Rizzoli wakes up at her desk. Detective Frost tells her that she missed a meeting about the case because she has been formally taken off it. Lieutenant Marquette has told the team that she is “no longer an asset to the unit” (375). Rizzoli refuses to give up. She reviews Hoyt’s financial records and sees he took cash out of ATMs in Nashua, New Hampshire, and Lithia, Massachusetts, both towns a couple hours from Boston. She thinks his “lair” is probably near one of these locations. Rizzoli also notes that a dark human hair was found in the bathroom at Hoyt’s apartment. The analyst tells her it is a hair from an East Asian person. Rizzoli calls Moore to tell him what she has learned. They argue when he reminds her that she is off the case. He tells Rizzoli that she is angry at him for falling for Cordell. He retorts, “[W]hat man’s going to fall for you, when you don’t even like yourself?” (381). Rizzoli decides to follow the lead in Lithia, 90 minutes away.

Cordell has been without water for hours. She is desperate for something to drink. Hoyt brings her a glass of ice water. She pretends she cannot drink it with both of her hands bound. He unbinds one of her hands so she can drink. She takes advantage of the situation to upend his tray of surgical tools onto him, grab a scalpel, and stab him. She tries to escape, but he knocks her down again. She taunts him by saying that his “hero” Capra was a “loser” who begged her not to fire him the day he died. She lies and tells him that Capra told her Hoyt was “nothing to him. Just a parasite” (387). Outraged, Hoyt uses the scalpel to cut into her.

Rizzoli questions the manager of the grocery store where the ATM Hoyt used is located. The manager says he does not recognize the picture of Hoyt she shows him. She asks him if any Asian women live in town. He tells her there is a “tall girl. Not all that pretty” (392) renting the nearby Sturdee Farm who has dark hair, but she is not Asian. Before going to the farm, Rizzoli calls Frost to tell him about the lead she is following.

Rizzoli arrives at Sturdee Farm. She is struck by the quiet and isolation of the place. She notes the farm seems somewhat dilapidated. She sees Cordell’s car parked in the barn. In the car, she finds a dark wig. She realizes the Asian hair found in Hoyt’s apartment was from the wig, as “the hair for most black wigs” comes from “the Orient” (396). Suddenly, she realizes that they had not seen Hoyt on the hospital security cameras because he had entered the hospital dressed as a woman and left dressed as a man.

She hears Cordell scream from the farm house. Rizzoli breaks into the farm house through the back door. She does not see Hoyt. In the cellar, she sees jars of the uteruses from the other victims and a bloodied Cordell tied up on the bed. She is still alive. Too late, she realizes Hoyt let Rizzoli hear Cordell scream to lure her into the house. Hoyt attacks Rizzoli from behind with a two-by-four. He prepares to cut Rizzoli’s throat with a scalpel when she hears the sound of gunshot. Cordell has shot Hoyt with his own gun. Rizzoli hears a police siren approach.

Moore visits Rizzoli in the hospital where she is being treated for three broken ribs. All of her colleagues have sent her flowers. Moore notes that despite her banged-up condition, Rizzoli has “beautiful eyes.” Moore tells Rizzoli that he has learned that Hoyt is expected to make a full recovery from his gunshot wound. Rizzoli tells Moore she wishes she had killed him, but Moore says “I think you’re too good a cop to make that mistake again” (407). Moore tells her that Cordell survived her injuries and that Hoyt never completed the uterus extraction on her. Rizzoli is relieved. When Rizzoli asks, Moore admits he does not know what the future of his relationship with Cordell holds.

Moore visits Cordell in the hospital. She is asleep. Falco is by her side. Falco tells Moore, “Take care of her” (410). Moore promises that he will.

Hoyt is in his prison cell. He is cold. He reflects on how the criminal psychologists who interview him find him boring because “[he is] as sane as they are, and they know this” (412). He reads a scrap he tore from the newspaper that day. It announces that on February 15, Cordell married Moore. He fantasizes about Cordell waking up from a nightmare about Hoyt during her honeymoon. He feels they are “forever linked” together.

Hoyt reminisces about the night he attacked Cordell with Capra in Savannah. He remembers how Cordell shot Capra in the stomach, paralyzing him. Capra had begged Hoyt to kill him and so Hoyt shot him in the head. Hoyt had taken a lock of Cordell’s hair as a souvenir of his vow to avenge his friend. Hoyt thinks about how he pursued Cordell “for you,” that is, for Capra. He feels that being a killer is part of his “essential nature.”