And then the pop came: a loud bang, and pressure on her shoulder. She fell flat on her face, breathing dirt up her nose and gasping for air. Something had hit her, but not a bullet, a rock maybe; the bullet had hit the ground and sent debris flying. He shot at me, Juno thought incredulously. That bumbling idiot shot at me. But the bumbling idiot was still coming after her; she could hear his grunts and his hands slapping at the ground. She crawled faster still, toward the dirt pile she rarely ventured past. The back end of the space still creeped her out. She felt something hit her in the back of the head, but she didn’t stop. And then a hand was on her ankle, yanking her backward. Her sweatshirt rode up as he pulled her along the uneven ground, and Juno felt something sharp stick into her breast. She yelled, she screamed and kicked, and, clawing on the ground, she wriggled away from him. She scooted a few feet ahead when she heard him curse. She scrambled over a ledge of dirt that rose so high to the ceiling of the crawl space she had to shimmy past it on her belly. He couldn’t follow her back here, could he? And then she was rolling down the incline, dirt coating the blood on her face like a mask. She didn’t have far to roll. She came to a stop at the bottom, lying on her stomach and spitting mud out of her mouth. She lay suddenly still, listening, deciding how far away Dakota’s grunts were. “You’re so fucking slow!” she called out. “No wonder your wife left you.”

That did it. “Who are you, you fucking bitch?” But she could hear the wobble of fear in his voice. Men always called names when they were scared.

“What were you going to do, Dakota? Kill your twin sister and then yourself?”

There was a shocked silence, during which she could hear him hammering out breaths. He was moving faster now, and if she wanted to stay alive, at least for a little while longer, she’d have to move.