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 another, 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.
Past Marty, Paige pulled to the curb. She threw open the door and got out of the BMW, leaving the headlights on and the engine running.
As she ran to the kids, she heard herself saying, “Thank God, thank God, thank God, thank God.” She couldn’t stop saying it even when she crouched and swept both girls into her arms at the same time, as if on some level she believed that the two words had magic power and that her children would suddenly vanish from her embrace if she stopped chanting the mantra.
The girls hugged her fiercely. Charlotte buried her face against her mother’s neck. Emily’s eyes were huge.
Marty dropped to his knees beside them. He kept touching the kids, especially their faces, as if he was having difficulty believing that their skin was still warm and their eyes lively, astonished to see that breath still steamed from them. He repeatedly said, “Are you all right, are you hurt, are you all right?” The only injury he could find was a minor abrasion on Charlotte’s left palm, incurred when she’d plunged from the Buick and landed on her hands and knees.
The only major and troubling difference in the girls was their unusual constraint. They were so subdued that they seemed meek, as if they had just been severely chastised. The brief experience with the kidnapper had left them frightened and withdrawn. Their usual self-confidence might not return for some time, might never be as strong as it had once been. For that reason alone Paige wanted to make the man in the Buick suffer.
Along the block, a couple of people had come out on their front porches to see what the commotion was about—now that the shooting had stopped. Others were at their windows.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
Rising to his feet, Marty said, “Let’s get out of here.” “The police are coming,” Paige said.
“That’s what I mean.”
“But they—”
“They’ll be as bad as last time, worse.”
He picked up Charlotte and hurried with her to the BMW as the sirens swelled louder.
Chips of glass are lodged in his left eye. For the most part, the tempered window had dissolved in a gummy mass. It had not cut his face. But tiny shards are embedded deep in the tender ocular tissues, and the pain is devastating. Every movement of the eye works the glass deeper, does more damage.
Because his eye twitches when the worst needle-sharp pains stitch through it, he keeps blinking involuntarily, although it is torture to do so. To stop the blinking, he holds the fingers of his left hand against his closed eyelid, applying only the gentlest pressure. As much as possible, he drives with just his right hand.
Sometimes he has to let the eye twitch unattended because he needs to use the left hand to drive. With the right, he tears open one of the candy bars and crams it into his mouth as fast as he can chew. His metabolic furnace demands fuel.
A bullet crease marks his forehead above the same eye. The furrow is as wide as his index finger and a little more than an inch long. To the bone. At first it bled freely. Now the clotting blood oozes thickly over his eyebrow and seeps between the fingers that he holds to the eyelid.
If the bullet had been one inch to the left, it would have taken him in the temple and drilled into his brain, jamming splinters of bone in front of it.
He fears head wounds. He is not confident that he can recover from brain damage either as entirely or as swiftly as from other injuries. Maybe he can’t recover from it at all.
Half blind, he drives cautiously. With only one eye he has lost depth perception. The rain-pooled streets are treacherous.
The police now have a description of the Buick, perhaps even the license number. They will be looking for it, routinely if not actively, and the damage along the driver’s side will make it easier to spot.
He is in no condition to steal another car at this time. He’s not only half blind but still shaky from the gunshot wounds that he suffered three hours ago. If he is caught in the act of stealing an unattended car, or if he encounters resistance when trying to kill another motorist such as the one whose raincoat he wears and who is temporarily entombed in the Buick’s trunk, he is likely to be apprehended or more seriously wounded.
Driving north and west from Mission Viejo, he quickly crosses the city line into El Toro. Though in a new community, he does not feel safe. If there is an APB out on the Buick, it will probably be county-wide.
The greatest danger arises from staying on the move, increasing the risk of being seen by the cops. If he can find a secluded place to park the Buick, where it will be safe from discovery at least until tomorrow, he can curl up on the back seat and rest.
He needs to sleep and give his body a chance to mend. He has gone two nights without rest since leaving Kansas City. Ordinarily he could remain alert and active for a third night, possibly a fourth, with no diminution of his faculties. But the toll of his injuries, combined with lost sleep and tremendous physical exertion, requires time out for convalescence.
Tomorrow he will get his family back, reclaim his destiny. He has wandered alone and in darkness for so long. One more day will make little difference.
He was
He recalls the joy he felt in the foyer of the Delorio house, holding the girls’ small bodies against him. They were so sweet. Butterfly-soft kisses on his cheeks. Their musical voices—“Daddy, Daddy”—so full of love for him.
Remembering how close he was to taking permanent possession of them, he is on the brink of tears. He must not cry. The convulsion of the muscles in his damaged eye will amplify his pain unbearably, and tears in his right eye will reduce him to virtual blindness.
Instead, as he cruises residential neighborhoods from El Toro into Laguna Hills, where house lights glow warmly in the rain and taunt him with images of domestic bliss, he thinks about how those same children ultimately defied and abandoned him, for this subject leads him away from tears and toward anger. He does not understand why his sweet little girls would choose the charlatan over their real father, when minutes previously they had showered him with thrilling kisses and adoration. Their betrayal disturbs him. Gnaws at him.
While Marty drove, Paige sat in the back seat with Charlotte and Emily, holding their hands. She was emotionally incapable of letting go of them just yet.
