- A child is kidnapped from his own room. Talbot asks Beth to look into it because she investigated other kidnappings which may be linked, and leads to a new job for Beth. Mick has a connection to the family from his pre-vampire days and investigates. Mick reveals to Beth that he may be related to the family.—Jesse Sanchez
- When six-year old Jacob Fordham is kidnapped from his bed during the middle of the night, district attorney Ben Talbot requests that Beth accompany him to the crime scene. Beth had recently covered two other similar kidnappings for BuzzWire, and Ben thinks that Beth might be able to see something that they're missing, something that ties the three kidnappings together. All they have to go on is that Jacob kept complaining about monsters in the wall, which his parents, Robert and Julie Fordham, simply ascribed to his vivid imagination. Beth notices that Jacob had lined up his toys around the bed such that, if a monster were to enter his room, it would have to bump into the toys and make enough noise to wake him. Beth concludes that Jacob may very well have heard something in the walls.
When Mick sees coverage of the kidnapping on the morning news, he also goes to view the crime scene, but not because he noticed Beth in the background. It's the old Victorian house and the people who used to live there that drew him. Ray Fordham and his wife Lilah were two of Mick's closest friends during the 1940s, when Mick was still human. Ray and Mick had grown up together, and they went off to war together. Both Ray and Mick were injured, but only Mick returned. Feeling guilty that he wasn't able to save Ray, Mick began spending time around Lilah's house, helping her with things that Ray wasn't around to do anymore. One day it just happened, and Mick and Lilah had sex with each other. Shortly thereafter, Ray returned home. He had lost both his memory and his dogtags and had languished in a hospital for months until he remembered who he was. When Ray returned to Lilah, Mick decided to make himself scarce, so he stopped visiting. He didn't know, until now, that seven months after Ray returned, Lilah had a baby. That baby was Jacob's father, Robert, and there's a strong possibility that Robert could be Mick's son.
When Mick gets to the Fordham house, the detective covering the case asks him to leave, but Ben steps in for Mick, reminding the detective that a child is missing and they can use all the help they can get. When Mick asks to see Jacob's bedroom, however, he is told that Forensics is still working up there and that he should come back in a few hours. While waiting, Mick checks on a vampire who is known for his taste for children's blood, but Leo denies having anything to do with Jacob's disappearance. When Mick and Beth return together some hours later, Robert lets them search Jacob's room. Mick can tell immediately that there is no vampire scent and proclaims it a human crime. When he notices some metallic dust on Jacob's night table, he looks up to see a tin ceiling. Looking in the attic, he locates a crawl space right over Jacob's room. The tin over Jacob's bed easily comes up, and Mick realizes that the "monster" simply reached down, grabbed Jacob, carried him up to the attic, and made off with him. Searching further, he discovers an unused coal shute that allows for entry into the house and concludes that that's how the kidnapper got into and out of the house.
Now that they know how the kidnapping took place, Mick asks Robert who might have had access to and/or knew about the inner structure of the house. Robert recalls having construction done about a year ago and gives them some work orders and receipts with the names of the contractor and some of his workers. Meanwhile, Beth asks Ben to look into the houses where the other kidnappings took place, and Ben is surprised to find that they were all old Victorians with secret accesses, such as wine cellars and crawl spaces. Impressed with Beth's insights, Ben offers her a job as a "civilian investigator."
When Beth learns about Mick's suspicion that he could have fathered Robert, she suggests that they do a DNA test. Getting a hair sample from Robert is no problem, but becoming a vampire has altered Mick's DNA and he doesn't happen to have a lock of his baby hair tucked away somewhere in a photo album or a family Bible. What he does have, however, is his old army footlocker filled with his personal items from the war, one of which is the razor that he used for shaving. He gives the samples to Beth, and she takes them over to the Bioanalysis lab.
Meanwhile, Mick interviews Robert once again to see if he remembers any particular worker who seemed to take an interest in Jacob. One name stands out: Ken Verdolino. Mick suddenly gets a call on his cellphone. It is Verdolino. He admits that he has been watching Mick since the start of the investigation and warns him to back off the case. To drive home his warning, Verdolino traps Beth in the Hall of Records where she is looking into recent requests of access to the blueprints for the two other houses where the kidnapped children lived. Fortunately, Mick shows up just in time to scare off Verdolino while Beth gets his address from the DMV and pulls the blueprints to Verdolino's house. Rather than wait for Ben to show up with a warrant, Mick races over to the house, convinced that time is running out for Jacob...if, in fact, he is still alive.
When Mick arrives at Verdolino's house, he notices Verdolino walking from the house to a sub-basement of another house that had been recently razed to make way for a new freeway. Following Verdolino into the dark basement, Mick calls out to him, telling him that he knows what it feels like to be alone and always in the dark. Verdolino assures Mick that he's going to teach Jacob that there is nothing to fear in the dark, then fires off a few shots at Mick. Mick keeps approaching, so Verdolino shoots himself, but not before he tells Mick that it's his fault Jacob will die alone and in the dark. With Verdolino dead, Mick searches for Jacob but can't find him until he hears a faint heartbeat behind a brick wall. Suddenly the heartbeat stops, so Mick breaks down the wall with his bare hands and rescues Jacob. Jacob begins to breathe again, and Mick brings him up from the basement to where the police and an ambulance are waiting.
The next day, Beth and Mick stop to visit the Fordhams. Inside the house, Robert has noticed Mick's car pulling up. "Look, Dad, it's Mick!" Jacob says, but Jacob is not referring to Mick's car. He's pointing to a picture hanging on the wall, a 1944 photo of Ray Fordham's army unit. Mick St John can clearly be seen standing in the back row. While still in the car, Beth hands Mick the envelope with the results of his DNA test. Mick is saddened to find that the test is negative and admits to Beth that he didn't realize until now just how much he would like to have a family until he almost had one. "Family isn't just about DNA," Beth replies. Mick smiles and drives off, just as Robert comes out of the house with the photo of Mick in his hand. [Synopsis by BJ Kuehl]
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