mel said, and Kick understood.

  “ ‘Used items’?” Bishop asked.

  “Boys,” Kick said softly.

  No one moved.

  Bishop was going to make her spell it out. “The Family sold him boys,” Kick said.

  “Some children can’t adapt as well as others,” Mel said. “That doesn’t leave a lot of options. Placing them in a new home seemed like a gentler alternative to a shallow grave.”

  A new home. Like a dog from the pound that didn’t work out. This had always been the threat, growing up, that she could be turned over to someone else, someone not as nice as Mel and Linda, someone who would hurt her much worse. She knew it happened. She had seen it.

  “But the boys this man acquired ended up in shallow graves anyway, didn’t they?”

  Mel nodded. “There were rumors.”

  The collage of missing-child posters flashed in Kick’s mind. All those dark-haired, slightly built boys. Almost elfin-looking. Adam Rice, with his dark eyes and hesitant smile—it had been his face that had set her off again, triggered something that had made her need to help him, to do something. She felt a connection with him. He seemed familiar somehow. She thought it was because he reminded her of herself.

  The pieces were falling into place as if they had always been there, right there in front of her, waiting to be noticed, but too close for her to see them for what they were. So many parts of her childhood had been packed up and tucked way in the far-off dark corners of her memory, but she remembered the day she met James. He had been dark-haired, with a cautious grin. Poor James, whose circumstances she recognized even then were so much worse than her own. “He bought James.”

  “Good, Beth,” Mel said, pleased.

  “You remember Mr. Klugman’s new car? The convertible? He used the cash he made on the boy to buy it. He went right to the dealer.”

  He had hurt James, and now he had Adam. Who knew how many other boys he had taken? She had to make Mel understand. “James found me,” she said. “He saw me on the news and he wrote me. He’s my family. We need to find this man.”

  “He’s gone, Beth.”

  “What about Klugman?” Bishop asked.

  “Gone,” Mel repeated.

  “He’s right,” Kick said. They had been experts at shedding their identities. “No one stayed anywhere longer than six months; every time we moved we changed our last name.”

  “Then we’re done here,” Bishop said.

  Mel’s eyes widened. “Just a few more minutes,” he pleaded.

  “You got what you wanted,” Bishop said in a harsh whisper.

  Kick was distracted, her mind on James. She got to her feet shakily.

  “Remember that vacation we took to the desert?” Mel asked her with sudden urgency. “I taught you how to do a back float in the hotel pool. Do you still like to swim?”

  Kick memorized him. This was the last time. She would never see him again. She knew that now.

  “Everything else aside,” Mel said, eyes burning into hers, “I’m still the guy who taught you how to swim. So if you want to remember me, you could remember that.”

  Kick heaved a tortured sigh. She hated him for making her grieve him. She kissed her palm and then leaned forward and placed her hand gently on Mel’s forehead. His skin felt vaguely plastic, like he was already half corpse. He closed his eyes as she touched him. “ ’Bye,” she said, her voice breaking.

  Bishop had her by the elbow and was shepherding her away from the bed.

  “Show me that pretty smile,” Mel croaked.

  Kick craned her head around. Mel had lifted his head from his pillow. His eyes were manic. Kick forced a smile.

  Mel sunk back in the bed. “There she is,” he said weakly. “There’s my Beth.”

  Bishop drew the curtain partition open for Kick to pass through.

  “Bishop,” Mel called.

  “Keep walking,” Bishop said from behind her. “Walk straight to the door. Wait for me.”

  Kick moved through the curtain like she was slipping between worlds. On the other side, the TV was tuned to a game show. One of the jumpsuited volunteers pushed a mop across the swimming-pool linoleum. The old black man was still strapped to the bed. He was moving his lips, not making a sound. He and Kick locked eyes.

  “This man you’re asking about,” Mel wheezed, on the other side of the partition. “He’s not like me.” He coughed, and Kick could hear him struggling to catch his breath. “He’s dangerous.”

  She watched the old man’s lips, curling around mysterious syllables, though Kick wasn’t sure he was even making words. Maybe he was reciting a curse.

  “You fucked up her entire life, Mel,” Bishop said. He was straining to keep his voice hushed; Kick could barely hear him. “You think you’re better than this guy because you didn’t kill her?”

  Her friend on the bed looked away. He closed his eyes. Not a curse, Kick realized, a prayer.

