Saint shuts herself inside her apartment for two weeks and tells Himes she is still tracking the pirate. She barely eats, sleeps on the sofa, and blocks out daylight while listening obsessively to old interviews and the tapes from her grandmother’s answering machine. Immersing herself in Patch’s voice lets Saint avoid facing her own pain while she works.

As Saint replays the recordings, she focuses on the places the missing girl described to Patch. When Patch recalls Baldy Point, Lake Altus-Lugert, and the Fork Red River, Saint marks Oklahoma on her map. When he speaks about Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor, White Point Garden, and pirate history in South Carolina, Saint marks that location too.

Saint keeps following the trail through more of Patch’s memories, including Denver and then many other places stretching from Cottonwood Falls to New York City, New England, and Montana. For days, she compares the taped details with transcripts and with the known mailing locations of the girls. Instead of treating the route as chaos, Saint searches for a pattern linking the places together.

On the thirteenth day, Saint hears the final tape, in which Patch describes the girl talking about Tucson, Kitt Peak, and the dark sky there. Matching that memory against where the last girl was mailed from, Saint draws a bold red circle and reaches a new conclusion: the pirate has not been moving randomly, but following the places the girl herself once saw. Realizing this gives her a way to predict his next move, and Saint immediately calls Himes to tell him she thinks she knows where the pirate is headed.