“You took my daughter’s child!” Terry Russel wasn’t shouting, but her voice was so cold she didn’t have to.

“He’s…not her son!” Winnie gasped. “You crazy old bitch. Get out of my house!”

She hadn’t called anyone a bitch since she was eighteen, and then it had been because her best friend had slept with her boyfriend. It flew out of her mouth with enough venom to stop Terry Russel in her kitten-heeled tracks. But then—oddly—Terry’s head pivoted right, like she’d seen something outside the open door. Winnie thought that she was imagining the whites of Terry’s eyes growing larger with each passing second, but then the woman’s mouth opened and she let out a little gurgle of surprise.

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