“I’m glad we’re going.”

That look again. Just making sure.

“We’ll get a hotel outside East Kent. Spend a few nights. Check the news. Once they catch whoever’s doing this, we’ll spend an extra few days or so away, get our heads together, let the reality of it all sink in.”

“What about your job?”

Jan shakes her head no.

“No job is supposed to keep you from protecting yourself. What good is putting food on the table if those about to eat are dead?”

“Mom!”

A man steps out into the street and Jan slams on the brakes. His blue suit looks at first like denim to Emily. He squints into the headlights and for a second it looks as if he’s reaching into his jacket for a gun. Jan puts the car in reverse. She’s prepared to back up as fast as she arrived. But he only pulls out a cigar and, shaking his head, lights it without moving.

Jan honks. Puts the car in drive.

“Think this guy is scared?” she asks. “He hears about you girls getting picked off one by one and he thinks it’s funny.”

The man raises a fist, lifts his middle finger, and finally moves.

Jan drives. Flips him off as they pass.

“Who do you think is doing it?” Emily asks.

They haven’t discussed much of this, as Jan and Emily Holt are both practical women. Someone is doing this. Until they know who it is, why speculate? At the same time, Emily’s peers are suggesting something far less practical. And it’s nowhere near lost on her that the horror began after the night they all spent at Dana’s, after Natasha told them the story about Daphne.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Jan says. “Only one piece of news I’m waiting on, and that’s that this is over.”

As Jan makes a hard right on Governor Road, Emily tries not to think about the story, the legend, the name. But just like when she watches a show about alien abductions, it’s hard not to at least temporarily believe in the possibility of alien abductions. When evidence is presented in such ways…

Her teammates were crushed.

Even poor Kennedy Lichtenstein, who was about the most down-to-earth girl Emily ever met. One could explain this all away with science (or, if you’re Jan Holt, you might say the reports of the girls being crushed by bare hands are exaggerated and when the news says “crushed” they just mean “beat to death”), but Emily hasn’t been able to fully commit.

Natasha did explain (in her own vague way) how easily something like this could spread: one teammate gets killed, the rest think of Daphne. Daphne then comes for the rest.

See? Something real practical in all that too.

“Less than three miles,” Jan says. “Then we’re out.”

She’s wearing a coat, the windows down. Emily has hers in her lap. They each have one packed bag in the backseat. Mom brought a cooler with some snacks but didn’t stop to add any ice. It’s okay. Emily isn’t hungry. She isn’t anything, really, other than scared.