Warning: Major spoilers ahead

In a motel parking lot, young Milo, with his hair dyed brown, has been left in an open car boot. Whoever left him set off the car’s alarm to make sure that he was found.

After hearing a young boy was found, Marissa and Peter rush to the station to identify him and are met by Detective Alcaras. Relieved at seeing their boy, Marissa runs to him and scoops him up to a hug, bursting into tears. She tells him it was because she was happy to see him.

Thankfully, he’s completely unhurt – though she’s thrown off when he asks where Carrie is.

With Carrie nowhere to be seen, Alcaras asks them if the police can ask Milo some questions, which Marissa agrees to but notes she won’t be leaving his side. In the interview, Milo says that he had been on “vacation” with Carrie, but a man dropped him off in the parking lot after “letting him ride in the trunk of the car”.

Marissa realises it means that he was left there deliberately and therefore returned but not found. But by who?

As they head outside, the press has been tipped off about Milo’s return, and they’re hounded by reporters and photographers as they get into the car.

Back at the house, Lia, Brian and Colin are relieved to see Milo in Marissa’s arms, safe and well. Lia bursts into tears and strokes his arm before Marissa takes the little one to bed, leaving Peter to face his siblings.

Peter asserts that “all that matters is family” but still refuses to apologise for lying about Brian’s injury or his cruel comments to Lia, instead walking off and leaving them dumbstruck.

Alcaras and Greco head to the parking lot to investigate the scene, before sending out officers to look into every motel within a two-mile radius – while they check out one that is right next to them.

Tucking Milo into bed, Peter attempts to address the chaotic argument of the night before to Marissa, saying it was “complicated”, but he loves them and would do anything for them. Marissa says she only cares about her son and doesn’t understand how he was just let go. She declares that Carrie will not be coming back for him as she won’t let him.

The next morning, Milo asks when his hair will be blonde again, as he only dyed it brown because he was “playing dress up with Carrie, who’s famous”. Marissa asks if Carrie was nice to her, and he said that she played lots of games with him. He asks for Fruit Loops for breakfast, but Marissa says they don’t have any so she’s making pancakes for his birthday. He angrily pushes the pancake mix off the counter in a strop.

Over at Jenny’s house, she receives word that Milo has made it home safely, much to her relief. Richie comments that she’s now “off the hook” with Marissa, but she insists they have become genuine friends and she wasn’t hanging out with her out of guilt.

Marissa admits that she’s still not sleeping properly, as now she’s too scared to take her eyes off him in case he’s taken again. Peter tells her that he’s upping security systems at the house to make sure he’s protected.

Alcaras comes to the house to talk to Milo again, showing him motel room pictures to see if they can track where they stayed. He points out one room, saying the bedsheets remind him of a chameleon. As Peter goes after Milo to play, Alcaras notes to Marissa that kidnap victims are normally only returned when a ransom has been paid. She insists they haven’t paid one and they leave.

Jenny brings Jacob over to the house for a visit, but Milo is wary of Jacob, especially when he asks about why his hair’s now brown. The boys go to play while the women catch up, with Marissa sharing how strange it is that Carrie treated him so well – almost like playing house with him as her son.

Marissa thanks Jenny for everything she did for her throughout the ordeal, and Jenny assures her that she’s there to be her friend, not to avoid a lawsuit. Marissa asks why she thought that, and Jenny admits it was a comment her husband made to her. Their chat is disrupted though when the boys get into a fight over Carrie – with Milo saying Carrie liked him more than Jacob and had promised they would never be apart. Realising it wasn’t the right time to be there, Jenny and Jacob leave.

Alcaras and Greco head to the motel Milo pointed out, and in one room find a dead body covered by a duvet.

Forensics are brought in to examine the body, who determine that the murder victim suffered blunt force trauma to the head. Due to it being a dirty motel, the CCTV proved useless, with potential DNA swabs also looking unlikely.

The body is confirmed to be a male, but the detectives are stumped as to his connection to Carrie, but deduce he was the one that delivered Milo. Marissa and Peter are informed, which sends Marissa into a panic, believing as she’s still out there, Carrie must be watching them to try and get back Milo.

At school drop-off the next day, Jenny drops Jacob off and gets a call about her new author wanting a meeting. While she knows her husband is unavailable, she says she’ll make it work for him. Then she runs into Sarah, who comments on Milo’s return and how it “doesn’t add up”, which she decides to ignore to instead ask if she could watch Jacob that afternoon. She says she will… if she helps with the fundraiser.

At the Irvines, new security is being put in which is so strong Brian wonders whether “they’re trying to keep people out or in”. Peter asks to talk with him and he reluctantly agrees, but snaps when Peter begins by trying to use Milo as leverage. Brian angrily tells him that their entire lives have been based on lies that have coloured their relationships, and he was old enough to know right from wrong when he allowed Lia to take the blame for Brian’s accident, knowing it was his fault.

