Mr. Murder

Buick.
        It looked bejeweled in the rain. Engine running. Lights on. Nobody inside.
        Dashing off the stoop into the storm, which was no longer the cloudburst it had been but still drenching, Vic caught up with them.
        "This your car?"
        "Yeah," Marty said.
        "Since when?"
        "Bought it today."
        "Where's Paige?"
        "We're going to meet her." Marty's face was as white as the skull hidden beneath it. He was trembling visibly, and his eyes looked strange in the glow of the street lamp. "Listen, Vic, the kids are going to be soaked to the skin."
        "I'm the one getting soaked," Vic said. "They've got raincoats.
        Paige isn't over at the house?"
        "She left already." Marty glanced worriedly at his house across the street, where lights still glowed at both the first- and second-floor windows. "We're going to meet her."
        "You remember what you told me-"
        "Vic, please"
        "I almost forgot myself, what you told me, and then you were on your way down the walk and I remembered."
        "We've got to go, Vic.
        "You told me not to give the kids to anyone if Paige wasn't with them.
        Not anyone. You remember what you said?"
        Marty carried two large suitcases downstairs, into the kitchen.
        The Beretta 9mm Parabellum was stuffed under the waistband of his chinos. It pressed uncomfortably against his belly. He wore a reindeer-pattern wool sweater, which concealed the gun. His red and-black ski jacket was unzipped, so he could reach the pistol easily, just by dropping the bags.
        Paige entered the kitchen behind him. She was carrying one suitcase and the Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun.
        "Don't open the outer door," Marty told her as he went through the small connecting door between the kitchen and the dark garage.
        He didn't want the two-bay door open while they loaded the car because then it would become a point of vulnerability. As far as he knew, The Other might have crept back when the cops had left, might be outside at that very minute.
        Following him into the garage, Paige switched on the overhead fluorescent panels. The long bulbs flickered but didn't immediately catch because the starters were bad. Shadows leaped and spun along the walls, between the cars, in the open rafters.
        Torturing his injured neck, Marty involuntarily turned his head sharply toward each leaping phantom. None of them had a face at all, let alone a face identical to his.
        The fluorescent came on all the way. The hard white light, cold and flat as a winter-morning sun, brought the shadow dancers to a sudden halt.
        He is within a few feet of the Buick, holding tightly to his kids' hands, so close to getting away with them. His Charlotte. His Emily.
        His future, his destiny, so close, so infuriatingly close.
        But Vic won't let go. The guy is a leech. Follows them all the way from the house, as if oblivious of the rain, continuously babbling, asking questions, a nosy bastard.
        So close to the car. The engine running, headlights on. Emily in one hand, Charlotte in the other, and they love him, they really love him.
        They were hugging and kissing him back there in the foyer, so happy to see him, his little girls. They know their daddy, their real daddy.
        If he can just get into the car, close the doors, and drive away, they're his forever.
        Maybe he can kill Vic, the nosy bastard. Then it would be so easy to escape. But he's not sure he can pull it off.
        "You told me not to give the kids to anyone if Paige wasn't with them,"
        Vic says. "Not anyone. You remember what you said?"
        He stares at Vic, not thinking about an answer as much as about wasting the son of a bitch. But he's hungry again, shaky and weak in the knees, starting to crave the candy bars on the front seat, sugar, carbohydrates, more energy for the repairs he's still undergoing.
        "Marty? You remember what you said?"
        He has no gun, either, which wouldn't ordinarily be a problem.
        He's been well-trained to kill with his hands. He might even have enough strength to do so, in spite of his condition and the fact that Vic appears to be tough enough to put up a fight.
        "I thought it was strange," Vic says, "but you told me, you said not even to give them to you unless Paige was with you."
        The problem is that the