One Kick (31 page)

Iron Jacket smiled at her. She tried to stay focused on the gun sights, on his sternum, but she could see his slow grin at the top edge of her vision. He shrugged his backpack off his shoulder and
let it drop to the kitchen floor. It made a loud sound, like it was full of tools.

Kick leveled the Glock’s sights at the center of his face. “Stop,” she said, but he continued toward her.

“Kill me,” he said, “you never find the boy.”

She hesitated, shifting her aim, trying to find a safe place to shoot him. The head and torso had too much bone mass, vital organs, nerve bundles; between the shock wave and the shrapnel, she couldn’t risk it. But if she went for an arm or leg, she might nick his femoral or brachial arteries. He’d bleed out in minutes.

She angled the muzzle downward and aimed the sights at his foot. The bullet would shatter the bones, hobble him, make him hurt. But before she could fire Iron Jacket lunged toward her and she had to raise the gun to keep him back. He held the knife in his right hand, his left extended toward her. She’d studied knife combat. The left hand was his lead hand, the one that would set up the attack. He was in a mobile stance, his weight on the balls of his feet, knees slightly bent.

She saw his eyes flick over her arms. That’s how you disarmed an opponent: you went for the joints above the wrists and elbows, or for the veins on the insides of the arms. You cut the tendons, you let the person bleed, you took the weapon. It was easy then to take your opponent by the head and thrust your blade into the hollow cavity below the jaw.

Iron Jacket was inside the grappling zone. She only had a second to react.

He brought his lead hand in toward her shoulder and she fired reflexively, jerking the trigger rather than squeezing it.

Iron Jacket grunted when the bullet hit. An exhalation of surprise, followed by a sigh. Kick staggered back, out of the grappling zone, breathing hard. The smell of gunpowder filled the room. Iron Jacket was still standing, the knife in his fist, upright, alert, seemingly unharmed. She searched his body for the entry
point, hoping for a through-and-through, something painful but not deadly.

Then Iron Jacket slowly stepped sideways and pivoted, revealing a figure behind him. Kick’s stomach dropped. Bishop stood there, one hand pressed against his shoulder, blood between his fingers.

Kick glanced down at the Glock she had just fired. Then back up at Bishop.

“That’s . . . why . . . I don’t . . . like guns,” Bishop said.

Iron Jacket stepped beside Bishop and drove an elbow hard into his skull, flattening him.

KICK WATCHED, TERRIFIED, AS
Iron Jacket unpacked his backpack on her kitchen table. He’d pushed the table to the wall and she couldn’t see exactly what he was unpacking from her position on the floor, but every item he set down made a sickening clunk. She tried to wriggle her hand out of the handcuff that Iron Jacket had used to cuff her wrist to Bishop’s, but it was useless. Their hands were secured on either side of the steel handle of her refrigerator. Sitting on the floor with her back against the fridge, her wrist shackled above her head, she couldn’t get a good angle to even see the lock.

She nudged Bishop with her foot, trying to rouse him, but he was deadweight, his arm hanging like meat from the cuff, his body slumped to the side, head hung over his chest. His blood smeared the fridge door between them. The bullet had gone through his shoulder and out his back, leaving a silver-dollar–size hole in his T-shirt and exposing flesh the color of raspberry jam underneath.

He’d come to help her. He
had
figured out what she was up to. He must have noticed the hair, that she’d put it to the left. Beth had done that only once, only in the first movie, before Mel had told her it was prettier on the right.

She bent her knee, drew her leg up, and thrust the ball of her foot into Bishop’s thigh.

He drew a sharp breath and opened his eyes, then winced in pain as he pushed himself up into a sitting position with his feet.

He was awake. Kick practically sobbed with relief. She glanced at Iron Jacket. He was examining the edge of a new knife he’d just unpacked.

Bishop blinked woozily down at his shoulder. “You shot me,” he said.

“Sorry,” Kick said. They didn’t have time for this. Iron Jacket looked over at them from the table. “You need to get us out of here,” Kick hissed at Bishop.

“Where’s the gun?” Bishop asked.

“On the table,” Kick said. What was she supposed to have done? “He made me give it to him. He threatened to cut your throat.”

Bishop glanced bleakly up at their cuffed hands. “He’s going to cut my throat anyway,” he said.

“No he’s not,” Kick said. “Because you’re going to get us out of here.”

Bishop gave the handcuffs an obligatory tug. “Can you open these?”

