One Kick by Cain Chelsea

Author:Cain,Chelsea
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

17

THE OREGON STATE PENITENTIARY was surrounded by guard towers and a twenty-five-foot wall topped with razor wire. Even after an hour to prepare herself, the prison appeared too soon, and Kick regretted the fact that there hadn’t been a multivehicle accident to slow down the interstate. The gray Taurus that had been tailing them since they left Portland had dropped out of sight when they exited I-5. She knew that Bishop had seen it too. His eyes had returned, again and again, to the rearview mirror. But he hadn’t said anything, and he hadn’t tried to lose it.

She tossed the cuffs back in her bag as they were waved through the prison gates. The guards seemed to know Bishop by sight. He steered around the compound of institutional buildings and found a place to park like he’d been here before.

He didn’t try to give her a pep talk; he didn’t talk to her at all. When she got out of the car, she followed him. The closer she got to Mel, the more blank she felt. Like she was shedding herself, cell by cell, molting down to nothing.

She could do that. She could disassociate.

Reactive attachment disorder, one of her early shrinks had called it, when Paula complained that Kick wasn’t showing the proper level of affection.

The spring after Kick’s rescue, Paula had shipped her off to a clinic in Colorado for a week of in-patient rebirthing compression therapy. Every day, two practitioners would restrain Kick, wrap her tightly in sheets, and then simulate contractions by sitting on her until she managed to “emerge from the birth canal.”

If Kick hadn’t had an attachment disorder before that, she certainly had one after.

Years later she had found the clinic’s report in some of her mother’s things. They’d diagnosed her based on how she scored on a set of twelve items, including “seeking comfort when distressed,” “responding to comfort when offered,” and “willingness to go off with relative strangers.”

“Kick?” Bishop said.

Kick looked up to find a prison guard in a blue uniform staring at her expectantly from the other side of a counter. A cacophony echoed from every surface: buzzers, walkie-talkie static, footsteps. Everything smelled like concrete.

“Ask her again,” Bishop said to the guard.

“You carrying any weapons, sweetheart?” the guard asked Kick. She looked at Kick with an air of professional boredom. If she recognized Kick, she didn’t show it.

Kick pulled open her red purse and showed her the army fixed-blade survival knife, the recon camo tactical knife, a three-pack of throwing knives, the Leatherman, her lipstick pepper spray, a pouch of throwing stars, the handcuffs, and a pen with a steel tip that could be used as an emergency window breaker.

“Anything else?” the guard asked.

Kick unzipped one of the purse’s inside pockets, reached behind the envelope from Trident Medical Group, retrieved her nunchakus, and dropped them on the counter with a ka-thunk.

Bishop gave the guard an apologetic smile. “She’s safety conscious,” he explained.

The guard handed her the key to a locker and told her to put her arsenal in it.

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