Excerpt from One Kick by Chelsea Cain, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"She's just a kid," Frank said. "I've got this."

She had to shoot. She had to shoot them all.

"Daddy?" she asked desperately.

This time her father lifted his chin. His face was sweaty and red, and his wrists were still handcuffed behind his back. But his eyes were sharp and dangerous. "They killed your mother, Beth!" he hollered over the noise. "Autonuke! Now!"

It was like a switch being thrown. All those drills they had practiced. She let her body take over. She flew down the hall, toward the back of the house, slipped into the closet under the stairs, went through the secret wall panel, pulled up the trapdoor on the floor, and scampered down the ladder one-handed, the gun still clutched in the other. She could feel the vibrations of the men chasing her, their boots pounding on the floor, as she descended into darkness. She jumped from the fifth rung, her bare feet landing on the carpet, and spun around to the desk where the computer screen's aquarium screen saver was the only light in the room. She sat down with the gun in her lap and felt around the desk drawer for the thumb drive. A lionfish swam by. She inserted the thumb drive into the computer like her father had shown her. Then she hit the space bar on the keyboard. In a blink all the fish were gone and a blue window appeared on the screen. She had never seen the blue box before, but she knew what to do. A white cursor blinked at the bottom of it. She typed in one word: "autonuke."

Then she sat back in the desk chair, brought her knees to her chest, and waited.

She could hear the FBI agents arguing above her and she knew that they would come down the ladder soon and lock her up forever, but she didn't care. She had done what she was supposed to do.

Finally, the trapdoor opened, and she glanced up to see Frank peering down at her. She put her hand on the gun.

"Can I come down, Beth?" he called.

She saw other faces behind his, crowding into the rectangle of light, looking at her. New people. The people from the helicopters.

"I still have the gun," she called up.

"I just want to talk to you," Frank said. He said something to one of the new people and then swung his body over the edge and started down the ladder.

She turned to the blue computer screen. "It's done," she said. "You can't stop it."

Frank's feet landed with a thud. She hoped his shoes weren't too muddy. Her mother didn't like the carpet to get dirty. Frank stepped beside her and peered at the computer screen, his hands on his hips. She saw the words "autonuke complete" reflected in his glasses.

"You deleted the files?" Frank asked. She could tell he was trying not to sound angry.

She made herself small in the chair. The white of her nightgown looked blue in the light from the computer, and the giraffes were faded. It hadn't fit for years. She stretched the hem over her knees.

"Do you have any idea what you've just done?" Frank muttered. He moved so suddenly she thought he might hit her, but he was just reaching for the light switch.

Their basement movie studio lit up. Four sets: a princess bedroom, a classroom, a doctor's office, and a scary dungeon. Beth's father took each set apart into pieces and packed it every time they moved. She wasn't allowed to touch the cameras. She had to be careful not to trip on all the black cords that snaked across the floor.

Frank spun slowly back to her. Her father had said that people would look at her differently if they knew. He said that it would make grown-ups angry. But Frank didn't look mad. He looked a little scared, like she was a bomb that might explode if he didn't figure out which wire to cut.

"Agent Moony?" a man hollered from above them. "You okay down there?"

Frank took a moment to answer. He probably hadn't seen movie sets before.

Excerpted from One Kick by Chelsea Cain. Copyright © 2014 by Chelsea Cain. Excerpted by permission of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.