“I only know how to do it with a paper clip,” Kick said. She didn’t have a paper clip. Couldn’t he see that? Bishop was looking past her. She saw his eyes darken, and she turned to see Iron Jacket swinging a length of heavy chain and gazing up at the exposed beam that ran the length of her kitchen ceiling. He positioned one of her kitchen chairs under it, slung one end of the chain over the pipe, and hooked the chain to some sort of winch. “What’s he doing?” she whispered.

Bishop took a slow breath. “He thinks you have some kind of password?”

Kick nodded.

“Do you, by any chance?”

“No,” Kick said. Iron Jacket attached the nylon cord from the winch to his belt loop and snatched something off the table before he crossed toward them. Kick pressed herself against the fridge and
wedged herself against Bishop. A black strap dangled from Iron Jacket’s hand. The winch made a
click-click-click
sound as the cord unspooled. Kick squeezed her eyes shut.

“He’s not coming for you,” Bishop said.

She opened her eyes. Bishop gave her a wan smile. She didn’t understand.
Click-click-click.

Iron Jacket squatted in front of Bishop and squinted at the wound in his shoulder. “I don’t like people sticking their noses in my business,” Iron Jacket said.

Bishop didn’t look away. “Whatever happens, I can handle it,” he told her. Iron Jacket slapped him hard across the face, and Bishop’s head slammed against the fridge door. Kick screamed and curled her knees against her chest. Iron Jacket took Bishop’s free hand and wrapped the black strap several times around Bishop’s wrist.

“It’s okay,” Bishop said to Kick. His cheek and jaw were red. His eyes swam. Blood collected at the corner of his mouth. “I can handle it.”

Iron Jacket lifted Bishop’s wrists together overhead, wrenching Bishop’s shoulder. Bishop made a grunting sound, and Kick could see him steeling himself against the pain as Iron Jacket bound his wrists together with the strap.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to work.

Bishop was going to rescue her. That’s why he was here.

Iron Jacket unsnapped the cord from his pants and hooked it to Bishop’s wrists, then unlocked Bishop from the handcuffs they shared and secured Kick directly to the fridge.

“I’m sorry,” Bishop mumbled to her.

The winch started to retract, and Bishop’s arms lifted as the nylon cord stretched taut.
Click-click-click
went the winch. Kick watched in horror as the cord lifted Bishop’s wrists.

“I don’t have the password,” Kick called after Iron Jacket, panicked. “I swear. I don’t know anything about it.” But Iron Jacket
barely glanced at her as he walked back to the winch and then stood there, waiting.

Bishop was pulled forward, onto his knees. He swayed there briefly. “I’m going to try to stay conscious long enough to buy you time,” he said to Kick.

She didn’t know what he meant. Buy her time to do what?

He wrapped his hands around the cord, got one foot in front of him, and managed to get shakily to his feet, then stumbled forward, away from her, following the cord drawing him to Iron Jacket. He came to a stop underneath the winch, next to Iron Jacket, and gazed upward as the retracting cable lifted his wrists above his head.
Click-click-click-click.
Bishop took a sharp breath, arched his back, and was lifted off the floor.

He hung like that for a long moment, dangling there, his back to her, every vein in his arms visible, fingers splayed.

And then Iron Jacket spun him around toward her. Bishop’s face was red and contorted, the muscles of his neck taut, threads of saliva hanging from his chin, and she could hear him wheezing, struggling to breathe, his arms pressed against the sides of his head, his toes just inches from the floor.

“Wrist suspension puts pressure on the muscle sheath around the chest, compressing the lungs,” Iron Jacket said. He threaded his gloved hands in front of him and leveled his gaze at her. His face was smooth, unworried, a man without a concern in the world. “He’ll suffocate if we leave him there too long.” He lifted his chin toward Bishop’s bound wrists. “Then there’s the strap,” he said. “It presses against nerves and cuts off circulation to the hands.” He frowned sympathetically, and Kick noticed that Bishop’s hands appeared to be darkening even as she watched, going from dark pink to crimson. “See there, how his finger’s twitching,” Iron Jacket said.

Kick would have told him whatever he wanted to know. He
should know that. He should know that she would cooperate if she could. “I swear,” she pleaded with him. “I don’t know any passwords. I don’t care about some old bank account. You can have it.”

“You think you’re so clever,” Iron Jacket said. “You had Mel wrapped around your little finger. But you don’t fool me. You think he came up with the idea of putting all the proceeds away for you on his own?”

