Free One Kick by Chelsea Cain Page A

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    “Where would you like it, Mr. Bishop?” she asked.
    Bishop was checking texts again. The neck of his shirt flopped down in a triangle where Kick had ripped it. He swiped at his phone’s touch screen, opened his knees, and gestured to his lap.
    Flight Attendant Barbie bent at the waist, all rounded buttocks and toned calves, and pressed the bag of ice against Bishop’s groin. “How does that feel, Mr. Bishop?” she asked.
    Unbelievable.
    Bishop’s eyes lifted from his phone.
    So that’s what it took to get his attention.
    Kick would sooner shoot him in the back.
    Kick coughed to remind them she was there.
    Bishop leaned his head back. “A little to the left,” he said, and Kick thought she saw him look at her again, but she couldn’t be sure.
    Flight Attendant Barbie shifted the ice.
    “Much better,” Bishop said.
    “I have a gun,” Kick said.
    Both the flight attendant and Bishop turned and looked at her. The flight attendant’s hand was still cupped against Bishop’s groin. She had lipstick on her front teeth that hadn’t been there before.
    “A Glock 37,” Kick said, liking the way the name of the weapon made the flight attendant flinch. Kick also had pepper spray, a Leatherman, a Taser, two extra magazines of .45 GAP ammo, and a box of Winchester jacketed hollow points in her backpack. “I have a permit,” Kick added. “But I need to check it, right?” Firearms had to be declared, unloaded, stowed in a hard-sided locked container, and checked. Everyone knew that. She didn’t want theGlock confiscated while she made her way through a month of TSA paperwork.
    Bishop was back on his phone. “This isn’t commercial air travel,” he said. Then he seemed to suddenly remember the woman whose hand was on his cock. “I want wings up in five,” he told her.
    Flight Attendant Barbie straightened up with a disappointed sigh. “Yes, sir,” she said. Duty called. “Anything else?”
    Kick resisted asking for a glass of water.
    Bishop pulled his ripped T-shirt off over his head. Kick was so startled, she forgot to look away. He was muscular, she had to admit, lean but toned, with enough definition to catch the light. He tossed Flight Attendant Barbie the shirt. She cradled it, along with the ice.
    “Can you get me a new shirt?” Bishop asked.
    As Flight Attendant Barbie slunk off through a door at the back of the plane, Kick leaned forward over the side of her chair and could just make out what looked like the corner of a king-size mattress.
    “Is that a bedroom?” Kick asked. She didn’t even want to think about what went on in there. “Seriously?”
    The plane started taxiing, and Kick put on her seat belt.
    “Check your phone,” Bishop said.
    Kick studiously avoided looking at his abs. “For what?”
    Bishop held up his own phone and wiggled it. “I sent you something,” he said.
    “I turned it off,” Kick said.
    “Again,” Bishop said, “not commercial air travel.”
    “Right,” Kick said. She retrieved her phone, enabled her browser, and checked her email. She had a new message from [email protected]. No subject line. She clicked on the email. There was no message, only an attached PDF. She opened it and found a sixty-five-page series of documents. Most of it consisted of documentation regarding the abduction of Adam Rice. Interviews, photographs, forensics.
    “Is this a police report?” she asked. The plane was going faster. The runway flashed by out the window.
    “I told you I have friends in the government,” Bishop said.
    Actually, he’d said he had friends with expensive toys, but Kick decided not to quibble. Instead, she pretended to scan the attachment while she surreptitiously forwarded it to James.
    “How do you know my email address?” she asked Bishop.
    He swiveled his chair around so that he was no longer facing her. There was a logo on the back, stitched into the flap of cream-colored leather that draped over the headrest: a W with a circle around it,