cat-quick, which was what he had in mind, actually proved to be out of
the question, and he could only drag himself across the foyer floor,
hitching and shuddering like a bug that had been squirted with
insecticide.
Blinking away tears squeezed out of him by the violent coughing, he
spotted the Smith & Wesson. It was about fifteen feet away, well beyond
the point at which the transition from tile floor to hardwood marked the
end of the entrance foyer and the beginning of the living room.
Considering the intensity with which he focused on it and the dedication
with which he dragged his half-numb and aching body toward it, the
pistol might have been the Holy Grail.
He became aware of a rumble separate from the sounds of the storm,
followed by a thump, which he blearily assumed had something to do with
The Other, but he didn’t pause to look back. Maybe what he heard was a
death twitch, heels drumming on the floor, one final convulsion.
At the very least the bastard must be gravely injured.
Crippled and dying. But Marty wanted to get his trembling hands on the
gun before celebrating his own survival.
He reached the pistol, clutched it, and let out a grunt of weary
triumph. He flopped on his side, wheeled around, and aimed back toward
the foyer, prepared to discover that his dogged pursuer was looming over
him.
But The Other was still flat on his back. Legs splayed out.
Arms at his sides. Motionless. Might even be dead. No such luck.
His head lolled toward Marty. His face was pale, glazed with sweat, as
white and shiny as a porcelain mask.
“Broke,” he wheezed.
He seemed able to move only his head and the fingers of his right hand,
though not the hand itself. A grimace of effort, rather than pain,
contorted his features. He lifted his head off the floor, and the
stillvital fingers curled and uncurled like the legs of a dying
tarantula, but he appeared incapable of sitting up or bending either leg
at the knee.
“Broke,” he repeated.
Something in the way the word was spoken made Marty think of a toy
soldier, bent springs, and ruined gears.
Steadying himself against the wall with one hand, Marty got to his feet.
“Gonna kill me?” The Other asked.
The prospect of putting a bullet in the brain of an injured and
defenseless man was repulsive in the extreme, but Marty was tempted to
commit the atrocity and worry about the psychological and legal
consequences later. He was restrained as much by curiosity as by moral
considerations.
“Kill you? Love to.” His voice was hoarse and no doubt would be so for
a day or two, until he recovered from the strangulation attempt.
“Who the hell are you?” Every raspy word reminded him of how fortunate
he was to have lived to ask the question.
The low rumble came again, the same noise he had heard when he’d been
crawling toward the pistol. This time he recognized it, not the
convulsions and drumming heels of a dying man, but simply the vibrations
of the automatic garage door, which had been going up the first time,
and which now was coming down.
Voices arose in the kitchen as Paige and the girls entered the house
from the garage.
Less shaky by the second, and having caught his breath, Marty hurried
across the living room, toward the dining room, eager to stop the kids
before they saw anything of what had happened. For a long time to come,
they would have trouble feeling comfortable in their own home, knowing
an intruder had gotten in and had tried to kill their father.
But they would be more seriously traumatized if they saw the destruction
and the bloodstained man lying paralyzed on the foyer floor. Considering
the macabre fact that the intruder was also a dead-ringer for their
father, they might never sleep well in this house again.
When Marty burst into the kitchen from the dining room, letting the
swinging door slap back and forth behind him, Paige turned in surprise
from the rack where she was hanging her raincoat. Still in their yellow