All the proceeds?

“You’re still a big earner,” he added. “I see the statements every month. That was Mel’s way of shoving it in my face.”

Bishop had his head back and was looking up at his wrists, his fingers pulling uselessly at the cord. His shirt was darkened with sweat and blood, so that she couldn’t tell where one left off.

“What kind of password is it?” Kick asked, stalling. “A word? A number? Does it have to have a symbol? I can figure it out. Give me a minute.”

Iron Jacket unthreaded his hands and looked right at her as he shifted his stance. She knew what was coming an instant before Iron Jacket placed his palm over his fist and drove an elbow hard into Bishop’s gut, before she heard Bishop’s sharp, guttural exhalation of pain. Iron Jacket stepped away, and Bishop swung back and forth from the winch.

Kick’s mind grasped for anything. “The Desert Rose? Or November tenth—that was the birthday Mel made up for me. Or Kwikset—that’s the first lock I learned to pick.”

It worked. Iron Jacket left Bishop, went to the table, where he had unpacked his backpack, picked up a BlackBerry, and typed with his thumbs on the keypad.

Kick willed one of the passwords to work. Bishop swung from the winch, pale and limp. His body seemed longer, more concave, like he was slowly deflating.

Iron Jacket threw the BlackBerry down on the table in disgust.
“I never liked you,” he said to Kick. “I always thought you were a spoiled little bitch.” He dug through his backpack, and Kick half expected he was looking for a weapon to kill her with right there, but instead he pulled out a plastic bottle of water and drained it. He put the empty bottle back in the pack and grinned to himself. “That’s better,” he said, wiping his mouth. He turned on his heel, stepped back to Bishop, and took him by the waist of his pants. His eyes gleamed as they roamed Bishop’s weakened body. “How do you feel?” he asked Bishop.

Bishop lifted his head and Kick could see him muster his strength. “Never . . . better,” he said.

Iron Jacket gave him a little push, so Bishop swayed away and back; then Iron Jacket leveled his shoulders and brought his fists in front of his own face. He danced around Bishop, like a boxer circling a punching bag, face merry, throwing fake little jabs as Bishop hung there, too weakened to flinch as the fake punches crossed in front of him.

“Mel’s birthday?” Kick tried in desperation. “Linda’s maiden name?”

“Think harder,” Iron Jacket said. He pushed off his back foot, took a small step forward, and threw a real punch, jabbing his fist into Bishop’s rib cage. Bishop’s lips contracted and he groaned horribly. The tendons in his neck drew taut like ropes. Iron Jacket returned his punching arm to starting position, his left fist at his ear. Bishop’s head flopped forward.

Iron Jacket put his weight on his back foot again.

“You had a wife,” Kick said quickly. “Back at the Desert Rose.” She was desperate to distract him, to keep him talking.

“So?”

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” It was a shot in the dark, a wild guess. Kick barely remembered her from the motel, just a vague presence, but she’d be the right age, and matched the general physical description, of the dead body they had found in the house in Seattle.
Iron Jacket pitched forward, slightly off balance, and had to adjust his stance, and she knew that she was right. “She rented the house using the name Josie Reed,” Kick said.

Iron Jacket wiped the saliva off his mouth again with the back of his glove. “Twenty-five years we had an arrangement. She didn’t have a problem with it until I brought home a girl.” He leaned back, pushed off, and punched Bishop in the solar plexus. Kick heard herself cry out. Bishop’s body buckled, his face twisted, his fingers splayed, then he hung limply. Iron Jacket swung him gently back and forth.

Bishop coughed, so she knew he was still alive. When he lifted his head, his eyes were bleary and there was blood and saliva on his chin. “Ever thought of using power tools?” he asked. Even half dead, he managed a smirk. “I find . . . it adds . . . a little finesse.”

Iron Jacket’s eyes glowered, and Kick could see him draw back his elbow.

“
Watership Down
?” she called out. “That was my favorite book. Mel read it to me.”

Iron Jacket hesitated, and then opened his fist, pivoted smoothly away from Bishop, and picked up his BlackBerry again.

The wheeze of Bishop’s breathing was barely audible now. Every few moments his mouth would open and his rib cage would jerk, and he’d suck in a small gulp of air. It wouldn’t be much longer. The blood slowed in Kick’s veins and a cold chill settled on her skin. And then Iron Jacket would kill her.