  “I’m dying, Bishop,”
Mel said.

  “Not soon enough,” Bishop said back.

  Kick heard Bishop’s footsteps leave Mel’s bedside and she pitched herself forward, hurrying across the infirmary to get ahead of him.

  20

  KICK HAD ALREADY DECIDED that she wasn’t going to speak to Bishop until they were outside the prison, and very possibly never again. But as soon as he’d had them buzzed through the infirmary door, back into the cinder-block hallway, Bishop spun her around by the arm.

  “What was that?” he demanded. He turned his head to look up and down the empty institutional corridor. “ ‘Daddy’?” He threaded his hands through his hair. “Jesus Christ, Kick.”

  Kick could barely breathe. The hallway swam around her. Who was he to question her? She had done exactly what he’d asked her to. “I got you what you wanted,” she said. “I didn’t see you rushing to intervene.”

  “We were on camera,” Bishop said.

  She didn’t know what that meant, why it was important. She couldn’t think straight. “You shouldn’t have taken me to see him,” she said. “I have a concussion.” Her skin was hot. Her eyes stung. She wanted out of this place, out of the vest, out of the building, away from all of it. She curled her lip at Bishop, her face burning. “You shouldn’t have made me come here,” she said.

  Bishop exhaled and leaned against the wall. “I know,” he said. His eyes looked pained. “I know.”

  No. He didn’t get to be nice to her now. Kick backed away from him. “Don’t talk to me,” she said.

  “You can’t be alone in here,” Bishop said, stepping after her.

  Kick held up a hand. “I just need a minute,” she said. She had to catch her breath. She had to process. If she didn’t get control, the anger would trigger the anxiety, and then she’d go down the worry maze and . . . She couldn’t concentrate. She looked at her hand, the one she had held Mel’s in. She could still feel his fingers scraping against her scalp. Her eyes were hot with tears. She put her forehead against the cinder-block wall and pressed her skull into the concrete, into the contusion, until the pain started to push everything else out. “Ha!” she said.

  She turned around, scanning the ceiling, squinting at the long rows of fluorescent lights. A security camera seemed to be aimed right at them. She held her arms out, opened her chest, and filled her lungs with air.

  “Ha! Ha! Ha!” Kick said to the camera.

  It had worked at the retreat. It had made her laugh. It had made everyone laugh.

  She was out of breath again. She looked helplessly at Bishop.

  He just stood there. “I need to know the level of your emotional entanglement with him,” he said.

  Kick flapped her arms around. What had he expected? “It’s called acting,” she said. “I grew up making movies, remember?” She was doing what she was supposed to do. “I was being who he wanted me to be. I was playing Beth.”

  “He’s not your father,” Bishop said.

  Kick threw up her hands. She didn’t know what the point was in trying to make anyone understand. She wiped some tears onto the shoulder of her orange visitor’s vest and tried to compose herself. “How long does he have?” she asked.

  Bishop sighed. “Weeks,” he said.

  Kick felt her features twist. She lowered her chin so that her hair would fall forward, covering her face. The key was not breathing. If she didn’t breathe, she could keep it all in. She counted to ten in her head and slowly exhaled. Change your thoughts and you change your world.

  “Talk to me about James,” Bishop said.

  Kick cleared her throat and nodded, then lifted her chin and swept her hair behind her ears. James. Where to even start? The corridor was still quiet. She didn’t know how unusual that was—no guards, no prisoners—and she wondered if Bishop had that kind of power, to provide a few minutes of privacy in a maximum-security prison. Kick slumped against the wall. “He’s not my brother,” she said.

  Bishop settled next to her against the wall. “I know he’s not your brother,” he said.

  It was so quiet. How could a prison be so quiet?

  “I know he started turning tricks at truck stops at age twelve and was convicted of stabbing a man to death off I-80 when he was fourteen,” Bishop said. “I know they locked him up in a mental hospital. He was still there when he wrote to you four years ago. He must have meant something to you by then, though, because you used a chunk of your settlement money to get him out. Given that his psychiatric history indicated a textbook pattern of childhood abuse, I suspected that you might have known James when you were kids. But I didn’t know for sure. Until now.”

  She was exhausted. She could feel every bruise on her body, every scrape and nick and sore joint. “He has scars on his wrists,” Kick said. “I always thought he’d tried to kill himself.” She had never suspected the scars were from being bound. If she had, she would have asked, she would have forced the conversation. “We don’t really talk about that stuff,” she added. It was obvious, but she said it anyway: “The bad stuff.”

