As soon as he gets home, Nick checks the website of his father’s National Guard unit; he finds a memorial to a recently fallen member, but he doesn’t see any updates about his father. Later, when he shows his mom the footage from the field trip, they can’t make out a panther, only a blurry brown figure walking away from the camera. 

Back at the school, the teachers and Dr. Dressler become concerned when Mrs. Starch doesn’t return from the field trip and report her missing to the sheriff’s office. The lead detective assigned to the case, Jason Marshall, happens to be the father of Libby—the girl whose inhaler Mrs. Starch ventured into the wildfire to retrieve. He sits up late, wondering what might happen to a person stranded overnight in the swamp: “Except for the bugs, nothing would bother you—at least no wild animals would” (44). Toward dawn, he is awakened by Sam, the dog, barking wildly at the approach of a stranger. When Detective Marshall opens the door, nobody is there, but his daughter’s inhaler is sitting on the doormat.