Kick Lannigan Gets a Little Revenge: One Kick (Chelsea Cain)

One Kick by Chelsea Cain

Kit Lannigan, just seven years old, left the door open and her puppy ran out through it. The nice man driving by offered to help her find Monster… Her family didn’t see Kit again for five years. When she came back to them her name had been changed to “Beth” – and Beth was one of the most popular child pornography actresses ever known.

credit: chelseacain.com

A decade later, Kick Lannigan (she doesn’t answer to Kit for fairly obvious reasons) is every bit as damaged as one might expect of someone with her history. She’s honed her self-defense skills to a razor's edge, can shoot the eyes (or testicles) out of a target almost with her eyes closed and carries more sharp-edged items on her person than might be found in your average surgical suite. She lives on her own, with her adoptive “brother” James and the now-ancient Monster. In her free time, she obsesses about missing children.

The man who called himself John Bishop appeared on her doorstep, bearing a satellite photo of a house somewhere, the face of the most recent missing boy peering through an attic window. Kit has trust issues aplenty, and the mysterious dead-eyed Bishop does not make her decision easy – but (still heavily-armed) she accompanies him on the search. It’s a search that will take her all the way back to her life as Beth; a journey only Kick Lannigan can undertake, and one she must undertake to save a missing child.