code—he’d stayed here more than once, after all. He tossed her away from him, and Juno’s shoulder blade struck the closet door. Even with the breath knocked out of her, she still hadn’t screamed. Dakota, seeing his mistake in shoving her away, reached for her again, but Nigel’s body was in the way and he tripped over it, sprawling. Juno had a split second to consider her options: the front door was out of the question; she wouldn’t get two feet before he grabbed her. That left the apartment beyond the kitchen, but that door had its own dead bolt, and beyond that was the gate with the latch and the alley. And who knew what she would find in that apartment. Two dead women?
She was up the stairs before he was on his feet. She didn’t hear his footfalls behind her. That was good; she had time. As she cleared the stairs and ran for Samuel’s bedroom window, she heard him yelling something. Her lungs were almost in as much pain as her joints as she gasped for air. If he wasn’t coming up the stairs after her, maybe it meant that one of the women was alive, and she bet it was Winnie. She reached Sam’s window at the same time she noticed the house had fallen eerily silent.
Her finger found the place behind her ear, but she pulled her hand back, shaking. He’d come up here next; he was probably already on his way up the stairs. She cast a glance over her shoulder, to the window Sam had climbed out of not twenty minutes ago. She’d probably break her neck falling from the roof.
But at least Dakota won’t break your neck. Don’t you want to die on your own terms? But she’d been wrong about all of it. Samuel—Sam—he’d lost Nigel tonight, and maybe he didn’t even know it yet; could she die in peace knowing she was responsible for him losing his mother, as well? She didn’t look at the window again, the window that would no doubt save her life. She left it open and hid instead, returning to the spot under the en suite sink.
Nigel had taken most of his toiletries to the downstairs bathroom and had yet to bring them back up. This had cleared out a space where she curled in a tight ball. Dakota stood nearby as Juno held her breath, her back curled against the space. Then she heard him close the window in a whoosh, and the snap of the lock. He did a quick tour of Sam’s room, the bathroom, the closet, and then his footsteps receded to the lower level. There was some commotion downstairs; she heard things slamming around. She braced herself to hear another gunshot, but none came. When Dakota’s clangs and bangs sounded far enough away, she pushed open the cabinet door and peered around nervously.
She had to stop him from killing Winnie; she was the only mother Sam had, even if she wasn’t Sam’s biological mother. She’d made a mistake in getting involved; she’d done the wrong thing, and now she had to do the right thing. Juno unfolded herself with the grace of her former years and the pain of her latter. She didn’t hesitate. She headed for the stairs with a rough plan forming in her mind.
Downstairs, Dakota was barricading the doors like he was preparing for some type of siege. When Juno reached the bottom of the stairs, she saw that he’d pushed the foyer chair in front of the door and had reactivated the alarm, the red light glaring like an eye.
He didn’t want anyone else getting out. But where was he now?
Juno ducked around the corner, grateful for the hundredth time that Sam wasn’t here, and headed for the kitchen. As her feet crept over the black-and-white-checkered floor, she heard Winnie’s guttural scream from the apartment. “What are you doing? You killed her! Dakota...!”
She could hear them struggling as she reached the junk drawer, yanking it open and sticking her hand all the way to the back. She found what she was looking for. As her hand closed around it, and she tucked it into the back of her pants, she heard Dakota howling like a wounded animal, followed by an incredulous “You bit me!”
Even in the midst of everything, Juno found that ludicrous. How dare you bite me after I shot and killed your husband! What she also found more than ludicrous was that none of