Peter acknowledges he did something stupid and then the lie got too big, but he loves them both and can’t live without them. Brian empathises, saying that he never said they wouldn’t be in his life and promises to text Lia to smooth things over.

Lia is staying with Colin, discussing what to do next, and avoids Brian’s messages asking to talk things through. Colin jokingly offers to beat Peter up for her, then suggests that she try and make amends for the sake of Milo. He then tells her he loves her for the first time.

As Marissa goes to get a baby monitor from the top of a wardrobe, she finds a duffel bag she had no idea about - filled with thousands of dollars in cash. She confronts Peter, asking if he’d received a ransom call she didn’t know about, and he begrudgingly admits he did, but insists he never got a call back for a drop-off, which is why he still has it.

At the police station, the detectives discover the body was Rob Murphy, who had a string of previous offences connected to illegal gambling, but no known connection to Carrie. They decide to track down his ex-wife.

When Detective Alcaras calls Marissa, Peter begs her not to tell them about the ransom. When they share the news about Rob Murphy, she doesn’t know the name but when it comes to tell him about the ransom request, she ultimately chooses to not say anything.

Jenny heads to a meeting with author Lee Logan, which goes well as she tells him he should go for a literary award. However, their meeting is disrupted by a phone call from Sarah, who asks her to come home early because her daughter’s falling ill.

When she arrives at Sarah’s house, she tells Jenny she had tried to call Richie but he hadn’t picked up – even though they’d spotted him in a parking lot, clearly not at school like he said she was. Sarah suggests Jenny ‘pay attention to what’s going on in her own home for her family’s sake’, and Jenny finally snaps, asking why everything is supposedly her fault and telling Sarah to stay out of peoples’ business.

On route to their next stop, Greco comments how Irene Murphy – Rob Murphy’s wife, lives in South Shore, the same neighbourhood Kyle Smith grew up in. Alcaras comments maybe they’re all connected.

Meanwhile, Jenny and Jacob go for a drive to the parking lot Sarah mentioned and find Richie sitting in his car scrolling on social media eating fast food. Beeping at him to alert him to her arrival, she berates him for lying about Quizzics, and he admits that at one point it was real but it disbanded a while ago.

He said he “did it for her” so she can show up at home and spend more time with Jacob, before complaining she spends too much time at her job and he needs some “me time”. She angrily tells him that she doesn’t get any “me time” at all because she’s having to do everything, and it’s cruel of him to resent her for enjoying her job.

She tells him she’s been unhappy for a long time, and that whenever she asks for his support he doesn't give it, or guilt trips her so she’ll stop asking. She says she wants a divorce. While he says he doesn’t want his son to hate him, he doesn’t fight it, and she promises that she’ll make sure Jacob will grow up treating women better than Richie’s treated her.

When Alcaras and Greco knock at Irene’s door, they realise she’s the woman from the autoshop that they’ve met before. She tells them she doesn’t talk to cops, and they tell her that her ex-husband is dead. She just responds “about time” but lets them in. They ask her about Kyle Smith and Carrie Finch, but she denies knowing them.

However, Irene slips when she shows a photo of her and Kyle when they were younger, and when she was clearly pregnant. She says they had a daughter, Josephine, who would be around 22 years old. Alcaras puts the pieces together and asks for a picture, telling her if she doesn’t they’ll come back with a warrant and police vehicles. When she does, they know they’ve finally found Carrie’s real name.

At the Irvines, Marissa and Peter turn in for the night, but Marissa still can’t sleep. Peter assures her the new security system was up and running, but Marissa is thinking about something else.

Having found out Rob Murphy was an illegal bookie, she had accounts at work flagged by internal operations for suspicious activity – and there’s been several, including Lia’s. She fears Colin is defrauding the company and was involved in the kidnapping. Peter jumps into action, calling Lia.

She doesn’t answer but it doesn’t matter, with Lia and Colin arriving at the house at the same time, setting off the new alarm in the process. Brian opens the door and shuts off the alarm. Marissa wastes no time to head downstairs and confront him about what’s going on with the accounts. Colin caves immediately, saying he relapsed once six months ago, to the shock of everyone, including Lia. He admits the loss was big, and his bookie came to visit him that weekend at the ranch, but he didn’t think there’d be any kind of connection between that and Milo’s disappearance because why would there be? When he decided to say something, the massive argument between the Irvine’s blew up, and then Milo was returned and he thought it was all over.

As for the money, he said he had been covering holes by moving money around accounts, but knew he was running out of time, so had put his house on the market to repay the firm. Marissa then tells him that the bookie was found murdered in the motel Milo was being kept, which leaves him stunned, insisting he would never hurt the boy and had no part in the kidnapping.

But as the fight continues, Carrie/Josephine lets herself into the house. While Alcaras calls Peter to ask if he knows the name Josephine Murphy… she walks through the door to join them, brandishing a gun.