One Kick Read Online Free PDF Page B

did you do?” he asked heavily. “Drive up and down I-5 all morning, looking for white SUVs?”
    He made it sound so ineffectual.
    “It’s not healthy,” he said. “You know that.” He pointed at the pizza in her hand. “That’s five days old,” he said.
    She took another bite of the pizza and chewed it slowly right at him with her mouth open.
    “That is so unnecessary,” James said, rolling his eyes as he turned his chair back toward his desk.
    He made a show of being absorbed in something on his computer screen.
    Kick didn’t take the bait.
    Finally, James said, “Want to see what I’ve been doing?”
    He was supposed to be getting an online certification in some new programming language. Kick craned forward, noticing that her brother’s monitors weren’t filled with their usual coding gibberish. She got up off the couch and joined him at the desk. It was spread with clutter, except for the area in front of his keyboard where James kept his talisman, a little man made of twisted wire. His largest screen, the center one, was checkered with video thumbnails. Kick reached across James for his computer mouse, but he swatted her hand away. “I’ll do it,” he said, and guided the cursor to one of the thumbnails and clicked to expand it.
    The window enlarged to reveal a video feed of cars on the interstate.Kick scanned the other thumbnails. They were all similar. “What are those?” she asked.
    The corner of James’s mouth turned up into a satisfied smile. “Traffic cameras,” he said. “I have a program that takes a screen shot of any vehicle I specify. For instance, white SUVs.” His fingers grazed his keyboard and a window opened on another monitor. “Look here,” he said. At least a hundred screen shots of white SUVs filled the screen.
    Kick’s eyes hurt trying to tell one from the next. “That’s a fuckload of white SUVs,” she said.
    “I’ve crowdsourced the images,” James explained. “So I’ve got volunteers all over the world looking at all these live as they come in. If any of them spot a vehicle with a matching plate, or dealer plates, I’ll know immediately. It’s faster than whatever the police are doing.”
    Kick wrapped her arms around her brother’s neck and kissed him. His T-shirt smelled like he’d been wearing it for days. “You’re brilliant,” she said.
    James’s face reddened. She could tell he was pleased. He hadn’t exactly been Mr. Sunshine lately, so it felt like a good sign. Kick sat down on the arm of his chair and leaned against him as they both watched his monitor. All the video was in black-and-white and every car appeared to be a shade of gray. Every few moments James would minimize one video and enlarge another one. There were so many cars, and so much water on the road, that the license plates were passing blurs.
    Kick glanced away from the monitor and noticed a new poster on the window. It had a picture of a baseball and a Babe Ruth quote: Don’t let the fear of striking out hold you back.
    “That’s two stranger abductions in the last month,” Kick said.
    James didn’t say anything. He reached for the little wire man. The scars on his wrists were faint white stripes. She’d never asked about them. The wire man was an inch tall, small enough to hold in your hand. But James didn’t let Kick touch it.
    “You know what that could mean,” Kick said.
    James pushed his glasses up his nose. “You called the police again, didn’t you?”
    He knew her too well. “They said that they still don’t need my help and suggested I call my therapist,” she said.
    “You want to help?” James asked. “Use some of your settlement money to buy them a better computer system.” Then he smirked and set the talisman back in its place. “Or cuter uniforms.”
    Kick opened her mouth to say something smart-ass, but she forgot what she was going to say as her eyes fell on James’s monitor. “Motherfucker,” she said.
    “What?” James asked. She felt him