In Chap­ter 116 of “All the Col­ors of the Dark,” Saint expe­ri­ences her first flight, feel­ing unset­tled as she nav­i­gates her fear of fly­ing along­side the dense smoke from cig­a­rettes being smoked near­by. Her des­ti­na­tion is Kansas City, where she arrives at a fed­er­al build­ing to join a bustling team of agents and sup­port staff focused on law enforce­ment in the West­ern Dis­trict of Mis­souri and Kansas. Upon enter­ing, she is con­front­ed with a wall of noise, phone calls, and a notice­board dis­play­ing crim­i­nal faces and rewards.

Saint meets Himes, an old­er super­vi­sor who recounts his­tor­i­cal crim­i­nal events, specif­i­cal­ly a noto­ri­ous mas­sacre from 1933. Despite her hes­i­tance and self-doubt about her suit­abil­i­ty for the role—considering her youth and inexperience—Himes insists that her back­ground, which includes a notable case, makes her a strong can­di­date. Their con­ver­sa­tion reveals that Saint is study­ing psy­chol­o­gy and behav­ioral sci­ence, a pur­suit linked to her inter­est in under­stand­ing crim­i­nal motives.

Himes intro­duces her to a case involv­ing a miss­ing girl named Grace, pre­sent­ing a file with unset­tling details, includ­ing skele­tal remains found at Tensleep Creek. The men­tion of “Angela Rossi” and rosary beads caus­es a vis­cer­al reac­tion in Saint, link­ing her past experiences—particularly with Eli Aaron, a case that haunt­ed her.

Fur­ther, Himes presents a file on a series of bank rob­beries com­mit­ted by an unas­sum­ing man who uses an unusu­al weapon, a one-shot flint­lock pis­tol, which intrigues Saint. She ques­tions the ratio­nale behind her involve­ment, giv­en the pres­ence of more expe­ri­enced per­son­nel, but Himes is con­fi­dent in her poten­tial to con­tribute. The chap­ter ends with a grow­ing real­iza­tion for Saint regard­ing the dis­tinc­tive nature of the weapon used—a pirate gun that evokes unease and curios­i­ty about the unfold­ing cas­es she is being drawn into.

This chap­ter encap­su­lates Sain­t’s tran­si­tion into a com­plex world of law enforce­ment, where her per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al paths are about to con­verge dra­mat­i­cal­ly.