out of control if he hadn’t pictured it doing so, and that his daughters
would burn to death in the car merely because he had imagined it
happening.
The Buick came to a sudden and noisy stop against the side of a parked
Ford Explorer. Though the clang of the collision jarred the night, the
car didn’t roll or burn.
To Marty’s astonishment, the right-side rear passenger door flew open,
and his kids erupted like a pair of joke snakes exploding from a tin
can.
As far as he could tell, they weren’t seriously hurt, and he shouted at
them to get away from the Buick. But they didn’t need his advice.
They had an agenda of their own, and immediately scrambled across the
street, looking for cover.
He kept running. Now that the girls were out of the car, his fury was
greater than his fear. He wanted to hurt the driver, kill him.
It wasn’t a hot rage but cold, a mindless reptilian savagery that scared
him even as he surrendered to it.
He was less than a third of a block from the car when its engine
shrieked and the spinning tires began to smoke. The Other was trying to
get away, but the vehicles were hung up on each other. Tortured metal
abruptly screeched, popped, and the Buick started to tear loose of the
Explorer.
Marty would have preferred to be closer when he opened fire, so he’d
have a better chance of hitting The Other, but he sensed he was as close
as he was going to get. He skidded to a halt, raised the Beretta,
holding it with both hands, shaking so badly he couldn’t hold the sight
on target, cursing himself for his weakness, trying to be a rock.
The recoil of the first shot kicked the barrel high, and Marty lowered
it before firing another round.
The Buick broke free of the Explorer and lurched forward a few feet.
For a moment its tires lost traction on the slick pavement and spun in
place again, spewing behind it a silvery spray of water.
He pulled the trigger, grunting in satisfaction as the rear window of
the Buick imploded, and squeezed off another round right away, aiming
for the driver, trying to visualize the bastard’s skull imploding as the
window had done, hoping that what he imagined would translate into
reality. When its tires got a bite of the pavement, the Buick shot away
from him. Marty pumped another round and an other, even though the car
was already out of range. The girls weren’t in the line of fire and no
one else seemed to be on the rainy street, but it was irresponsible to
continue shooting because he had little chance of hitting The Other. He
was more likely to blow away an innocent who happened to pass on some
cross street ahead, more likely to shatter a window in one of the nearby
houses and waste someone sitting in front of a TV. But he didn’t care,
couldn’t stop himself, wanted blood, vengeance, emptied the magazine,
repeatedly pulled the trigger after the last bullet had been expended,
making primitive wordless sounds of rage, totally out of control.
In the BMW, Paige ran the stop sign. The car slid around the corner,
almost tipping onto two wheels before she straightened it out, facing
east on the cross street.
The first thing she saw after making the corner was Marty in the middle
of the street. He was standing with his legs widely spread, his back to
her, firing the pistol at the dwindling Buick.
Her breath caught and her heart seized up. The girls must be in the
receding car.
She tramped the accelerator to the floor, intending to swing around
Marty and catch up with the Buick, ram the back of it, run it off the
road, fight the kidnapper with her bare hands, claw the son of a bitch’s
eyes out, whatever she had to do, anything. Then she saw the girls in
their bright yellow rain slickers on the right-hand sidewalk, standing
under a street lamp. They were holding each other. They looked so
small and fragile in the drizzling rain and bitter yellowish light.