One Kick

by Chelsea Cain

  “It will help,” Bishop said. “Peppermint kills everything.”

  22

  JAMES STILL HADN’T RETURNED Kick’s texts, which meant he was deep into programming or, more likely, playing Skyrim. Kick knew he wouldn’t deal well with this, her just showing up with Bishop, all the questions about James’s past. The elevator stopped on the second floor and Kick and Bishop stepped out.

  “I think I should talk to him first,” she said, four pieces of gum wadded in her cheek.

  Bishop’s hood was up so she couldn’t see his face. He didn’t break stride. “No,” he said.

  “He’s fragile,” Kick reminded him.

  Bishop tipped his head slightly so it was angled away from the security camera and glanced back at her. “That’s why I’m letting you be there while I talk to him,” he said.

  Kick worked the gum in her mouth. It was already losing flavor, getting blander with every chew. She’d left the pack in the car.

  “Maybe we should call the police,” she suggested.

  Bishop stopped in front of James’s door and knocked.

  Kick crossed her arms. “It’s not like he knows where the guy is now. It’s not like they keep in touch.”

  “James?” Bishop called through the door.

  They listened. Kick didn’t hear the sound of James’s steps.

  “James?” she called impatiently. “Open the door.”

  She started digging through her purse, through the assortment of weaponry. “I have a key,” she said. “He’s probably at his computer with headphones on.”

  Bishop had pivoted slightly, his attention directed behind them. Kick could feel his body language had shifted, like a dog raising its hackles. “Here it is,” she said, finding the key. They just needed to get inside. Bishop would see. James would be sitting at his computer. She started to turn the key in the lock.

  “Don’t,” Bishop said, putting his hand on her wrist.

  Kick swallowed her gum, startled. She could feel it stuck in her throat. She let go of the key and lowered her hand.

  “It’s probably nothing,” Bishop said. He was still facing the door so she couldn’t see his expression, only his hood and the tip of his nose.

  “You made me swallow my gum,” Kick said.

  Bishop put his hood down and turned to her. There was no smirk anymore. He locked his eyes on hers.

  “I need you to do something for me, okay?” His voice was even and calm. “I need you to stay right here while I go inside the apartment.”

  Kick knew James. He hardly ever answered the door. It’s why she had a key. “He has his headphones on,” Kick said.

  “Please,” Bishop said. “Do this.”

  A flutter of fear moved through Kick’s stomach. She gave a small nod of assent.

  Bishop exhaled slowly, turned the key, and pushed open the door. He lifted his phone to his ear as he went in and mumbled something into it. She thought she heard the word “backup.”

  Bishop had left the door slightly ajar and Kick kept her eyes on the sliver of hallway she could see through the gap. She could feel the pressure of the gum in her throat every time she took a breath. She waited.

  “Well?” she called after a minute. “Is he playing Minecraft or what?”

  No one answered.

  “James?”

  The gum throbbed as her throat constricted. “Bishop?”

  She pushed the door open. James’s recyclables were strewn on the floor. Kick felt around in her purse for the hunting knife. It made a satisfying sound as she unsheathed it. Her fingers wrapped around the rosewood handle. It was a fixed, full-tang stainless steel blade. She had never used it, but the guy who’d sold it to her had told her that it would split through rib cage and bone. She stepped over the threshold, the knife at her hip, her thumb at the hilt. She could hear faint sounds now, movement, coming from the living room. She stopped and switched the knife around so her thumb was at the handle base, holding the knife at shoulder level like she was about to kill someone in a shower. Then she started down the hall.

  23

  KICK HAD TO MAKE her way through a minefield of plastic water bottles and pop cans to get down the hall. She didn’t know how Bishop had managed so soundlessly to avoid them.

  The apartment smelled different. The stale pizza smell, James’s unwashed sweet stink, they were there, but there was another smell, too, something on top of it, something fresh and metallic.

  As she got close to the living room, she thought she could hear someone breathing.

  Kick tightened her grip on the knife and stepped around the wall.

