with each desperate stride, the names of his daughters echoed through his mind in an unvoiced scream of loss and grief.
When their father shouted at them to shut up, Charlotte was as hurt as if he’d slapped her face, for in her nine years, nothing she had said and no stunt she’d pulled had ever before made him so angry. Yet she didn’t understand what had infuriated him because all she’d done was ask some questions. His scolding of her was so unfair; and the fact that he had never been unfair in her recollection only added sting to his reprimand. He seemed angry with her for no other reason than that she was herself, as if something about her very nature suddenly repelled and disgusted him, which was an unbearable thought because she couldn’t change who she was, what she was, and maybe her own father was never again going to
Dimly aware that the car finally started, pulled away from the curb, and reached the end of the block, Charlotte rose partway out of her misery only when Em turned from the window, grabbed her arm, and shook her. Em whispered fiercely,
At first, Charlotte thought Em was unjustly peeved with her for making Daddy angry and was warning her to be quiet. But before she could launch into sisterly combat, she realized there had been joyful excitement in Em’s voice.
Something important was happening.
Blinking back tears, she saw that Em was already pressed to the window again. As the car pulled through the intersection and turned right, Charlotte followed the direction of her sister’s gaze.
As soon as she spotted Daddy running alongside the car, she knew he was her
Keeping pace with the car as it turned into the next street, pointing the gun at the window of the driver’s door, Daddy yelled,
As the fake daddy realized who was shouting at him, Charlotte reached out as far as her safety belt would allow, grabbed a handful of Em’s coat, and yanked her sister away from the window. “Get down, cover your face, quick!”
They leaned toward each other, cuddled together, shielded each other’s heads with their arms.
BAM!
The gunfire was the loudest sound Charlotte had ever heard. Her ears rang.
She almost started to cry again, in fear this time, but she had to be tough for Em. At a time like this a big sister had to think about her responsibilities.
BAM!
Even as the second shot boomed a heartbeat after the first, Charlotte knew the fake daddy had been hit because he squealed with pain and cursed, spitting out the S-word over and over. He was still in good enough shape to drive, and the car leaped forward.
They seemed out of control, swinging to the left, going very fast, then turning sharply back to the right.
Charlotte sensed they were going to crash into something. If they weren’t smashed to smithereens in the wreck, she and Em had to be ready to move fast when they came to a stop, get out of the car, and out of the way so Daddy could deal with the fake.
She had no doubt Daddy could handle the other man. Though she wasn’t old enough to have read any of his novels, she knew he wrote about killers and guns and car chases, just this sort of thing, so he would know
The car swerved back to the left, and in the front seat the fake made small bleating sounds of pain that reminded her of the cries of Wayne the Gerbil that time when somehow he’d gotten one small foot stuck in the mechanism of his exercise wheel. But Wayne never cursed, of course, and this man was cursing more angrily than ever, not just using the S-word but God’s name in vain, plus all sorts of words she had never heard before but knew were unquestionably bad language of the worst kind.
Keeping a grip on Em, Charlotte felt along her seatbelt with her free hand, seeking the release button, found it, and held her thumb lightly on it.
The car jolted over something, and the driver hit the brakes. They slid sideways on the wet street. The back end of the car swung around to the left, and her tummy turned over as if they were on an amusement-park ride.
The driver’s side of the car slammed hard into something, but not hard enough to kill them. She jammed her thumb on the release button, and her safety belt retracted. Fumbling at Em’s waist—“Your belt, get your belt off!”—she found her sister’s release button in a second or two.
Em’s door was jammed against whatever they had hit. They had to go out Charlotte’s side.
She pulled Em across her. Pushed open the door. Shoved Em through it.
At the same time, Em was pulling
The fake daddy saw or heard them getting out. He lunged for them across the back of the front seat—“Little bitch!”—and grabbed Charlotte’s floppy rain hat.
She scooted out from under the hat, through the door, into the night and rain, tumbling onto her hands and knees on the blacktop. Looking up, she saw that Em was already tottering across the street toward the far sidewalk, wobbling like a baby that had just learned to walk. Charlotte scrambled up and ran after her sister.
Somebody was shouting their names.
Daddy.
Their
Three-quarters of a block away, the speeding Buick hit a broken tree branch in a huge puddle and slid on a churning foam of water.
Marty was heartened by the chance to close the gap but horrified by the thought of what might happen to his daughters. The mental film clip of a car crash didn’t just play through his mind again; it had never
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