That night, James leaves Jackson Island for good and crosses the channel under moonlight with rations, his notebook, and a pistol. The crossing sharpens his sense that he is changing: his voice feels deeper and truly his own. Once in quiet Hannibal, James slips through the shadows to Judge Thatcher’s house, enters through the unlocked back door, and goes to the library, where he has secretly read before. He gathers a satchel, books, matches, pencils, and a map, then searches the desk for a bill of sale that might reveal where Sadie and Lizzie were taken.

Judge Thatcher catches James in the library, seated in his chair. James stays calm, identifies himself as "James," and uses the pistol to control the encounter. When James demands to know where his wife and daughter were sold, Thatcher confirms they are on the Graham farm in Edina, Missouri. Because James cannot read the map well enough to navigate it alone, he forces Thatcher to show Hannibal and mark Edina. During the exchange, Thatcher is disturbed not only by the gun but by James’s educated speech and literacy, which violate his assumptions about enslaved people.

James then makes Thatcher leave the house with him, taking food, a knife, and plans to get rope and twine. At the river, James puts Thatcher to work rowing a skiff upriver, reversing the master-slave relation for a short time. Thatcher tries to frame slavery as care and obligation, but James exposes the lie by pointing out that forced labor under threat is slavery. When Thatcher identifies the pistol as the kind Tom Hopkins owned, James openly admits he killed Hopkins by strangling him after witnessing Hopkins rape an enslaved woman. James also accuses Thatcher and men like him of using kindness to disguise the violence and sexual exploitation built into slavery.

By sunrise, James and Thatcher beach the skiff in a hidden place. James orders Thatcher to send the boat adrift, then ties him to a sycamore, leaving him alive and ungagged so that someone may eventually find him. When Thatcher asks about the books James stole, James names works that Thatcher never truly used, underscoring how much James has claimed for himself. Looking at the marked map, James sees that Edina lies north and west of him, away from the Mississippi. Though Thatcher warns he will never make it, James now has the direction he needs and leaves committed to pursuing his family.