  Somehow she knew to keep her gaze from the floor—maybe by instinct, maybe because some part of her saw what was there and warned the rest of her not to look. Her eyes fixed instead on James’s workstation. She almost believed he’d be there, bent over his keyboard like always. But his blue chair was empty. Instead of displaying their usual coding and games, the monitors were in screen saver mode, rotating through a slide show of affirmations. Large white letters on a black screen read: Anxiety is a normal emotion that I can control.

  She heard Bishop say, “Kick.”

  But Kick refused to look at him, refused to look down. She didn’t want to see. She didn’t want for it to be real. So Kick kept her eyes stubbornly glued to the monitors. The screen saver affirmations scrolled right to left. There are good things about me. I deserve to be happy. Kick could feel a film of sweat between her hand and the handle of the knife. I feel calm. The letters spun away and dissolved out of view.

  She heard James’s voice in her head. I am safe outside. I enjoy meeting new people.

  “He’s still alive,” Bishop said.

  Kick sobbed with relief and let her eyes fall. James lay splayed on his back, surrounded by blood-soaked printouts and notes. Pain twisted like a razor in Kick’s chest. So much blood. She didn’t know a person could bleed that much. James’s entire midsection was red, his yellow shirt not yellow anymore, blood pooled around him. Bishop was kneeling at his side, blood seeping into his jeans, hands slick with red against James’s belly.

  The pain bounced and grew in Kick’s chest. It was hard to breathe.

  Change your thoughts and you change your world.

  She hadn’t paid James’s water bill. It had been in her backpack, blown to smithereens. She hadn’t even told him. She didn’t know why it seemed important right then, but it did.

  “Kick, I need you to listen to me,” Bishop said.

  One of his hands was inside James, his fingers pressed inside a bleeding wound.

  “There are going to be a lot of people here soon,” Bishop said. “You need to put the knife down. I need you to sit in that chair.” He thrust his chin at James’s desk chair. “And I need you not to contaminate the crime scene. Do not touch anything.”

  One of James’s shoes was untied. His face was so pale.

  Bishop was wrong. He couldn’t be alive.

  What would she and Monster do without their James?

  The pain in Kick’s chest tightened.

  Monster.

  She put her fingers in her mouth and tried to whistle, but her mouth was too dry and all she managed was a panicked croak.

  “My dog,” she said. She looked around, frantic. He was there. He was hiding. She took a step back and felt a piece of paper stick to the sole of her sandal. She kicked it off and saw that it had blood on it. She took another step, backing away.

  “No,” Bishop said sharply. “We have to wait for backup. I haven’t cleared the apartment. It’s not safe.”

  There was blood smeared on his forehead, like he’d touched his face with a blood-covered hand. “Stay here with me,” he said. His gray eyes were intense, and she knew that he meant it, that it was important, that she should do what he said. “I can’t leave James right now,” he said.

  It didn’t matter. There was nothing he could say.

  It was happening all over again. Monster was lost. It was Kick’s fault. She had
to find him. This time she would find him.

  She stumbled out of the living room and into the hallway.

  “Shit,” she heard Bishop say under his breath.

  She didn’t even try to avoid the empty bottles now. She didn’t care how loud she was. James’s bedroom door was closed at the end of the hall. Kick felt a glimmer of hope. James had put Monster in the bedroom and closed the door. Monster was so blind and deaf, he wouldn’t have barked; he wouldn’t have made a sound. He was safe.

  “Talk to me, Kick,” Bishop called.

  “I’m in the hall,” Kick called back. “But it’s okay. I think James shut Monster in the bedroom.” Of course James had protected Monster. He loved Monster too. Kick had the knife at her side now and was batting water bottles out of her way with her feet. Poor dog, he’d probably been in there for hours. “I’m almost to the bedroom,” Kick called excitedly. “I’m going to open the door.”

  “Don’t touch it with your bare hand!” Bishop called back. “Find a clean rag or use—”

  Kick didn’t hear the rest. She had already turned the knob and thrown open the door, ready to welcome Monster into her arms.