  “Do you know how James escaped?” Bishop asked.

  “I don’t think he did escape,” Kick said. “I think he just lost value. The guy Klugman sold him to sold him to someone else who sold him to someone else.” From what she could piece together, James had been a part of at least three different “families” after San Diego. “He was used up. No one wanted him. So they let him go.”

  “And Klugman?” Bishop asked.

  “Mel and I spent a few weeks at Mr. Klugman’s house in San Diego,” Kick said. “I never saw him before that, and I never saw him after. He was a creep. And like Mel said, he’s long gone. These people are good at covering their tracks.”

  “There’s no record of James before his first arrest. If he was abducted under a different name, it’s possible he made it through the court system without anyone making the connection. But I’ve studied the missing-children database. I’ve memorized all those faces. I don’t recognize James.”

  Kick’s tears had dried and her face felt tight. “James was never reported missing,” she said. “His mother sold him for drug money. There is no missing-kid photo to memorize. He was never on a milk carton because no one ever looked for him.” She gazed up and down the empty corridor again. “Don’t people have to use this hallway?” she asked.

  “Are we done?” Bishop asked.

  Kick ran her fingers through her hair. She felt a little better. “Let’s go talk to James,” she said.

  They started to walk, and Bishop glanced back over his shoulder, his eyes directed upward, toward the security camera.

  An instant later the hallway was bustling.

  21

  THE DRIVE HOME WAS taking months. Kick stole frequent glances at Bishop. She rubbed her palms against her thighs until they burned. She had washed her hands before they left the prison, but she could still smell Mel. It clung to her—the stench of raw meat—and underneath it something more familiar, more the smell she remembered. She crossed her arms and tucked her hands under her armpits. Then she snuck another peek at Bishop. He’d been sending and receiving texts for an hour now, his phone on the steering wheel, his eyes bouncing from the road to the screen. Kick uncrossed her arms and dug through her purse for her own phone. Still no reply from James. He was evidently pissed that she hadn’t responded sooner to the fifteen texts he had sent her phone while it was in that prison locker. She sighed and leaned back in her seat and looked over at Bishop.

  “You’re breaking the law,” she said.

  Bishop kept typing.

  “Texting while driving,” Kick said. “There’s a law against it.”

  Bishop’s expression didn’t register a reaction. “I’m an excellent driver. Why don’t you practice some more with your handcuffs?”

  “Just talk on the phone. Put it on hands-free.”

  He shot her a curt smile. “I don’t want you to know what I’m saying,” he said.

  “So I have to die in a car crash so you c
an keep secrets?”

  Bishop’s eyes flicked down at his phone. “If necessary, yes.”

  Kick didn’t like being ignored. She was the one who was mad at him. He’d taken her there; he’d made her see him. She was the one with the head injury. “You’re not looking at me,” she said.

  Bishop continued to not look at her. “I’m driving,” he said.

  Her phone buzzed. Kick glanced at it to see if it was James. It wasn’t. She gazed out the window at the agricultural fields on either side of the interstate. The crops were subsidized with billboards for mixed martial arts tournaments, cage fighting, and state fairs. The phone continued to buzz in her lap.

  “Your phone’s ringing,” Bishop said between gritted teeth.

  “It’s my sister,” Kick explained. Her head hurt again, a dull pain that gnawed at the back of her neck. “She calls every year on the anniversary. But she doesn’t really want me to pick up.”

  Everyone said she and Marnie had been inseparable when they were little, but Kick couldn’t imagine it. The Marnie she remembered had never liked her. She’d never forgiven Kick for splitting up their parents.

  Kick wondered how long it would take for Mel’s smell to fade from her hands. She had missed his smell at first. They didn’t let her take anything from the house. They didn’t even let her keep her nightgown. It was all evidence. All she had was the Scrabble tile. For a year, she slept with it in her fist. Every morning she’d have to find it in the bedsheets.

  “It was an act,” she said quietly.

  She squeezed her arms together as tightly as she could. Her hands didn’t burn anymore. They were numb.

  “There’s gum in the glove box,” Bishop said. “Chew on a piece before you rub all your skin off.” His eyes moved from the windshield to her hands and then flicked away again.

  Kick lifted her hands from her lap and turned them over. Her palms were raw and red.