Bullet has decided she's now on the team full-time, and leads them through the back alleys and creep spots of Seattle looking for an abductee who may or may not be Kallie, may or may not be related to Joe Mills, may or may not be related to the Piper, but for sure has connections to Beacon House. In the end, they find the girl -- throat all chopped up, but alive -- in a black-bag veterinarian office, and while Bullet's happy that they saved a life, one day of the realities of the Team Linden Lifestyle has her pretty convinced they're never going to find Kallie, and her ass is totally dead.

On the lighter side, it gives Linden ample time to see why Holder's so smitten with the girl -- one scene in particular, in which Bullet offers to ink Linden up with a picture of the North Star ("Because that's what you look at on the ocean. When you get lost, it helps you find your way home"), is not only an episode but a series highlight -- and Holder and Bullet a chance to really coordinate their affections in their lovely, quiet way.

Less soothing is Linden's visit to Holder's dojo, where she finds Caroline resigned to two facts: Holder isn't the sort of person who remembers Valentine's Day, and Holder is turning into a wild Linden animal right before her eyes. And when she has a run-in with Skinner's daughter at the station, it results in so many different kinds of bitchface from his wife that you can picture her just passing the hell out.

Turns out Joe Mills is Mama Dips's son, which Linden intuits almost as quickly as, later, she flips the fuck out on Danette for being such a bad mother. In both cases, you can see Linden's self-loathing from here, but it's a smooth Holder who renders it safe and on the table with "one of his addict sayings," as Linden puts it: "You spot it, you got it."

Adrian's foster mother comes to visit Ray Seward to ask for a final reconciliation; Ray strings her along until she fatally mentions that Adrian's "forgiven" him, at which point he abruptly but not surprisingly flips out. In parallel, chatty Alton has been given the chance to speak to his victims' family, in the hopes of getting points toward his appeal. It's only after the fact, when he returns empty and crestfallen, that he fills Ray in on his crime: He killed his parents in a botched burglary, and the "family" that visited -- and eventually forgave him, breaking his heart -- were his brother and sister.

These C-Block moments are really coalescing into some high-level shit, which I feel like we were promised but took a while to get going. The actors involved, of course, are a dream, but seeing their shadow play reiterations of the show's various themes could eventually turn these closed-box scenarios into more of a show highlight than even Mitch's harrowing journey into bleak stasis (and eventual recovery) was.

In the end, we're a little closer to finding the Piper and Pastor David is still pinging like hell, but the ever-fascinating Joe Mills provides much of the game-changing action. First you've got his mom running a motel to protect his perversity (while claiming he's just an innocent "young soul" that kids love), and then over the course the episode, the real scary shit: Danette received a call from Kallie's phone last night, which combined with Linden's emotional abuse has finally lit a fire under her ass. So she spends the episode driving around looking for her and calling obsessively, but just before she packs it in for the night, she calls one more time, and it rings nearby: The phone's been in Joe's possession this whole time.

Next Week: Bullet continues adjusting to the idea that there may have been a Killing, Danette goes fully apeshit about Joe Mills, we get some testimony from tonight's Pied Piper victim that seems to indict (the obviously psychotic) Pastor Dave, and Linden tries to convince both Skinner and Seward himself -- his execution now two weeks away -- that Ray is innocent.