Charlie gets a break in a long-unsolved kidnapping case that has haunted him, but runs into trouble when the abductee refuses his help.
Tropes:
- Atrocious Alias: Jesse considers Trevor's assumed name Bob Lowther to be this, claiming the first part of it to be uncreative.
- Cassandra Truth: When Boyle is found murdered after attempting to come forward with information regarding the whereabouts of Trevor and Alison, Charlie comes to the conclusion that Boyle really was telling the truth about not knowing anything before the events of the episode.
- Chekhov's Gun: Alison’s childhood doll that Charlie finds buried in Trevor's backyard. It's what allows Allison to regain her memories of Fiona being her mother and allowing them to reunite for real.
- Crazy Survivalist: Trevor turned into an extreme doomsday prepper after the death of his wife, which was from her contracting cancer despite her allegedly having lived a very clean lifestyle. It's to the point where he fervently refuses to trust hospitals or consume anything store-bought out of paranoia that it's somehow contaminated, with him also having brainwashed Alison into having the same mindset.
- Disappeared Dad: Alison's biological father is mentioned to have walked out on her just after she was born, leaving Fiona a single mother struggling to make ends meet for her daughter.
- Dying Clue: While Boyle doesn’t get to directly tell Charlie the info he possesses regarding the whereabouts of Trevor and Alison due to Trevor killing him, his body is found clutching a note containing a written version of it.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Charlie's fourteen years of searching finally pays off, allowing him to arrest Trevor for Alison’s abduction and Boyle's murder, and Alison and Fiona to reunite as mother and daughter.
- Hope Spot: One for Charlie when he learns from Boyle that Trevor and Alison have recently returned to town under assumed identities, giving the detective the chance to finally bring Alison home to her mother Fiona after fourteen years of searching.
- Hypocrite: Trevor in spades. He claims to have made a vow to keep Alison safe after witnessing her play near the street unsupervised and is pathologically against any kind of standard-issue hospital drug, yet his ideas of doing so involve stealing her from her mother and keeping her drugged in an underground bunker. Then once Alison learns the truth and starts disobeying him, he accuses Charlie of poisoning her mind despite Trevor having brainwashed her with his insane prepper beliefs for the last fourteen years of her life.
- It's Personal: Discussed by Donovan, who claims that every cop has at least one case that is extremely personal to them. Alison's abduction was Charlie's, with the latter having spent the last fourteen years following every possible lead trying to find her.
- No Place for Me There: Alison believes this to be the case after Trevor is arrested, that she doesn't feel like she belongs with Fiona or anywhere else and chooses to try and find a place of her own. Fiona respects her decision, but offers Alison a room to stay in until then. The feeling however becomes lessened after she regains her memories when Fiona shows Alison her childhood doll, with Alison finally recognizing Fiona as her mother.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Trevor abducted Alison out of the desire to keep her safe after he saw her playing by the road unattended, deeming Fiona unfit to be parenting a child. Charlie immediately calls B.S. and points out that he could have instead just told the police about it, implying that Trevor's real motive was because he wanted a child of his own to raise. While Trevor doesn’t take the accusation well, he notably doesn't attempt to deny it either.
- Parental Neglect: Part of the reason Trevor's abduction of Alison happened was because Fiona left Alison playing outside unsupervised for a brief moment, making Trevor deem Fiona unfit to be a parent.
- Revisiting the Cold Case: One that Charlie decided to give up on in the previous episode, no less. The episode opens with Bertrand Boyle giving the detective a call claiming to have new information regarding the whereabouts of Alison Anders and her abductor Trevor Miles after a brief encounter with the latter. Charlie heads to the meeting place, only to find Boyle bludgeoned to death with his own oxygen tank. Fortunately, Boyle is revealed to have left a written form of the information on him for Charlie so he can investigate it himself. The rest of the SJPD are in full support of the investigation if it means they can finally rescue Alison.
- Sanity Slippage: Trevor was driven completely insane with grief from his wife's death and the circumstances of it, leading him to become a fanatical doomsday prepper and abducting a four-year-old Alison from her mother.
- We All Die Someday: Trevor had no problems with killing Boyle to keep him from turning Trevor in to the police as Boyle didn't have long left to live anyway, not to mention Trevor's deranged belief that the rest of humanity will follow in the oncoming cataclysm.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: When Charlie brings Alison to Fiona's house the first time, Alison requests to have some alone time with her which Charlie agrees to. Then the second Charlie and Fiona’s guards are down, Alison brains Fiona and escapes out the back door. Fiona is devastated enough by everything that she falls back into her drinking habits and loses almost all hope of getting her daughter back. Fortunately, she regains it when Alison recovers her memories of the time before she was abducted.
