And then it happened: the scene shifted, and the villains rearranged themselves into a new order. The whole thing couldn’t have taken more than ten seconds to play out, but to Winnie, everything happened excruciatingly slowly.

A noise preceded her husband, a guttural, wet moaning that raised the hairs on Winnie’s neck. He moved into view in slow, laborious steps, like he was pulling something behind him. Winnie saw his brow, then his nose, and then his shoulders struggled past the open door, heading straight for Terry, who seemed frozen, staring.

He was walking in a strange, zombie-like gait. What Winnie noticed first was that the white T-shirt he’d been wearing when he left to take his run was no longer white. A bloom of red started just under his shoulder, near his collarbone, dark in the center and bright scarlet on the edges. She just had time to register that her husband was injured—terribly so—before he fell directly into Terry Russel’s arms. Winnie ran for Nigel at the same time as his weight pushed the older woman off her feet and onto the foyer floor with a hard thump. They went down in a tangle of legs. But before Winnie could reach them, Nigel had rolled off Terry Russel and was lying on his back on the floor, gasping.

Winnie dropped down next to him. He was rearing his head up, struggling to look out the door.

“Dakota...”

Winnie heard him but couldn’t register his words. Her husband was busted like a cracked wine bottle, leaking on her hardwood. Winnie didn’t even notice that Terry Russel had risen to her haunches and backed herself against the closet door, her mouth slack with horror.

She saw the blood on his shirt at the same time her brother walked through the front door holding a gun in one hand and a knife in the other.

      29

   WINNIE

“Dakota...oh my God, call an ambulance!” Winnie’s hands were slippery, and she didn’t want to think about the color of the substance on them; the color was hurting her eyes and there was so, so much of it. She was trying to stop the blood that was easing out of Nigel’s shoulder in a thick stream.

She had her phone a second ago; where was it? Her eyes scanned the floor around her as she tried to remember if she’d dropped it. Nigel moaned, the whites of his eyes flickering through the small gap of his eyelids. How was she supposed to stop the bleeding? Ripping off her sweater, she balled it up and pressed it to Nigel’s shoulder. Her cream-colored sweater soaked his blood like a sponge and Winnie let out a cry. God, he was going to bleed to death. That horrible woman—Terry Russel—was slowly standing up, using the closet door as leverage so she could slide slowly up the wall. One of her kitten heels had come off and was lying on its side next to Nigel’s head.

“Dakota!” Winnie cried again. She turned to Terry, her rage so large her words grated out of her throat. “You! Get out! Get out right now!” Then, back to her brother—

“Are you drunk, Dakota? Did you hear me? Nigel is hurt!”

“He knows that,” Terry Russel said. Her voice was almost dry. “He’s the one who did it.”

Her voice summoned Dakota’s gaze. He looked at Terry with little interest, and that was when Winnie really began to panic. Her gaze leveled on the knife held limply in his hand and she felt a quake of uncertainty, but then Nigel was squeezing her hand. What strength he had left was leaking out of his body alarmingly quickly. His face was a shade of gray that scared Winnie. People didn’t turn that color unless something was very wrong. Nigel’s eyes were open, and he was staring at Dakota, his mouth distended with terror.

Winnie connected the dots slower than she would have if it wasn’t her husband who was dying in front of her. Terry Russel knew exactly what was going on, which was why she hadn’t made a dash for the door: the object of her fear was blocking it. Dakota. She glanced back at Terry and saw the older woman’s eyes scan the room and then, with a little flicker of hope, land on her handbag, the one she had so primly carried on her arm when she knocked on Winnie’s door.

Dakota’s face was expressionless, like he was zoned out watching TV rather than his brother-in-law bleeding out on the floor. He sheathed the knife in a holster on his belt, the holster she knew he used for hunting because she’d bought it for him. She was about to scream his name again, this time wake him up from whatever alcohol-or drug-induced trance he was in—when she really saw the gun, and Manda’s words came rushing back to her: He has it out for Nigel...

“Dakota, what are you doing?”

He ignored the question—he ignored her altogether, in fact, and took a step toward Nigel, lifting the arm holding the gun.

“Dakota!” Winnie’s scream was shrill, but the only indication he’d heard her was a slight sway his head made in her direction.

She looked down at Nigel, afraid to leave him and even more afraid to move him. But if her phone was trapped underneath his body... She needed to calm down, clear her head. She thought of Samuel, upstairs doing his homework—had she really heard his door open, or had she imagined it?—and mentally begged him to stay put. If he heard Dakota’s voice he’d stay in his room, she thought. But Dakota had yet to say anything, and that was the strangest, scariest part.

Winnie tried to stand up, but something abruptly slammed her back to the floor. She felt pain explode in her knees and she fell forward over Nigel, the palm of her hand almost landing on his bleeding shoulder. Astonished, she looked over her shoulder at Dakota, who had been the one to shove her down. He wasn’t looking at his sister; his eyes were now on Terry Russel—the thing that didn’t belong in this situation. Winnie tried to stand up again with the same result: Dakota’s heavy hand resting on her shoulder before slamming her back to her knees. This time, she managed to crawl across Nigel’s legs and away from her brother.

“What is wrong with you?” she gasped, backpedaling farther from him. His only response was to raise the gun, the muzzle pointing at Nigel’s chest, and to shoot it, once...twice. Winnie didn’t scream; she was too stunned. Besides, if you knew you were dreaming it was stupid to scream, wasn’t it?

Terry Russel screamed, however. It was an old woman’s scream, deep and frail, and it didn’t go very far. Nigel’s body bucked only when the second bullet hit him. There was a faint curling of smoke above where the bullet entered his chest—or at least Winnie thought there was. The pops of the gun were so loud Winnie’s vision seemed to tremble, and when the air settled, her husband was dead. Winnie was puzzling over the fact that her knees had hurt when Dakota shoved her down, hurt like it wasn’t a dream. She could see a stream of red pooling underneath Nigel; his shirt had been white, hadn’t it...? She reached to touch the blood; if it was warm, this wasn’t a dream. You couldn’t feel warm in a dream. Winnie opened her mouth to scream; in that moment her head suddenly exploded with pain and everything went black.