Even as the second shot boomed close after the first, the car tires

  shrieked. The Buick bolted forward, as a mean horse might explode out

  of a rodeo gate.

  He ran after the car, but it blew away from him with a backwash of

  turbulent air and exhaust fumes. The look-alike was still alive,

  perhaps injured but still alive and determined to escape.

  Rocketing eastward, the Buick began to angle onto the wrong side of the

  two-lane street. On that trajectory, it was going to jump the curb and

  crash into someone's front lawn.

  In his treacherous mind's eye, Marty imagined the car hitting the curb

  at high speed, flipping, rolling, slamming into one of the trees or the

  side of a house, bursting into flames, his daughters trapped in a coffin

  of blazing steel. In the darkest corner of his mind, he could even hear

  them screaming as the fire seared the flesh from their bones.

  Then, as he pursued it, the Buick swung back across the center line,

  into its own lane. It was still moving fast, too fast, and he had no

  hope of catching it.

  But he ran as if it was his own life for which he was running, his

  throat beginning to burn again as he breathed through his open mouth,

  chest aching, needles of pain lancing the length of his legs.

  His right hand was clamped so fiercely around the butt of the Beretta

  that the muscles in his arm throbbed from wrist to shoulder. And 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 like her. He would never be able to take back the look

  of rage and hatred on his face, and she would never be able to forget it

  as long as she lived. Everything had changed between them forever. All

  of this she thought and under stood in a second, even before he had

  finished shouting at them, and she burst into tears.

  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, "Daddy."

  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 real father. The daddy behind the wheel--the daddy with the hateful

  look on his face, who screamed at children for no reason--was a fake.

  Somebody else. Or some thing else, maybe like in the movies, grown out

  of a seed pod from another galaxy, one day just a lot of ugly goop and

  the next day all formed into Daddy's look-alike. She suffered no

  confusion at the sight of two identical fathers, had no trouble knowing

  which was the real one, as an adult might have, because she was a kid

  and kids knew these things.

  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, "Hey, hey,

  hey!"

  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 exactly what to do. The fake would be real sorry he had messed

  with Daddy, he would wind up in prison for a long, long time.

  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 sisters 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 her, as if Em herself was the
one doing

  the rescuing, and Charlotte wanted to say, Hey, who's the big sister

  here?

  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 real Daddy.

  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

  stopped playing. Now it seemed about to be translated out of his

  imagination, the way scenes were translated from mental images into

  words on the page, except that this time he was taking it one large step

  further, leaping over typescript, translating directly from imagination

  into reality. He had the crazy idea that the Buick wouldn't have gone

  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.

  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.

  Sir
ens 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