Mom looked back at the game show, where a contestant had just blown the big question and was hiding his face in his palm. She said, “Texas seems so far away. I’ve felt that ever since you moved.”

I reached out and took her hand. If I hadn’t met Aimee, would Michael and I ever have left the Northeast? Maybe not. Maybe we wouldn’t have met Brady and Lena, I’d still be working, my parents would spend every weekend with Grace, and we’d watch this true-crime story unfolding from a safe distance, disturbed but not distraught.

I texted Alondra. When are the FBI or the police sending someone?

Her answer was quick: Working on it.

Maybe Lena would retreat, there would be no more sightings, no more postcards. But I knew that wouldn’t make things better. The FBI would keep looking, but Michael and I would either have to enter witness protection or go back to our lives, never able to relax or feel safe again.

“Did you know Shakira just finished an ancient philosophy course?” Mom held up her magazine so I could see.

I nodded, and as she flipped the page, my breath caught. Maybe Lena wasn’t running around Texas faking a case against Michael. Maybe she was faking her presence in Texas altogether.

The box left on my doorstep and the postcards in Texas could have been dropped off by any of Lena and Brady’s subcontractors. That security camera footage had been fuzzy. Maybe someone else was in the footage. Maybe Lena had used technology to alter the feed.

Maybe … I pulled up the search engine on my phone. The last time I’d seen Lena, she’d said she was visiting her aunt. The aunt who had given her the sourdough starter. The aunt who’d raised her. Was there a picture of this woman?

In a news story titled Local Woman Questioned in Serial Killer Case, there was a photo labeled “Courtesy of the Texas Department of Public Safety,” a terrible driver’s license photo of a grim-faced woman with Lena’s unruly hair and strong build. Lena’s aunt might be the one caught on the surveillance camera, trying to help out her niece.

My brain wanted to argue, but my body was certain, ice-cold with fear. Lena was still here. That jar on my parents’ front steps couldn’t be a coincidence.

But it wasn’t proof. Not the kind anyone would believe.

When Aimee destroyed my life, Michael and I had run away and started over. But there was nowhere we could run from Lena. She’d pick off the people I loved one by one, and then she’d just disappear again. Tension tightened every sinew in my body as my mind flipped between the options.