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Summary

The Hunt: Chapters 117–132

In 1983, Jimmy fails his exams, growing angry and listless. Saint spends more and more time working in Kansas in her own apartment; she has taken on the job of finding Patch, in exchange for use of the FBI’s resources in her search for Grace. She drives to a bank in Kansas that Patch once robbed and meets with a teller named Dawn, where she learns that, after Patch asked Dawn about her family, he ended up not taking the money and walking out on his own. That night, Patch calls Saint at her hotel. She reveals her assignment to him, which he has already guessed, and tells him that it will kill her to take him down. 

Saint receives a letter from Tooms, asking to see her. She goes to the prison to meet with him, and he tells her that he consistently gets letters from Patch, who he believes is traveling across the country. She urges him to tell her where Grace’s body is. He begins to tell her, but she runs out of the room to vomit. 

Patch disappears after their phone call, and Saint works tirelessly with the FBI to try and track him down. She is put on cases that she breezes through easily, catching criminals, getting written about in the paper, and honing her skills. On Thanksgiving, she goes home to Monta Clare to prepare a huge meal for Norma and her ungrateful husband. After Jimmy passes out on the couch, Saint walks into town with Norma, who brings her to Monta Clare to see Patch’s most recent painting of a missing girl named Eloise Strike on display. Afterwards, she tells Norma that she is pregnant.

In Oklahoma city, Patch calls Saint again. They talk about Grace, and Misty, and Patch intuits that Saint is pregnant. Patch speaks to her for a long time, unaware that she has traced his call. The next day he robs a bank, and Saint arrives at the scene fifteen minutes later. 

Saint goes to a clinic, intending to abort her pregnancy. While waiting at the desk, Saint sees a photograph of the clinic’s opening day, in which Dr. Tooms stands in the crowd. That night she returns home to a drunken, passed-out Jimmy. He wakes up as she is finishing cleaning the house, and they eat together until Chief Nix knocks on the door, coming to see Saint because he misses having her around. 

Saint tells Jimmy that she had gotten pregnant, but that she went to the clinic for an abortion. Before she can finish speaking, he hits her. She lies on the floor, picturing Patch and crying for his help as Jimmy continues to beat her. 

Patch wakes from a dream about Grace and calls Saint, only to be greeted by Norma on the phone. She tells him that he’s breaking Saint’s heart, and that he needs to let Saint go so that she can move on. 

Saint leaves Monta Clare without seeing Norma, not wanting her grandmother to know that Jimmy has beaten her. She stays in her apartment in Kansas for two weeks until her wounds heal, working from home and listening endlessly to the tapes of Patch talking about Grace. She begins pinpointing spots on a map of places Grace described having been, and realizes that Patch is going to those places one by one. 

Traumatized by Jimmy, Saint tries to keep herself together. She travels to San Carlos, where she thinks Patch is headed next, and leaves her motel at once upon hearing an announcement of a nearby bank robbery. She catches Patch soon after he’s robbed the bank, stopping him on the road. Patch tells her that he thinks Eloise Strike is Grace, and Saint tells him she needs to arrest him. Patch notes the bruises on her face and she admits that Jimmy beat her. She says that Tooms told her that Grace is buried in Thurley State Park, and Patch doesn’t believe her. He turns to run, and she shoots him.

Previous section Cops and Robbers: Chapters 98–116 Next section Fate: Chapters 133–152

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