After narrowly escaping execution, Marty Tooms sits with Saint in a calmer, almost ordinary moment, joking about his last meal of grilled cheese. He begins talking about the past, recalling the morning he was out looking for Scout. When Blackjack brings coffee, Saint notices the name badge identifying him as Darnell Richardson, a small detail that adds to her sense that everything around the case has become morally unstable.

Saint then tells Tooms that she understands what he had really been doing for the girls who came to him. Without boasting or defending himself, Tooms accepts her praise only partly, saying he did not save all of them. Saint reflects that Tooms had secretly given desperate pregnant girls abortions when their families and communities would have condemned them, and that he later waited around schools so vulnerable girls would know someone safe was there.

When Saint asks about Eli Aaron, Tooms explains that he recognized Aaron as dangerous when Aaron came to the school to photograph children and behaved inappropriately with Misty Meyer and other girls. Tooms went to Aaron’s house to warn him off, but Aaron made clear that he already knew Tooms’s secret work. That encounter explains why investigators found Tooms’s hair fibers at the Aaron house and leads Saint to realize that Aaron chose victims from the girls who came to Tooms for abortions, seeing them as "penitent sinners."

Tooms says he misunderstood Aaron’s intentions at first, thinking Aaron was only taking money and luring girls with false promises of modeling. Because Tooms did not keep names, he could not easily identify or contact the girls once he understood the danger, so he tried to warn them indirectly by waiting outside schools. He blames himself for not doing more, but Saint tells him he did everything he could.

Finally, Saint confronts Tooms about Grace. Tooms admits he lied when he said he had killed Joseph’s mother. He says he had treated her for years, saw her worsening condition, and failed Joseph by never reporting the situation to Social Services. Later, believing Joseph had already lost too much and would otherwise search forever, Tooms falsely confessed so Joseph could at least have certainty. After seeing Joseph in prison and hearing Joseph still offer compassion, Tooms realized he had made the wrong choice, and in the hours before his planned execution he used his last prayer to ask that Joseph would never return.