One Kick Read Online Free PDF Page A

would bite it right off.
    The woman took a step toward Kick. “Trust yourself, Kit,” she said.
    Kick winced at the sound of her old name. “ Kick, ” she corrected her.
    There was no comprehension in the woman’s face.
    “I go by Kick, ” Kick said, feeling her center harden. “Not Kit. Not anymore.” She hadn’t been able to get used to her old name after she came home. It made her feel like an impersonator.
    “Well,” the woman said, touching the pendant again, “time heals all wounds.”
    “Your gun’s too big,” Kick said. “It’s got too much recoil; that’s why you’re not hitting the target. Start with something smaller, like a .22. And aim for the head.”
    The woman gave the corner of her mouth a tiny scratch. “Thank you.”
    They looked at each other in silence for a moment. Kick felt an urge to run like she had not felt in a long time. “I have to pee,” Kick said, tilting her head toward the restroom sign. The woman let her go. Kick hurried through the bathroom door and locked it behind her. The outline of the Glock was visible in her sweatshirt pocket. She had red lines on her face where her safety goggles had made an impression on her forehead and cheeks. She pulled back her hood and examined her reflection. People knew her from the Missing Child posters. Her first-grade school photograph, bangs and braids, a forced smile. She had been famous in her absence—on billboards, national news, the subject of talk shows and newspaper stories. She’d been on the covers of magazines. The first photo of her, after she was saved, went global. But she wasn’t the girl people remembered—eleven years old, angry-eyed, a tangle of long dark hair down her back. Kick’s mother cut her bangs and braided her hair and the family released another photograph: Kick reunited with her sister, their arms around one another. That one had been on the cover of People . Her mother sold pictures every year after that, on the anniversary, until Kick left home. They owed it to the public, her mother said, to let them see Kick grow up.
    Kick turned the cold water on in the sink, pushed up her sleeves, and started washing her hands. Ammo left lead residue on everything. She cupped her hands under the faucet and lowered her face into the water. After she dried herself, she inspected herself in the mirror again.
    She undid her ponytail and let her hair fall loose. It came down to her elbows. She didn’t get haircuts. Not anymore.
    Her phone buzzed in her pants pocket and she dug it out with cold fingers.
    She reread the message three times. It made her stomach hurt.
    An Amber Alert had just been issued by Washington State police looking for a five-year-old girl abducted by a stranger and last seenin a white SUV with Washington State plates, heading down I-5 toward Oregon.
    Kick hesitated. She knew how this went.
    But she couldn’t stop herself.
    Kick opened the police scanner app on her phone, picked her backpack off the bathroom floor, and headed for the door, the loaded Glock still in her sweatshirt. Whenever they had traveled, Mel put her under a blanket on the floor of the backseat and switched the vehicle plates out for fake dealer ones. The dealer plates were harder to read, and produced little information, so patrol cops often didn’t bother running them.
    It’s not like she thought she’d find the car. This was something that none of her shrinks ever seemed to understand. Kick knew exactly how futile it was. She knew she’d drive up and down the interstate until she was exhausted, and stay up half the night refreshing her browser, sorting through every detail, hunting for anything familiar. She knew that the kid was probably already dead and that when the police did find the body, it would feel like a part of Kick had died too.
    That’s how this went.
    How it always went.
    Penance wasn’t supposed to be fun.

2
    KICK WAS FOUR HOURS late by the time she let herself into her brother’s southeast Portland