  The sound came out of her stomach, a gut-wrenching wail that made her light-headed, made her legs go weak. She dropped to her knees and the knife fell from her hand and clattered on the floor.

  Bishop was hollering for her, yelling her name. She struggled through sobs for enough air to be able to respond.

  “Is it the dog?” Bishop called.

  Tears dripped down Kick’s neck. She managed a great, shaking breath and called out, “Uh-huh.”

  Her shoulders heaved. She was sobbing so hard that no sound came out, so hard that it physically hurt.

  He was lying by the foot of the bed. She crawled forward on her knees until she reached him. His frosted eyes were half open. “Pretty boy,” she whispered, stroking the fur on his muzzle. Blood glistened around his mouth and ear. She glanced at his belly where he’d been opened up, his insides spilled out on the floor. Then she leaned forward and put her face against his, breathing him in. He was still warm. She had lost him once. And then they had been reunited. But he was lost forever now. He had died alone, with no one who loved him.

  Kick lifted her head, choking back sobs, and slid her arms under her dead dog. Monster rolled against her chest as she picked him up, his head lolling over her arm. The weight of him was different, denser, like he was her dog but not. She struggled to her feet. She could feel the wetness of Monster’s blood against the fabric of her dress, staining her. His tag jingled with each of her steps and she carried him down the hall into the living room.

  Bishop was leaning over James and had started CPR chest compressions. Kick stumbled toward them with Monster, but Bishop stopped her with a look.

  “Put the dog down!” he commanded “That’s evidence. Goddamnit. Kick, you’re contaminating the scene.”

  Mucus clogged Kick’s throat. She couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t evidence. This was Monster.

  “Drop the fucking dog,” Bishop snarled. “Now.”

  Kick buried her face in Monster’s fur, sank to her knees, and let him roll gently out of her arms onto the floor. Now he looked dead, his body slumped unnaturally on the floor. Kick adjusted his legs so that he would look more like himself, like he was sleeping. Her hand grazed something on the floor. It was James’s wire talisman. It had been flattened, stepped on. Kick reached for it. Bishop wasn’t paying attention to her anymore; he was focused on James, his arms straight, his hands pumping against James’s fragile breastbone. Kick stared, wide-eyed, at the disfigured wire man.

  James.

  Bishop’s hands were covered in blood, his face taut with concentration as he compressed James’s chest again and again and again. Kick scrambled on her hands and knees to the other side of James’s body. She glanced around frantically for something she could do, some way to help. Bishop’s sweatshirt sat in a heap on James’s belly, soaking up blood. Kick pressed her trembling fingers against it and applied pressure. She copied Bishop’s hands, palms stacked, the fingers of the top hand threaded between the fingers of the bottom one. The little wire man was wrapped around her finger like a ring. She could feel the pump of every chest compression under her own hand. It almost felt like James had a heartbeat.

  24

  JAMES’S ROOM WAS EMPTY. It would not have been strange, except that James never went anywhere. Kick backed out of the room, into Mr. Klugman’s basement, and ran up the stairs to the kitchen. She didn’t see anyone. She ran to the back window and looked into the yard, but the pool was empty. She felt a tiny seed of panic tickle at her throat, like a spider crawling up the back of her tongue. She flew through the house, the dining room, the living room. Had everyone left? Had they left her alone?

  She was almost crying then, when she heard voices coming from the garage. She was so relieved that she almost opened the door without knocking. She caught herself, and knocked, and her father’s voice called for her. When she opened the door, there they were, her father and Mr. Klugman. The garage door was open. The bright San Diego sun poured in. It was so warm, like not being outside at all.

  “It’s Miss America,” Mr. Klugman said, and Beth beamed.

  “I thought you’d left,” she said.

  “Mr. Klugman got a new car,” her father said.

  The car glistened red, like cherries.

  “Where’s James?” Beth asked.

