Kit increased pressure on the pedal

Kit put the automatic gearshift into drive and touched the accelerator pedal. The car seemed to strain forward, but did not move. The plow had stopped a couple of feet away, and snow was piled two feet high in front of the bumper. Kit increased pressure on the pedal as the car labored to move the snow out of the way. "Come on!" Kit said. "This is a Mercedes, it ought to be able to shift a few pounds of snow! How big is the damn engine, anyway?" He pressed a little harder, but he did not want the wheels to lose traction and begin to spin. The car eased forward a few inches, and the piled-up snow seemed to crack and shift. Kit looked back. His father and Toni stood outside the house, watching. They would come no closer, Kit guessed, because they knew Nigel had the guns. The car suddenly sprang forward as the snow gave way. Kit felt a soaring elation as he accelerated along the cleared driveway. Steepfall had seemed like a jail from which he would never escape—but he had. He passed the garage—and saw Daisy. He braked reflexively. Nigel said, "What the hell?" Daisy was walking toward them, supported by Craig on one side and by Ned's sulky daughter, Sophie, on the other. Daisy's legs dragged uselessly behind her, and her head was a mass of blood. Beyond them was Stanley's Ferrari, its sensuous curves battered and deformed, its gleaming blue paintwork scraped and scratched. What the hell had happened there? "Stop and pick her up!" Nigel said. Kit remembered how Daisy had humiliated him and almost drowned him in her father's pool only yesterday. "Fuck her," he said. He was at the wheel, and he was not going to delay his escape for her. He put his foot down. * * * THE long green hood of the Mercedes seemed to lift like the head of an eager horse, and it leaped forward. Craig had only a second to act. He grabbed the hood of Sophie's anorak with his right hand and pulled her to the side of the drive, moving the same way himself. Because they were tangled up with Daisy, she moved with them, and all three fell into the soft snow beside the track, Daisy screaming in pain and rage. The car shot past, missing them by inches, and Craig glimpsed his Uncle Kit at the wheel. He was flabbergasted. Kit had nearly killed him. Was it intentional, or had Kit known that Craig had time to get out of the way?