  “He’s gone,” her father said.

  Beth knew better than to ask any more questions.

  25

  JAMES WAS GONE. THEY had taken him away on a stretcher.

  Kick didn’t know who these people were. But they were leaving her alone, stepping around her on the floor. She had pulled Monster halfway onto her lap and held him in her arms. His body was limp and heavy. Her dress was covered in dog hair and blood and something like blood, but stickier. The floor was red where James had been. Bloody footprints made tracks across the papers strewn around the room. Kick recognized the shapes of her own sandals.

  James’s wire man was ruined. She didn’t know how to fix him. She twisted the ring she’d made of him around her finger. James would be furious.

  Where was he? She remembered Bishop sitting back, letting the paramedics take over compressions, seeing them loading James on a stretcher. Someone took the sweatshirt out of her hand and put it into a plastic bag.

  And then James was gone.

  The paramedics were gone.

  She smoothed down the fur over Monster’s forehead.

  Bishop was still there. He was talking to one of the men with guns.

  FBI agents. That’s who they were. They were all carrying Glocks. Like the ones who’d come for Beth. Only Kick was Beth. Kick was Beth that night at the farm. She could still hear Frank’s voice in her head.

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

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

  There was shouting.

  “You took her to see him?” a voice said incredulously. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  It was Frank.

  His voice—now, here, in this room. For real. Kick strained to locate it.

  But it was Bishop’s voice she heard. He was talking to someone who had just come in. “I don’t work for you, Frank,” Bishop was saying. “I didn’t have to call you. I could have just walked away.”

  Kick threaded her fingers deeper into Monster’s fur, unsure what was real.

  She watched Frank point a finger in Bishop’s face. “Not even you are that much of a prick,” Frank said.

  A poster on the wall had a picture of footsteps on a white sand beach. Your Dream Vacation, Today! it promised.

  “It’s him,” Bishop told Frank. “James was one of his victims. This? It’s him. There’s security footage of the conversation at the prison. You know who to talk to about getting a copy.”

  Monster’s head was so heavy. “She’s a kid,” Frank said
, his worried eyes glancing in her direction.

  “Not anymore,” Bishop said.

  Frank came toward her then, carefully making his way around yellow plastic evidence markers, pausing to find a spot to place his foot.

  “Don’t touch her,” Bishop called to him. “Her clothing hasn’t been processed. And she doesn’t want to let go of the dog.”

  Monster looked peaceful. She had closed his eyes. As long as she didn’t look below his shoulders, she could almost believe he was asleep. James was asleep. They could sleep together.

  Frank was standing above Kick now, and she was gazing up at him. His rust-colored eyebrows were still thatched with blond.

  “Are you really here?” she asked. She wanted to reach out, to touch him, to see if he was smoke. He was shorter than she remembered him. His eyes were squintier. Seeing him now, she realized that he wasn’t even that old. She was the old one. She was as old as the universe.

  Frank lowered himself into a squat. “I show up when you need me. That’s our deal.”

  Kick moved her fingers over Monster’s head, feeling his skull, his realness. “He killed my dog,” she whispered.

  Frank’s mouth twitched. “I know.” He turned his face to his shoulder for a moment and when he looked back his eyes were red. “But it’s time to go now.”

  “I don’t want to leave him alone,” Kick said. She could feel Beth’s panic in her chest. Beth had never liked Frank. Beth had wanted to shoot him dead. “Don’t take me away from him,” she begged.

  Frank rubbed his eyes with a thumb. “When I found you, you couldn’t even say your own name, remember?” he asked. His shoulders rose and fell. “But you told me about your dog; you remembered Monster’s name. And that’s how I knew who you were. He helped get you home.” His jacket hung open, and Kick could see his Glock 27 with Smith & Wesson .45 ammo, close enough to snatch. “And he has been a great dog, hasn’t he?”

  Kick looked down at Monster. This would be the last time she’d see him, his graying muzzle, his furry ears, his rough nose.

  Oh, Monster, no.